Maybe Animals Are Kind Of Interesting After All

The biggest tragedy of the trip so far is that Seth - who used to want to be a veternarian and who was more excited about shark diving than almost anything else on the trip other than soccer - was too seasick to cage shark dive. He took these pictures of me moments before he upchuked over the side of the boat. The crew would have allowed him to go in, but he could barely move.

Initially, I had absolutely no desire to go: getting into a clausterophic cage in freezing cold water with human-eating beasts did not sound like fun at all. But Seth had made reservations about a month ago, and he convinced me last minute to try to squeeze onto the list. I got super nervous beforehand - I come from a family of surfers and Jaws-watchers.

Once I relunctantly loaded the boat, they took us out to an island full of seals, and anchored in the middle of a stormy sea (thus the motion sickness) with an 8-person cage hanging alongside the boat. Once you're in the cage, you float with your head just above the surface of the water while a guy on the ship throws out a huge chunk of tuna bait attached to a string. Then, as he spots a shark approaching, he yells, "Down on left!" That's our cue to submerge our heads and look left as a shark comes barreling towards us. Then he'll yell, "Down middle!" and we hold our breathe and look straight ahead.

About a dozen sharks came within three feet of my face. It was not scary, but thrilling, especially when they approached us with their mouths wide open. Every time we came up for air, the people next to me in the cage would scream, "Holy cow! Did you see that?!" Then we would pop our heads down for more. After 15 minutes or so in the cage, there was still great shark watching from the boat. We saw some amazing breeches, and saw one shark attmept to eat the bait that was stuck on the side of the cage. (See picture.)

About 30 minutes after my turn in the water, I also got seasick and puked off the side of the boat. But I recovered quickly and the experience was still totally worth it. It's just kind of sad that I - the animal hater - got to have the experience that Seth - the animal lover - wanted. I will keep trying to give animals a chance.

Seth and Oakie

Driving with a left-handed stick-shift on the left side of the road is probably one of the most terrifying things I have done in South Africa (well, at least until shark diving tomorrow). Driving along the highway is fine, but this is what goes through my head when I have to make a turn:

"Ok, turn onto the left side of the road. Stay left! Crap, I have to downshift. Oh no, we're going to stall. Downshift! Downshift! And now I'm not breaking fast enough. Don't flip, little car! Why are the windshield wipers going?! Aaahhh! The stupid blinker is on the other side. Now we're going to rear-ended because no one knows that we're turning. Blinker, now!"

Fortunately, Seth drives 90% of the time. We have put some serious miles on our little Hyundai named Oakie - tomorrow we will complete the gorgeous 1,000 mile drive from Durban to Cape Town. Despite the fact that Oakie has what Seth describes as "wheelbarrow tires," she has served us well. Most importantly, she has not been broken into.

Beyond his willingness to drive, Seth has many other qualities that make him a perfect travel companion. He makes me laugh. A lot. He charms the locals. He made all the reservations at our hostels. He lets me read out-loud to him the history of all the towns we pass. He knows almost everything about soccer. We get hungry and tired at the same times.

In five more days, I will be car-less and Seth-less, but in the mean time, I am greatly enjoying their company.

Just for fun, here are some pictures of the baboons we saw along the side of the freeway today. They created quite the traffic jam!

Day 4: Netherlands vs. Japan

The Netherlands game was wonderful for two reasons: the new Durban stadium is stunningly beautiful and the Dutch fans rival the Argentines in their fanaticism. The sea of orange was perpetually undulating.

One of the best parts about this game - and each World Cup match we have attended - is mingling with the fans around the stadium before and after the game. We haven't been leaving the stadiums until about an hour after each game has ended. The people watching is fantastic, and there is a palpable sense that we are all part of something special and huge and even historic. I often wonder how many people in the crowd are fulfilling a life-long dream.

Each game is a day-long affair. We arrive at the designated parking areas - often a suburban shopping mall or school - about three hours before kick-off. (We haven't had to do anymore bribing to park!) Then we load onto buses. The lines to get back onto the buses after the game take hours, but no one seems to mind. People keep on blowing their vuvuzelas and looking at the patriotic goods people are hawking on the side of the road.

No one seems to want the excitement to end.

