Damn, it feels good to be a graduate

So, Ive been prettttttty slack about keeping up with this. My last real update was about a month ago. Ive been SO BUSY!!! The main thing anyone reading this needs to know is I AM DONE WITH COLLEGE. It was a strenuous push to the finish, but now the marathon is over and I’m basking in the flood of endorphins and overall goodness that follows. To catch up:

After Thanksgiving things got serious. We had our final exam in our South African history/politics class (for which I am proud to say I completed a college goal of including the word “bullshit” in an exam when I wrote a response about the 4 pillars of struggle during apartheid, saying, “basically, the the international community was sick of the National Party’s bullshit”), we had our final banquet which was 5 hours long and consisted of adults schmoozing, and then PAPERS. I had a pretty good base before the final week, but Monday-Thursday of that week I spent 5-6 hours at UCT library writing, everyday. Sweet little Sarah Henning was my library partner and we tried to keep one another on track. By Thursday, I was completely done with my personal research paper, which is 22 pages (biggest paper I’ve ever written, I’ll call it my own version of a thesis) and BALLER if I may say so myself (big Word up to my special friend who helped me proof-read). I was also done with my part of a group paper on natural resource exploitation in the DRC and spent a lot of the night finishing up the bibliography (group bibliographies are a PAIN IN THE ASS). I had to go the bed though and rest up for the next morning because I would be having tea with …

   DESMOND TUTU!!!!! 

Ok, so during the summer  a beautiful lady I know, Anna Claire Eddington, did a Burch Fellowship in South Africa and got breakfast with Desmond Tutu. When I heard this in June, I  a) totally developed a girl-crsuh on her  b) got so excited at the prospect of doing the same thing myself. Thus, in October I drafted a letter to Sweet Desi inviting him to a Thanksgiving feast at our house in Tamboerskloof and had everyone in the house sign the letter. Our TA Eboni was set to meet him through her internship-like thing she was doing, so she was able to give the letter to his personal assistant. Eboni received a call from his assistant saying he was unfortunately busy on Thanksgiving but would be able to meet on December 4^th. When I heard this I thought:

“HMMM, THIS IS KIND OF PERFECT as my last day of college is December 4^th, and would pretty much be my graduation day, and since he was the speaker at the May graduation ceremony in Chapel Hill, WE CAN BE BEST FRIENDS ON MY GRADUATION DAY IN CAPE TOWN!!!”

So yes, it all worked out. We all woke up super early (some people never went to bed as they were finishing papers) and we went downtown to St George's Cathedral. Here we attended a service led by Desi, which was very cool. After the service we all headed to a coffee shop with him. As we were walking there, Sweet Desi kept shaking people’s hands on the street, waving at people; basically being the cutest, spunkiest little old man ever. By far the best part of this walk occurred when we stopped in the median of a pedestrian crosswalk. As the cars drove by honking there horns, Desi held out his hand and gave every driver that passed him a high-five, including some white guy in a BMW who looked so happy. It was hysterical. Then at the coffee shop I was able to nab the seat beside Desi (which was my goal, afterall). There were other adults there, so he spent most of his time talking with them. I felt a little awkward at times, thinking in my head “What the hell do you talk about with Desmond Tutu?????” We made nice conversation and he patted me on the shoulder (PRAISE!). Yall, he CACKLES. The cutest laugh Ive ever heard. He could only stay like 20-25 minutes, but it was enough to snap this photo:

And that was that! Headed back to the house, turned both papers, and was

DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE!!!!!!

There was 1 other super-senior on the program and she was pretty excited as well, but no one else really understood how weird/awesome/scary/amazing/reallyreallyreallyreallygood it felt. It was a BEAUTIFUL day so I just ran over to Andrew’s apartment where I was greeted with “CONGRADUATIONS!!!” signs all over the house, a card, and the biggest hug ever. We celebrated by taking a shot of peach Schnapps (what?! Kaitlin taking a shot?? I know what youre thinking…. But this was a big occasion) :

Then we headed downtown for the World Cup Final Draw. IT WAS INSANE. There were thousands of people on Long Street the main drag in Cape Town. Tooo many people for me, though it was fun for a while. I have to write a whole other post about what I think about the World Cup..... whew. Its going to be ugly. 

ANYWAYYYYYYYYYYS now that I have 2 weeks of free time until Malawi, I can do WHATEVER I WANT!!!! I'll be writing more now BECAUSE NOW I GOTS THE TIME YESSSSSSSS.

Love you all, send me some chilly December air

K-Grad