Weekend!

Saturday:
So I’m stuffed to the brim. My family keeps on feeding me and gets worried when I can’t finish my meal. We have been warned that the families brag about who has the chubbiest student in the end, so I think my Mama is trying to fatten me up. I just ate some pretty yummy stew with some mystery meat (I have given up trying to guess what meat I’m eating). So far the food has been really good. And despite one meal that upset my stomach, I have had relatively few food problems. The main staples are rice, corn, and chicken. A LOT of chicken. Just about every restaurant and fast food chain is chicken related. KFC’s are as common as McDonalds in the states. In fact, KFC was one of my 5 meals today.
Today, my mama, younger bhuti, and I made a trip to the store to get food. All told, the round trip was about 5 hours. We first had to take a “minibus taxi” in order to get onto an “Indian bus”. Minibus taxies serve the same purpose as our taxies in the states, except that they hold about 12 passengers. Now, this “Indian bus” was quite the trip. The bus is equivalent to a charter bus + stuffed animals hanging from the windows + crazy attendants yelling + erratic driving + hip hop music BLASTING throughout the bus to the point where you cannot hear the person next to you. It was quite the cultural experience to say the least.
It’s been fun seeing the excitement around the FIFA World Cup in 2010. I had the chance to see the new soccer stadium in Durban today and it is absolutely beautiful. Apparently there is a cable car that takes you over the stadium so you can see down into it. I wish I was going to be here for the games!
Tomorrow I am going to church in the morning. My younger bhuti is very excited for me to go because he is an altar boy. He is going to have me sit in the front row. After church my older bhuti’s girlfriend is going to “change my hairstyle” which apparently means give me cornrows/microbraids. This could turn out very good or very, very bad.

Sunday:
Today I combined two things that I have trouble understanding: Catholic Church and Zulu. It was very interesting to see the traditions at my family’s church, although I don’t know how much I actually understood since it was all in Zulu. However, I do know that when they called my name to stand up in front of the whole congregation, the words USA, Obama, and “Cat-lyn” were all mentioned in the same sentence. My younger bhuti was very professional as an altar boy and he told me that one day he wants to be Pope John Paul. He warned me beforehand that everyone would stare at me because I’m new but more importantly because I’m white. Many people did stare, especially the kids. Somehow I ended up sitting in the front section with all of the Sunday school children. They all wanted to sit next to me and hold my hand during prayer. It was quite adorable. Everyone is very friendly, but apparently just not used to seeing a white person in their neighborhood.
I did not have enough time to get my hair braided today but I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to avoid it next weekend. I also found out that the mystery meat I ate yesterday was sheep. Apparently we have been eating lots of sheep. Good to know.
Sala kahle … Stay well :)