Today, as many before, was an interesting day.
Last night, before I went to bed I was reading a book, about various things, when the author began ruminating on the word saunter. Sauntering, a word for walking, but in a particular way of wandering or meandering is originated from the two roots sans and terr, sans meaning without and terr meaning home or dwelling, so to saunter is to walk as if you have no fixed dwelling to which you are heading, or that the whole world is your home which you are meandering about in. To saunter is different than to swagger, as those who swagger generally are aware of the persons in their vicinity, although sometimes, as in the case of the baboon crossing the road at Cape Point, which I now visualize as my definition of swagger, it can be the case that one’s swagger and their saunter are the same. While I was walking down Loch road to Klipfontein this morning, in order to catch a minibus to UWC I was entertaining such ideas, and working on my own sauntering, which takes a surprising amount of self restraint. It is difficult to walk towards a destination with not only that particular destination in mind, forfeiting the opportunity for a little lateral curiosity.
When walking as much as I have found myself on this trip, one begins to sense the tune of their emotional composition through the manner in which they find themselves walking on a particular occasion, and many times a conscious reappraisal of my motivation ensues.
The minibus ride was not quite comfortable this morning, although better than a few times that I can remember in which my head was cocked down and my knees pushed into the back of the seat in front of me. My height is not minibus friendly, and I find myself slouching and squished on most occasions. At least one would not have to worry about freezing on a minibus, for there is surely always enough body heat circulating. The man who I was squished next to today was fiddling in his pockets, and he pulled out a ring which he showed to the woman next to him, to see if she wanted to buy it. She wasn’t interested. Then he turned to me, and showed me the necklace on his neck, motioning to ask if I was interested. ‘No thank you’ I said, and turned back towards the window.
I played soccer today, with Angelo and his friends from UWC. They are a rowdy bunch, to say the least, with energy like kids on a playground. Half the time they are fighting and the other half joking around, and these two sports are stewed together to make for a soccer match that is at least entertaining for our fans. Having an appreciation for ‘the beautiful game’ is less about tactical ability and more about unfiltered and unabashed passion. The rivalry between the two teams, which comes from a long history of Sunday matches, with lines divided at red v blue t-shirts, brings the glory of victory and the sadness of defeat to a very personal level. The winners have no qualms about telling their opponents just how defeated they are. Today was a difficult day for the red team. After losing our second consecutive match, our leading striker signed over to the blue team after the match. These two loses do come after 12 consecutive wins for the red team, I may add, although I was not in attendance for those.
A Russian Gatsby may rank in the top three most disgustingly unhealthy but sort of addictingly delicious if you can get past the thought of your food foods. It is a massive, maybe two pound sub, about 15 inches long, 4 inches wide and 4 inches tall stuffed with spicy greasy French fries and russian hotdogs. It is then topped with perinaise dressing (peri-peri mayonaise) Try everything once right. Well, for this one, yes, only once, and I don’t feel good about myself after eating it. Brittany and I attempted to go to Golden Dish, the premier Gatsby shop in the local area, and we took a minibus out to gateville to get there. It was closed, such a shame. I didn’t want to go back empty handed, so we walked into a smaller, less popular sandwich shop down the street, Fast and Furious Foods.
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