Hey everyone! I want to say so much to everyone right away. Listen! People! This is a "YES!!!", of course! Maybe it will pass, but for now, I'm really liking it here!!! I've been having a blast this week. We're walking around, they're taking us on excursions. And later I'll look for housing and work. There are six of us: three girls and three guys. We were all put (unbelievably!) in one room (and I thought I'd arrive and have a whole room to myself). But the guys are good, pleasant. By the way, I'm writing all my posts on my stupid, old, and battered laptop at the hostel. Then I copy them to a flash drive and take them to the CACTS office, because that's the only place with the Internet. But it's one thing when it exists and is decent, and another thing what it's like here. First, it's only on one computer. Second, this computer is a real drag and the Internet keeps dropping out. Third, it doesn't have Windows, but an unfamiliar Ubuntu (while other computers in the office somehow have Windows). So there. And the browser works terribly, twisting my text into incomprehensible structures. Today, while walking through shops and looking at housing prices in the newspaper, I was once again convinced that everything here costs exactly the same as in Chelyabinsk. One to one! And only bananas, if you convert the prices to rubles, come out ten to fifteen cheaper. And watermelons are the opposite. In everything else, there's just no difference! It's somehow... even surprising! By the way, there are no bananas on the palm trees (I hope that's just for now). Otherwise, I would periodically forget that I'm a human and turn into a monkey ?O0 I took about a hundred shots. Here are a few of them. Interested? All the photos are urban: in the center (buildings - skyscrapers), in De Waal Park (flowers and a bird), at the Waterfront near the Victoria Wharf hypermarket (a bent gun and a road with palm trees), and in Gardens (the area where we are currently living - houses and trees in a foggy haze). Weather? Yesterday it was warm, but today it's like in Chelyabinsk: rain and all that stuff. It's okay, spring is just beginning! It should get warmer by December (how great that sounds: it should get warmer by December!). So I need to dig in and find work. Otherwise, it wouldn't be cool to return to Russia to the frosts. Don't you agree?! September 24, 2008. TRAVELING THROUGH SOUTH AFRICAN WINE REGIONS AND A CHEESE FACTORY. Tasting, tasting. I tried different cheeses, but in the end, Gouda turned out to be the tastiest. But still, it was fun. And the wine tasting was even a little curious. I understand, of course, that some other alcoholic (or just a connoisseur) in my place would be crazy with happiness while tasting such expensive and different wines. But for me, they are still made from rotten fruit and smell of that same rot. But, of course, they don't stink. And, besides everything else, everything is so beautifully presented that it's just interesting to participate in this whole game-ceremony. And I even drank a little wine (I poured the rest into the trash). What I liked about today was riding around and seeing the suburbs. And there are plenty of them around Cape Town. Basically, they are quite small. In the center, they are cute and convenient. On the outskirts... well... it varies. I think Africa still has a long way to go in terms of development. This is not the established and adapted Europe and America. You can't deny them comfort (although they have plenty of blind spots too. But that's not what we're talking about). How much sand there is in Africa! The entire soil is literally permeated with it! You know, a monument should be erected to Africans simply for not despairing of living among all this sand, and for using it in such a way that it turns from a disadvantage into an advantage. I must be so Russian to the core, permeated by our nature, that I am like a part of it, if I reason this way. It's not for nothing that there is an opinion that it is best for a person to live where they were born. Because all the surrounding nature has everything that they and their organism need. Maybe that's partly why I've never seriously thought about emigrating. Well, that's okay. I have the triumphant music from one of my very few favorite movies, Rocky Balboa, playing here. That's good! That means everything will be wonderful for us, don't you agree?!