Day 48

I must say that today, I was quite popular. 

After a morning full of pretty much nothingness, I decided to head to the gym to coop up in the lounge area, crank out a paper, and attend a kickboxing class. 

The minibus I got in was really struggling. So I got in, the driver started driving, and I hadn't been able to sit down yet, so I literally went flying to the back of the bus. I landed in a seat with a big "ooph" and pretty much everyone looked at me and chuckled. To my embarrassment, I looked even more like a foreigner. Then next stop, I had to move to let a young boy sitting next to me out, and low and behold the same thing happened again. Driver started driving, I went thrashing to the wall. I turned to a middle school aged girl sitting to my left just shaking my head. Then to my surprise, a man who was probably homeless, or close to it, sitting two rows up from me, turned around, looks at me and says, "you know, they do it once, they say sorry, but then they do it twice and just say sorry again?! To me, thats when you kill them!" Turned into an all out conversation between the driver, the assistant (who claims the money and opens the door) and the locals in the bus, about how once you commit a crime the deserving punishment was to get your hands cut off, and apparently pretty much everyone on the bus was in support of the driver being punished due to his urgency to drive before I was sitting down. I assured everyone that it was really okay and that I was fine. I eventually got off the bus, receiving multiple goodbyes and once again another apology. 

I got into the kickboxing class to some bumping 80s beats. Every couple of songs the instructor asked the group "does anyone know the original artist?!" Psh. I'm a champion at this game. "We Are Family" is playing. Sister Sledge. Easy. A few songs later, a low rumbly female voice starts singing. "When the Heartache is Over," Tina Turner. At that point I got a couple applauses and the rest of the group started looking at me weird so I stopped. 

I thought it was just a kickboxing class. Wrong. Half way through we changed to circuit training. Nora Lynch, Zipporah, Alex,.... we used gliders. South Africans aren't very good at the gliders. Needless to say I probably won't be able to walk tomorrow but it's a good thing because I'm probably going to be sheltered in the library all day tomorrow anyway.