My house in Randpark Ridge

So, here' s a video of the house that I'm renting in Johannesburg in the area called Randpark Ridge. It's a thatched house and very open and lots of light, which is what drew me to it initially. As you will see in the video, it has a huge back yard and I've got plenty of room to host people! At the end of my blog is a link to the video, hopefully it will work because I can't seem to load it. If it doesn't work then I'll try something else.

The address is 6 Haakdoring. The people that own it and live there are moving to Australia. If your audio works, you will hear the owner, Kerry, telling me about the move and that it's for two primary reasons: 1) the overall crime in Joburg, and 2) opportunities for her young sons. As she was telling me, it is difficult for white males post-apartheid in getting a job. And as I've come to learn, there is a similar version of affirmative action here in South Africa, so you'll hear me make a reference to black and coloured males. Race is talked about very differently here than in the US. Coloured is an official racial category and is used openly, which of course is outdated and insensitive in the States, so it's an adjustment.

Tomorrow we're going to the Apartheid Museum and Soweto, which I'm really looking forward to. Two of my colleagues are white South Africans in the 30's who have told some stories about being a youth and growing up in the apartheid era of South Africa and seeing its collapse in the 90's. Both of them went to integrated schools, which was rare for the times, and in fact, Alison's father was an educator who was involved in this very famous social movement called Edu-train where, back in the 80s, black and white South African high school students were put on a train together and traveled around South Africa. This was during apartheid and there were still separate cars for the two races to sit in and this caused quite a stir, as you can imagine. I'm anxious after tomorrow's visit to learn more about this time period.

Here's a picture of two of my colleagues that weren't in the group photo, Samburu and Dinah. Gavin is on the left and I'm on the right. This is at a mall before we went and saw a movie last Friday night. I'm the one without anything fancy around my neck.file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/user7/My%20Documents/My%20Flip%20Video%20Library/house/Thatched%20house.AVI