Déjà vu

The next morning we walked into town. Like Chestertown, and perhaps every small town around the world, Grahamstown has pretty much one main street called High Street on which almost all the shops and restaurants are located. Everything seems more colorful, though, lots of light pink brick and white paint and green everything. Grahamstown is much busier too, especially at night. We stopped at the local supermarket chain called Checkers, and I was pleasantly surprised at how well stocked with American products it was, including shelves of American shampoo and conditioners and even Heinz ketchup! And of course everything is extremely cheap. At ten rands to a dollar a 300R cell phone costs 30 dollars. I have a feeling this could be dangerous. Even if everything always seems like a bargain, eventually those bargains add up! We ate lunch at another rather strangely decorated restaurant- this one had an, as Nouria described it “tastefully racist,” American cowboy and Indian theme. The burgers were great though.



Sunday night was, well… weird. A jazz night had been organized as one of the orientation events but before we went our RAs or ‘wardens’ as they’re called here told us to dress up and all meet in the common room early. Then all the boys from another residence came over and we randomly paired up. My ‘date’ was nice enough but a first year like all the students that aren’t international right now and more interested in talking with old highschool friends. It was a strange déjà vu like experience, like going through freshman orientation all over again except this time with alcohol. I went home early deciding that once was enough for awkward first year mingling, but of course most of this week is going to be these orientation type activities so I’ll just have to see how it goes…