P.S. Note how the arches in the stadium are similar to the lines in the South African flag: two forked lines that meld into one.

DAY 3: USA vs Slovenia

The second half of the USA game was absolutely thrilling. Throughout the first half, Seth kept saying that all he wanted in life was to witness just one American World Cup goal. When the US finally did score, our screaming and jumping and hugging led to the slight dislocation of my jaw.

Since the game, anyone who hears that we are American says how sorry they are about the third goal that did not count. One South African said, "No one understands what the ref saw or what he did. I don't think that even he understands." We have felt very supported.

For the Argentina game, we were about fifteen rows from the very top of Joburg's brand new Soccer City stadium. For this game at Joburg's old and crumbling Ellis Park, we had box seats. They were the only seats left when we went to buy tickets, and even without the free soda, it was totally worth it; we were directly above the goal.

Sitting right next to us was a Slovenian family. They graciously said that they were happy to have even qualified for the World Cup, and they could already go home proud. We congratulated each other after almost every goal. Given their difficult history and the fact that our population is 100 times the size of their population, I was happy that they did so well against us.

Since we had not brought any American paraphenelia, I bought a flag and a funny hat/scarf thing, and Seth and I both got temporary American flag tatooes on our cheecks. The tattoo artists run a pretty sweet business: they stand with a little water bottle and sponge right where the buses drop us off from the park-and-ride.

Overall, the Americans fan were great - they unfurled this monstrous flag during our national anthem and after both our goals - but we're not quite up to speed with the Argentine fans yet. I think with a few more years and a few more wins, we might get there.

DAY 2: Argentina vs. South Korea

Getting to Soccer City for the Argentina vs. South Korea match was an adventure: we had to bribe two different people to get into the parking lot! We had tried to pre-purchase a parking ticket, but it was a huge hassle. So once we got near the stadium, we tried to give one man 50 Rand, but he said, "Too much! Too much!" and took 20 instead.

Walking into the brand new stadium took my breathe away. There were 83,000 people in attendance, and the majority of them were wearing Argentina's light blue - so were we. The stunning exterior is meant to look like a woven basket. It is located outside of the city in the middle of huge dusty fields.


The Argentine fans were wild. Every wall and railing was covered with an Argentine flag or banner. At the end of the game, huge mobs of Argentine fans stayed and danced and celebrated until the rest of the stadium completely emptied.


The Korean fans were great too; we sat directly behind a highly costumed group of them. There was a Korean band playing in another part of the stadium for the entirety of the game.

The stadium was energetic but felt completely safe. There were riot police and other officials everywhere. I even saw an Argentine fan and a Korean fan exchange jerseys in an act of world peace. I had ear plugs just in case in the horns were overwhelming, but we didnt' have to use them.

We have to head off to the USA match. I don't always love cheering for the USA, but I feel really good about it today since we are generally soccer underdogs. GO USA!

DAY 1: South Africa vs. Uruguay

After Uruguay scored their third goal, the South African TV announcer said, "Please don't lose interest in the World Cup. It's still a beautiful game." It truly is a beautiful game, and the whole country is alive with World Cup fever. The name of the South African soccer team is Bafana Bafana, and there are signs cheering them on all over the city. Everywhere is also covered in flags - both South African and international ones.

Seth and I watched the first half of the South Africa game at a cafe/restaurant in downtown Johannesburg that was full of locals. They were blowing their vuvuzelas (large, loud horn things) in the restaurant! But they stopped for the Uruguayan national anthem, and for the South African national anthem, they all stood. It was very moving. At random intervals during the game, they would break into song. They also continually chanted, "Come on, boys! Come on, boys!"

For the second half of the game, we walked out on the main square where they were showing the game on three huge screens. We were freezing, so I bought a fleece blanket of the South African flag. Seth wanted to buy one too, but the salesperson was already wrapped in the only one that was left, and she was so cold she refused to sell it. Despite the chill, people were loud and energetic.

I was sad for them when they lost, but they continue to be very friendly and welcoming hosts. For example, at my very first meal, a Black South African family came up and gave us their phone number and address and said that they would give us a tour of Soweto. Often, when we ask for directions, people don't just point us in the right direction but actually walk us to our destination.

