Week 7: 25 - 28th March

April 02, 2024

I am sitting down to write this having just about recovered from Equip camp and feeling a little overwhelmed by the amount of work I will have to complete over the next few days. (Equip was truly wonderful by the way, but I will give it its own blog post, for now you will have to bear with me as I drag my mind back to last week and try to describe everything properly!)

I feel that Monday has been just about erased from my memory, so I will have to begin by writing about Tuesday instead. I started the day in a bit of a panic having woken up about twenty minutes before my first class and rushed to get ready. There really is nothing worse than running late, it can feel as though the whole morning is thrown off! I had so many things I needed to do, being very conscious that I would have to hand in an assignment before camp and also do any necessary grocery shopping, washing and packing. While I was making a mental shopping list during classes, Tao messaged to ask what I was doing during the lunch hour between classes. It turned out she had promised a friend that she would act as his model for some or other photography for his portfolio but was no longer able to go. She wondered whether I would be able to help out instead and had asked Dana as well. Hoping I would not be the only one going, I said that I was happy to help out. A message from Liesje then came through, asking if i would like to have lunch with her. I was excited for these unexpected adventures, but felt a bit swamped!

In the end, I went shopping, then home to get changed into something more photo shoot-appropriate, and then to Victoria street to meet Tao's friend. The pictures came out beautifully and he was very sweet. I hope the pictures did help him advertise his services for grad week like he had hoped. Since the pictures only took around 30 minutes, I met Liesje outside the Lombardi building and we ate our matching salads and chatted. We were both rather tired, and Liesje needed to get some things off her chest, but it was a peaceful sort of lunch which helped me rewire my thoughts.

I then headed to the library where I worked for a while until I was interrupted by Dana, who had decided that rather than working at the bib until six which we had originally agreed upon, we should go to the flat now and work form there. So off to the flat we went to work together until it was time to go to the Spier Light Art. We did not get as much done as we had hoped I think. We were both so burned out and I was dreadfully overstimulated. Dana can attest to this; she spent ten minutes trying to fix a dripping pipe with a colander because it had been driving me insane the whole week. I suppose it's a little funny looking back, but sometimes having misophonia is so frustrating!

Anyway, I microwaved the Macaroni and cheese while Dana logged onto her zoom call for Equip leaders and she gave me live updates while we ate together. It was most entertaining! The funniest was when George was shaving right in the middle of the call and the group chat was having quite a lot of fun with it.

Liesje fetched us just after eight and Tao squished in since her exam had finished earlier than anticipated, meaning that she was free to join! She was not very happy that we were breaking the law by having me on Dana's lap, but it did not seem to stop her from coming. In the end, there were quite a lot of us who went to see the lights! (Me, Dana, Tao, Liesje, George, Timothy, Tristan, Pieter, Michael, Reynhardt and Li-Yen). As we had been warned, the lights themselves were not all too impressive except perhaps "In die Sterre Geskryf" which was created by a Blind artist-- this was my favourite!

After looking at the lights and also having a "swamp man" running competition on the field, we decided to head to the Neelsie for ice cream (a rather odd suggestion if you consider that we had been wandering around in the freezing wind for just under an hour). It turned out that the queue at Moody's was far too long and so we got iced slushies at DCM instead and happily chatted away at a table inside. On our way out, we sokkied on the rooiplein and had to do it mostly without music since no one could hear it from Reynhardt's phone. Tao looked exhausted by the time we had all finished, she just wanted to climb into bed poor soul!

I realise now that all of this is only about Tuesday! To be completely honest, not much happened on Wednesday except Bible study (which Lauren lead and was wonderful!) I spent most of Wednesday and Thursday working on Philosophy and trying not to burst into tears about it. I also had to work on a few group tasks and things so those were far more academic days overall. I also spent time packing for Equip and bought some snacks (but more about Equip later!)

I think I shall leave it there for now, this is dreadfully long for describing such a short week!