Recap of weekend

So I think i short-changed you guys a bit on yesterday's post. My first weekend in jo-burg was actually a pretty fun one. Friday, i met up with a friend from chicago who was visiting someone else here; went to montecasino for a late lunch. montecasino is this huge place that has a casino (obviously), shops, restaurants, bars, clubs, etc. it was almost overwhelming, but really fun. i had oxtail, which i thought i'd never eaten before, but then realized that my mom cooks it all the time (my mom wasn't too happy when i told her that. heh). That night we also went to a club around here called Manhattan's. That was also fun (as fun as clubs can be i guess). Company was nice; the music selection was...interesting. anyway, fortnately or unfortunately, i think some pictures have popped up on facebook.

Saturday, I met up with a guy whose family and my family used to be good friends back in Nigeria. even though we went to sandton city (the big, annoying mall) it was still nice to hang out and chat. we got the most discgusting lunch i've had here so far (it was advertised as chinese), but we also got to watch a Man-U match.

Sunday was my trip outside of sandton which was exciting. Went to the flea market at Rosemont, drove around a couple interesting neighborhoods, and had a really nice convo with this guy (one of those friend of a friend of a friend-type). he's from singapore, but has been here for several years and had an interesting perspective on a lot of issues.

lesson #387: south africa is still very much racially tense. and i'm not talking about how it is in the states. things may be pretty bad in some areas in the states, but in sa, institutionalized racism/segragation/discrimination just ended 14 years ago, so there is still quite a bit of divisions. of course, like in the US, you can ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist, but if you dig deeper into why some things are the way they are, race is very much at the bottom of it. (this was another reason why i enjoyed venturing out to the more diverse places on sunday)hopefully these are times of "growing pains"...sa is such a melting pot of different types of people that if it works, it would truly be a thing of beauty.

Resolution #0542: take more pics...i've hardly taken any.