Sorry France, but I won't be cheering for you come Tuesday!

Four-Year Plan: Concluded

Four years ago, I had just finished my first year of teaching in NYC, I was struggling with the aftermath of a break-up, and I had been watching the World Cup on screens set up on the sidewalks of the Bronx.

On June 26, 2006, I wrote this in my journal:

"I want to go the World Cup in South Africa in 2010. I'll be 29 years old, almost 30. That's four years away. What do I want to have accomplished by then? Who do I want to have become? Four years is a long time. It's the period of time of high school, of college undergrad; four years ago, I was in the MTC. But life after missions and graduation feels devoid of predetermined and predictable goals. So I'm going to have to create my own. With FIFA 2010 as my goal, I feel empowered with a sense of my agency. This is where I see myself on the eve of my trip to South Africa:"

Then I wrote a list of goals. Some are too personal to include here, but here is a sampling:

• Ride my bike across the country - Summer 2007 I did not ride across the country the way I had intended, but I did ride "across" North to South.
• Become a confident and competent cook; host frequent dinner parties. - I no longer get anxiety in grocery stores!
  
• Be in the process of working on another graduate degree towards my goal of becoming a counselor/motivational speakers/writer/community organizer for adolescents. - When I wrote that, I had no idea what degree I wanted, and yesterday I graduated with a Master's in Social Work. The program fit that description perfectly.
  
• Read the entire scriptural canon. - Well, I got through the Doctrine and Covenants, but only through half of the Old and New Testaments. Still feel good about that though. In the middle of the Book of Mormon now.
  
• Develop sustainable healthy living habits. Achieve my ideal weight. - Weight achieved! Habits: ongoing work in progress.
  
• Be a bonding, unifying force for my family, immediate and extended. - Also ongoing, but last summer, we had a pretty sweet extended family reunion.
  

I have been obsessed with South Africa since I took my first class on apartheid my Sophomore year of college. I secretly wanted to be the next Amy Biehl. In the ten years since then, I have made it around South America and Southeast Asia, but not to the continent that excited me the most.

I fly to Johannesburg in about nine hours.

A friend of a friend, Seth, is meeting me at the airport. We have only emailed and talked on the phone, but we will be traveling together for two weeks. (In later posts, I will share the vetting process he went through.) After he flies home to Rochester, New York, I will have two weeks on my own. Fortunately, I have other friends of friends who will be there with whom I'm hoping to connect.

On Thursday, we have tickets to Argentina vs. Korea in Johannesburg. On Saturday, we have tickets to Netherlands vs. Japan in Durban. Then we are going to drive along the coast to Cape Town along the Garden Route, and hopefully pick up some more game tickets along the way.

Even given the tone of resolution and determination with which I wrote my end goal four years ago, I don't know if I actually believed that it would happen. But it is! I'm going! It gives me the chills.

Firsts

For Memorial Day weekend, I went to the infamous Duck Beach - a gathering of about 1,000 LDS singles on the beaches of North Carolina. For the three years I lived in NYC, I haughtily rejected this East Coast tradition. Yet for some reason it made sense to me to fly from Seattle to Washington, D.C. and then drive 6 hours to spend 2 days in a house with 40 people I barely knew.

Part of me just wanted to observe the spectacle. However, my hopes for one day making a juicy documentary have been dashed: there was surprisingly less drama than I would have expected from a Mormon Spring Break. But the trip did allow for many firsts. For example, it was my first time to:

puke on an airplane,

see my dear friend Melissa pregnant,

be in the state of North Carolina,

stay in a house that had an elevator, movie theater, pool, sauna, hot tub, billiards room, dozens of flat screens, integrated sound system, and beach access, but not a garbage disposal,


sleep in movie theater stadium seats,
(That's not me, but that is the very room I slept in.)

meet someone who actually, sincerely, honestly likes Glenn Beck,


eat at Chick-Fil-A,


attend a church that was so crowded that people were sitting in the hallways,
(The ward had even rented chairs from the local school.)

roll my own sushi,

and kayak on the Potomac with my bro Jeffrey.

In five days, I get to experience the "first" that I've been anticipating for four years:
first time on the continent of Africa!

