Another first...

So I have had a lot of firsts in Cape Town. My first car, my first apartment, and now my first broken bone. I suppose it only seems fitting.
It was of course the result of an epic adventure and fabulous story: after literally wandering all around Observatory barefoot: over bridges, fences, and highways, I was running up a very flat and very paved road. I tripped trying to catch a frisbee and made some unhappy contact between my foot and the ground. I did catch the frisbee, but I am now headed to see an orthopaedic surgeon tomorrow morning.
I have yet to come up with an optimistic way of describing my experience with the hospital today (I will!), however, I did appreciate how kind the people I encountered were to me. So, another first and so many more to look forward to, but hopefully the others will not be quite this painful.

Just Photos

For more photos than I can upload to this blog and for a quick synopsis of my first two months in South Africa check out this facebok photo album:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2083143&id=40404789&l=7e6ef215bb

Some recent developments

I have taken great strides in installing myself in Cape Town -  I have not only have a place to live, but a car to get around in as well.

Meet Buttercup, my first car ever. She is older than I am (87), has a manual choke, and takes 5 keys to operate (steering wheel lock, door lock, ignition lock, immobilizer, and petrol tank lock). She and I zip around Cape Town together, up and down mountains, and I even drove her almost 200 km from Robertson where she lived previously to Cape Town.

This is my new digs (lemme know if you need my address or a translation of this South African term). I'm living in Observatory, a rather "Bohemian" area of Cape Town full of internationals and grad students. Obs is full of surprises and interesting people, so many I have yet to even encounter.

I live with Stephane, the naval engineer from France (he designs bellybuttons), Ewaldi, the sustainable interior designer, and Ed, the out of work sound engineer (both from the east of SA). Each of these people are so much more than the simple sentences that follow their names and attempt to describe all that they do; they are all lovely, and we are fortunate to have such a cohesive and harmonious house of people that found each other purely by chance. And gumtree (SA craigslist).

My house is the little white one with the no parking sign, and yes, that is Table Mountain in the background.