Greetings from South Africa

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So I got to Pietermaritzburg on Wednesday morning after 30hrs of
travel and layovers, and went straight to orientation.
Pietermaritzburg is the capital city of the region of Kwa-Zulu Natal
which was home to the Zulu kingdom.
Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were spent pretty much just settling
in. There are about 20 American students here, but only 3 of us are
from Rutgers. There are also 3 Germans. We've pretty much been hanging
out amongst ourselves, but that will change once classes and clubs get
under way.
Saturday we went on a bus/walking tour of down town Pietermaritzburg
which is about 20min away by car. The city is beautiful and choc full
of museums and historical cites as well as clubs and cafes, so you
know I'll spend quite a bit of time down town. On Sunday we went to a
pho-Zulu village and watched a performance version of typical Zulu
courting practices and marriage ceremony. While we were there we saw a
monkey in a tree!! That was definitely one of the highlights of the
day.
Yesterday we registered for classes, that was an experience in
itself. They don't have online registration so we were running around
like chickens without heads trying to find the right people to sign
our forms for us. I'm not entirely sure what my final schedule will
look like, but the classes I'm definitely taking are The Ethics of
Power, the Social Psychology of Race and Race relations, Diversity,
Development and Education. The history department here is painfully
small. It only offers 3 classes this semester and none of them focus
on South African history or race relations. Of course I'm not letting
that stop me. This afternoon I'm meeting with the professor who
usually teaches South African history to talk about doing some sort of
independent study. I spoke with him briefly yesterday and he sounded
optimistic. I may also take a history course that's split into two
sections. First 7 weeks covers US history post 1945 and the last 7
weeks deals with US-African relations and African opinion of the US
post 1945.
I'm in the process of putting pictures up and adding captions, you'll
get an email with a link to the website in the next day or so.

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