Bodies Everywhere

One of my roommates, Aubree, is a body builder. My four other roommates and I recently went to see her compete in a Fitness and Figure competition.

I was nervous. I had almost had a nervous break-down when Aubree taped a tiny photograph of a bikini-clad body-builder onto our fridge. I eventually came to realize that she (the half naked woman on my fridge) was more athletic than pornographic, and that she was also an important motivation for Aubree. However, I feared some sort of personal and/or feminist meltdown upon seeing hundreds of life-size versions of her up on a stage.

For months, the roommates and I had watched Aubree diligently weigh her portions of chicken, spinach and raw oatmeal on the same kitchen counter with our half-eaten cookies, cakes and brownies. She did not drink water for the three days leading up to the competition.

The morning of event, I got to spray glue onto Aubree's butt so that her bikini bottom would not shift around. I am not being sarcastic when I say that it was a personal highlight. I also got to touch-up some of the tan on her back with a real paint brush.

At the competition itself - held in the Snoqualmie Casino - I felt like a foreign tourist on an anthropological study. My observations, however, were neither objective nor scientific. For example, the roommates and I quickly became expert fake tan critics ("Too orange, honey. Too orange!") and expert fake boob spotters ("That is so disproportional."). We also became pretty adept at spotting trembling women who looked like they were about to pass out on stage ("Up! Stay up!").

Some of the more inspiring moments during the competition included shout-outs to Jesus, and New Testament quotes in the program. One woman - who still had visible cellulite - won an inspiration award for losing 150 pounds. There were also a handful of women in the 50 and over age category who were extremely impressive. The man featured above appeared during intermission and testified that body-building had kept him out of jail and off drugs. He now does body-building outreach in prisons.

The women in the competition were empowered in the sense that they had made their bodies into works of art - art that is both alive and ephemeral. I was impressed by their work, sacrifice and diligence. Yet I also found it ironic that in order to be that "fit," they had to go to unhealthy extremes.

Aubree competed towards the end of the evening. She did not win a tiara for being in the top five, but she had a very loud cheering section, she looked great, and she was pleased with her first ever performance.

At roommate check-in in the car on the way home, we all still seemed to be feeling comfortable with our curves and soft spots. No meltdown necessary.

What Precedes Us

I attended a Mormon singles conference last weekend in Huntington Beach, California. One night, I was sitting in a hot tub with a bunch of people I didn't know. (Let me just take this opportunity to say that no matter how comfortable you are with your body, it is always awkward having "getting to know you" conversations with strangers in swimsuits. I don't really want to be acquainted with a man's chest before I know his name.)

Anyway, one guy was asking me questions about my life, and as he pieced together my biography, he said, "Wait a second. I think I've seen you before on youtube!" I silently panicked while trying to remember what he possibly could have seen. Suddenly, being half naked with this guy felt significantly less awkward than the conversation we were having.

It turns out that a few months ago, my parents had collaborated with some family friends to set me up with this guy's roommate. Like all good 21st-century stalkers, they had googled me and found this year-and-a-half-old footage of me and my brother Jeffrey lip-syncing. Although my new friend claimed that both he and his roommate thought that I was very "entertaining," his roommate never called me.

Exactly two days after that conversation in the hot tub, I received a voicemail from the film's intimidatingly cool co-star, Jeffrey. He has just moved to Washington, D.C. for a summer internship, and in his own words:

On the first day of my internship, when an old family friend, Rachel, was introducing me to people, this middle-aged man told me that he recognized me from somewhere. He started saying that he recognized me from TV or something, and I thought he was just trying to be funny. But he insisted, and finally claimed that he had remembered where he had seen me: on youtube. And then it clicked. He had seen the youtube video of us dancing to "Ain't No Mountain High Enough." It turns out that Rachel had looked it up and shown it to everyone in the office, and it became a joke in the office even before I had gotten there.

After these back-to-back revelations, we took down a family holiday video we had made for our other brother, Ryan - ridiculous family behavior that should not be in the public domain. We also changed the name of the lip-syncing video from "Jen and Jeff Nuckols singing" to something a little more discreet. Little did we know that when we covered the TV with a green sheet and drew posters with Sharpies, we were preparing for one of the most important performances of our lives.