tomorrow in Cape Town

the Q&A with the Archbishop this morning was most excellent. It's really astounding to watch what he does with a room. The energy & the quiet all at the same time. At dinner tonight, I sat with Gloria & Gene & Judyie who, as mentioned before, has lived in South Africa since 2001. We spent a bit of time talking about the 2 days of Global Studies with the Archbishop and again about the simulation the other day. Judyie is a theatre arts professor and she performs and she continually makes me think very differently about things. When I sat down at dinner, Gloria was saying to Judyie much of what I said yesterday in this blog, that she was feeling a lack of substance in his presentation. I said that I very much agreed. Judyie said she thought he did exactly what needed to be done yesterday. That we can read about his life and experiences in any of a good number of books both by him & about him. That, particularly after the apartheid simulation, we needed the community to come back together and that's what he did for us. There was really no shipboard processing of the activity, and Tutu only addressed it in passing, but Judyie said that was exactly the point: he addressed it and moved on. Since Judyie is all about performance and theatre arts, she gives me a really interesting perspective. She was paying attention to energy and space and emotion and that wasn't at all what I had paid attention to yesterday. She said he put us in exactly the place we needed to be in to listen. And he set us up for today for the Q&A. He taught today. Judyie also made the point about the simulation that no one would ever suggest that we participate in a Holocaust simulation ... why would we think this was at all an appropriate exercise? ... that question had also not at all occurred to me, but also very much worth pondering.

Classes are done now and I'm sitting in the faculty/staff lounge, partly blogging, partly chatting. All the faculty are feeling very free tonight & it's fun to watch. We will arrive in Cape Town tomorrow around 7:20 am. They said to be up by 6 or before to watch and that this will be the most beautiful port on the trip. Sunrise is at 6:34, which I just googled to prove my librarian-worthiness to all the folks sitting here wondering. They told us at the pre-port tonight to secure everything in our cabins because it will be very rocky in the early morning as we come in and the winds converge. This is the first time we've gotten that kind of instruction. There was also the 2nd malaria/condom/alcohol song at the pre-port tonight, this time the lead singer was the Archbishop himself. He dances and everything. As with last time, it was very very funny. I heard there are .mp3s floating around, so I'll see if I can get them posted on the blog.

I've got an architectural city tour tomorrow, which is a faculty directed practice for Robin, and then I'm free the rest of the day and again on Saturday. The safari starts Sunday. I met my students today. There are 23 of them & 1 of me. Wish me luck. There are a ton of things I want to do in Cape Town, so we'll see what I can fit in. I've very excited. This, and Vietnam, are the two ports I'm most looking forward to. Everyone says Cape Town is awesomely beautiful. My camera batteries are charged ...