Today I managed to sleep into just before 9 AM, what an accomplishment! Given I usually wake up at 5:15 AM on the dot to the sound of a heard of elephants rolling through my door and burglar bars to the sounds of Rihanna or South African Christian gospel. "We found love in hopeless plaaaace!!!!" comes bellowing in from the other side of my wall on a very-off falsetto pitch with several cracks of his Muppet-Gonzo-like-voice. It's Gonzo, it's a bird, it's a plane, oooh oooh wait, it's my host brother at it again doing his morning crack ass of dawn ritual dance-off and sing-off in his room at 5 AM. I usually groan and mumble: "Are you F#$%^ing kidding me? I have 1 more hour till my alarm goes off."
But, today NADA. AWESOME! So I slept into to the pitter patter of the falling rain on my tin roof. I cannot tell you how relaxing that is. AND it's cool out so I was actually able to snuggle under my sheets and putting off getting up.
So I get up and unlock myself from my fortress (3 doors to get out of my house: normal door, burglar barred door, sliding door)and stumble out to the latrine and breathe in the freshly rained upon African air....Aaaaah. Then I walk over to my outdoor tap and fill my plastic bucket with water my morning bath.
I get back into my room and put in my modem and go to Facebook instantly - anything crazzzy going on in people's lives back home, ehhh not really. CHANGE....right to the NY Times. In the background my electric kettle warms up my morning coffee water and I begin to scan through the headlines, nothing too moving. Hmmmm..."In Maryland, House Passes Bill to Let Gays Wed," the only article I read. Then my eye reaches The Fashion & Style section....
Guilty pleasure, yes! Omigoodness, so I'm here sitting in my gross jeans, Peace Corps - South Africa shirt that I've been wearing to bed for the last week, hair a mess and with my nerd glasses on, surrounded on the outside by what is the rural village life of the Northern Cape and I have the gumption to go look at this. Bucket baths, funerals, kids running around with no shoes on, women carrying goods down the road balanced on their head, unpaved street, black outs, no water, hunger, living on 1 meal a day - the different life.
Look at High fashion, the fashion of New York's fashion week,while in the African Bush is like looking at that really good gourmet French patisserie rich chocolate cake and not even being able to eat it. It's almost like an oxymoron, it's something unheard of in these parts and something completely out of my current budget.
However, my eyes and interest can't help but be pulled into the glitz and glam of what is part of the central aspect of what makes New York City, The City. Fashion.
So I've got to look at Bill Cunninham. OOOOooh Hmmmm, fall coats, and fur coats with no sleeves dressed down. Lovely: http://video.nytimes.com/video/2012/02/17/fashion/100000001368347/bill-cunningham--coatings.html
Then pulled into the happening of the Jason Wu show marking multi-culturism and the other shows that highlighted the upcoming season themes of the military look [now - I've been reading Vogue since I was 12 and the military look is something that comes in and out every several years for fall fashion, this is nothing new, but at the same time all the pictures I see all are great looks].
Names and things like: Joseph Altuzarra, Rag and Bone, Michael Kors with his outer wear knit alpaca fringe coat, Brad Goreski commenting on Tory Birch, and seeing the faces lined up at the front from of shows at New York's Fashion week....art and beauty. I just love it.
I flip through the AmfAR (The Foundation for AIDS Research) gala pictures and Sarah JessicaParker dressed in, what else, Oscar de la Renta. This is the side of New York I only saw from the outside but I can't help but be drawn in.
But that's what I do my Saturday morning, flip back to the the life in the States that I do not see here, nor was I ever a part.
I open up a few more tabs and spend about 15 minutes looking for information on the prevalence of STDs in South Africa curious to find things to have my 7th graders need to know. We're still on Sexuality and Disease in my Life Orientation class and it's been a really interesting time. I wish I had a good 3 months to work on this with them, instead the Department of Education allots you 3 weeks to teach them about these
2 topics. I'm already going onto 4 weeks pushing into our next theme which is Personal Choice and
Self Image, but I've been going over that with the kids as I go through Sex Ed. We spent this last week going over Decision-Making and terms like "safe" and "risky" and "alternatives" and then I've prepared a midterm exam for them next week, there is NEVER enough time!
But anyways, I need to get back to the lesson plan research and then get my lazy bum into town to do my grocery shopping. Here's a great message from one of my old Yoga teachers in NYC:
"Research has shown that a simple act of kindness directed toward another improves the functioning of the immune system and stimulates the production of serotonin in both the recipient of the kindness and the person extending the kindness. Even more amazing is that persons observing the act of kindness have similar beneficial results. Imagine this! Kindness extended, received, or observed beneficially impacts the physical health and feelings of everyone involved!"
Be good people and enjoy the weekend, and go out there and extend some kindness - know I will :) I'm out
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