Stellenboschin'

This will be a quickie, because this really sweet South African girl is letting us use internet time on her student account!
So. Stellenbosch.
Well, basically its a little university/wine town, and we are staying here in the University dorms and working with some students from here on a Habitat for Humanity project in the township of Mfuleni, about 30 minutes or so out of town. Honestly, it's been a kind of strange experience so far.
The first two days of construction, we got rained out by the unexpected cold front blowing over Stellenbosch this week. The philosophy of Habitat, though, is to go to the build site no matter what. Which for us meant getting up really early, then hiding out in a neighbor's house next to the site where we were supposed to be building a house, and leaving about 5 hours earlier than planned. The kids of the township were in school, so we didn't really have any interactions with them. And, our homeowner was not able to come to the site until the second day. So, we sat around drinking tea that the ladies of the neighborhood made for us, feeling utterly useless.
Today was a bit better, but we didn't really do much building. Our homeowner has several people working on his house-- they might be relatives, or just friends. The way habitat works is that you have to put in so many "sweat equity" hours before you can qualify to apply for your own house, but we aren't sure if these young men are doing that or are in some kind of informal agreement with our homeowner. At any rate, they are much more experienced in the type of construction we are doing, rendering us essentially brute manual labor forces for moving bricks and mixing Dugga. Ah, yes- brick lines and dugga, I should tell you about those. Brick lines are what they sound, standing in a line and swinging bricks at each other to pass them without actually lifting them (so goes the theory, unless the girl next to you keeps taking her gloves off, then you end up bearing quite a bit of unexpected weight. or so I have heard. . .) And dugga is the cement/sand/water mixture used as mortar for the brick house. You have to take several loads of sand, then dump the cement on top of it and turn it over with the shovel, then repeating the process using water. Much more labor intensive than it sounds! It makes it nice for the builders/bricklayers to have everything at their disposal, but it doesn't always require all volunteers.
Today, the kids got out of school. It was complete madness! At times, anyway. So, we have been playing with a few kids here and there, but there must have been at least 30 around our site today. First off, we are playing with a few in the street, and some others poke their heads out of fences and start saying some word in Xhosa, then darting away and giggling. We have no idea what, but try to invite them to play anyway. They come, but keep repeating it- I think its something like looma? One of the South African girls picks up on it and realizes they are yelling, "White Person! White Person!" It isn't as if they haven't seen them before, so apparently it's just custom. We wanted to point back and say, "Little black child! little black child!" They find it quite funny, but maybe they like us a little bit, because it turned into "My white person!" while they were playing with us. Oh heavens, I think they think we are human jungle gyms. They have no real relative sense of personal space, and feel quite free to climb on you and grab your things. I am not kidding or trying to stereotype- these little buggers grab and run! We are able to organize a few games and generally get thigns back, but you have to keep your eye on them.
Other than that, the South Africans have been trying to entertain us and themselves. We've been pretty wiped so haven't been up for much, but did go to a pub & then winetasting yesterday afternoon. Actually, at the second vineyard, we were heading down the path and saw a sign for a coffee shop, so, being the Seattlites we are, went and sampled the famed local double espresso in lieu of the renowned local wine. (We weren't alone, some people from my house group joined us.) Tonight we went to the Arizona Spur, a South African interpretation of an American restaurant, for burgers and shakes.
Like I said, I've been enjoying myself, but having a really interestign experience working in the townships. No matter how many images you see or books you read before you get here, nothing gets you ready for it, really. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but can't say it's anything like I expected.
That reminds me, I should write about our visit to an orphanage, but I will do that when I am not on someone else's time.
love you all!
Oh yes, and if anyone in Juneau hears they have an arrest warrant out for me for missing Jury duty due to being halfway across the world, you can assume my phone call did not work today, and can vouch for me if you care.