babbelas and other South African goodies

Thanks to a lovely and thoughtful note from a friend of mine I was reminded to write a new post (by the way, havent received the link to your semesterbreak-blog yet, Sandy.. but Im sure you have written several posts already ;) ).
Anyways..10 days have gone by already and lots has happened!!My internship at the research office of the Democratic Alliance in the parliament of South Africa has officially started and believe me folks, it has not been easy to get up that early every morning. I used to be pretty good at getting out of bed in the mornings but I guess three years of university have done the usual to me. Nonetheless, work at the research office has been pretty interesting so far! The first day I received my first research project which is to find out about CPFs (Community Police Fora) which were established to promote communication between police and communities and to prevent crime after all (you might have heard about South African crime statistics..they are pretty scary). Apparently there have been budgetary cuts by the government and the DA as leading opposition party of course has to make a statement on that. Besides the research project Im in charge of uploading new press releases onto the DA homepage..for those of you who know about my IT skills..yes..they seriously let me touch their homepage ;) .
The first couple of days it was really intense and overwhelming to receive all the news about South African politics but already now I feel I kind of know about the current main topics and issues going on in the country. I also got to go to a press conference last week and today I watched a committee meeting about the police. It is really cool to watch the news at night and you hear the statements you have already heard all about all day long because they were actually produced in your office. Or even see a press conference you helped setting up the room for and you actually watched life hours earlier that day.
But I dont want to bore you with politics.
The diversity of Cape Town still amazes me. It is such a global city, people from all over seem to live here. I love walking down the street (eventhough I still have not been able to accustom myself to the fact that people here drive on the left side of the road and I risk my life as soon as I put foot on the street o.O) and to hear the different languages, South Africa alone has several official languages but you can hear many more being spoken. My stay has already enriched my English vocabulary I suppose, some expressions really differ from the English I am used to, such as the use of "robot" instead of "traffic light" or "babbelas" for "hungover". I guess that is also the case because a lot of Afrikaans words have found their way into the English language here. Its very interesting to observe.
Other than that it is really remarkable how South Africans handle their public holidays. Apparently there are more public holidays in South Africa than in any other country in the world. Last Sunday for example was Women's Day, thus, everybody got off on Monday. And thats just the way it works here..everything is considered a public holiday..and in case it happens to be on a weekend then everybody just gets Monday off. I was told that during the Worldcup schools and universities were closed for 5 weeks straight!!That might be also an issue of public education since teachers have been striking a lot lately, but come on..5 weeks off, just like that?!?!
Alright..I have got to hit the pillow now, otherwise its going to be even more difficult to get up tomorrow morning!!I hope all of you are doing fine!!
Cheeeeeeeers from Bafana Bafana
Gesa

Parliament

early in the morning

at the waterfront