Twas the best of times, twas the worst of times. This past week has been just that. It started with absolutely amazing experiences around Cape Town with some absolutely phenomenal people and then…BAM! Little B is knocked off her feet with a bad case of strep throat. My left tonsil looks like there’s a lump of charcoal covered in white netting. My lower cheeks and neck are quite swollen and sore, making me look a bit like a pear-head. This is an exaggeration, but adds to the imagery. I’ve never had strep throat so severe. After a few days of letting it go and immersing myself in activities 137%, I finally pulled my weak feverish body to health services, where the nurse immediately sent me to the doctor for some help. That was yesterday. Today was all videos! And for those of you who know my well, I am often opposed to movies for a few reasons, the major one being they take away from time that could be spent productively working or building relationships. However, extreme circumstances call for extreme measures. Interestingly enough, one of the videos I picked from my roommate’s collection happened to be the Beyond Words video from 2001 of a group of Bahá’ís from around the world who came to South Africa, traveled around and did dances with messages about eliminating the extremes of poverty and wealth, ending poverty, staying away from drugs, and stopping domestic violence among other things. Low and behold when I turned it on and watched the members of the group dance in from offstage, I saw TWO PEOPLE I knew! My first-year roommate, Jess Thimm, and my good friend, Jenni Burke! It was so amazing. Talk about globalization.

Let me take a few steps back though and update y’all on a few things. Last I wrote I was still figuring out my classes; whether I should take 3 or 4. The second to last day before we had to add claases, I decided 3, but then went to talk with Bill Moseley, my geography professor from Macalester who is in Cape Town for the summer, who told me about a really interesting Urban Geography class, which I immediately took action toward adding. All I needed was the professor’s signature, a seemingly simple task, but by the last day to add classes I only had an email approval. The registrar’s office gave me til Monday to get the signature. So after four long walks up to the top of upper campus to the professor’s office where I was met each time by a closed door, I figured it must not have been meant to be. I want to emphasize at this point that upper campus is not close to anything but upper campus, and upper upper campus is no less than 237 steps away from upper campus. So four walks up and down pretty much gave me my exercise for the next two months. I additionally went to the class at its meeting time on Monday and was greeted with a note on the board that said, “Urban Geography has been cancelled today because the professor is stuck in Johannesburg due to the South African Airways strike. So that pretty much sealed the deal, and I’m taking 3. Being sick right now really makes that feel like the right decision.