This will be my last blog post from Rhodes. I've opened and closed the blogger dashboard screen about twenty times in the last two days - I just can't seem to write anything - excellent timing on the writer's block, by the way.

I wanted to tell you all about this place and all about how much it's given me. Quite similar to Vern's wish-list post when he left, but I don't regret anything or not doing anything...
I wanted to tell you about how strangely appropriate it is that this town is full of jacaranda trees, even the trees are purple here at Rhodes - but without a photo I cannot do it justice. I wanted to post a pic of my shorter hair but that will have to wait until I'm home.

I love this place, and the last week has been a mixture of heaven and hell. I have my portfolio back now, and it's all over until I get my marks, which will be whenever the Journ department decides it's ok. They have finally paid me for the book project of Hades, which means that lunches are fancy and dinners are huge!

I want more memorabilia! I want to hug everyone a little tighter for the last time.

So it's goodbye to the place I've called home for 4 years. I've loved it. I think that everyone has the right to be nostalgic about their university or tertiary-type place, but I do believe that had I gone anywhere other than Rhodes, I would have missed out. The people are amazing, the place is just the right size, there's no pressure to be anyone other than yourself! I have truly met some unbelivable people the last four years and I can't bear the thought of never turning up my nose at res chicken again.
I will forever be proud of my purple university, and although I'm missing graduation, I will be back someday.

So it's goodbye *sniff* to this comfy little Elbow-Knee town, and *big breath* hello to real life, or so they say.

The movie was good. The fact that I drank the world's most enormous cup of coke and had to pee halfway through did kind of put a damper on things, but the place was packed with Bridget-loving pajama wearing girls - had someone screamed "pillow-fight" chaos could well have ensued.

Now, I went to sleep at 3. The sun (beaming down on my left leg, frying it a little) woke me up, to find that I have one last print this afternoon at 2, and dinner and drinks with my classmates tonight at 7. Portfolio is due on Monday.

With all of this portfolio crap happening in my life, to-do lists have become the new black.
Here follows a list for myself (not my actual normal to-do list, which is far less interesting and about ten times longer):

1. stop dreaming about InDesign pages and the crazy things PDF'ing* can do to you 2. stop determining budget in terms of number of FanCan cokes one can buy 3. stop stop stop listening to very violent Dre feat. Eminem tunes. This can lead to acting out of scenarios depicted in such songs. 4. must not wear actual current normal pajamas to the peejay-themed The Edge of Reason premiere on Thursday at midnight. Doubt others want to see you in an inside out Castle lager tee shirt, comfy granny panties and those bedsocks that Ouma knitted 5. be careful to limit coffee consumption to a good cup-per-hour ratio, which should prevent further occurances of screaming out Bring It On cheers to the shock of passers-by 6. that algae-green soup swimming pool must NOT be swum in again 7. stop blogging and get back to work

* not a rude word, mom, I promise

I leave this place so soon. Stepping out of KFC with another unhealthy meal and yet another Coke (2 a day, it seems), the lights were just coming on in Bathurst street and I thought, my god, the things I've seen here.

Not in Bathurst street, silly. In Grahamstown. Although, Bathurst street has seen its fair share. The scene of the almost-didn't-get-a-bus-ticket in first year (I was so scared my folks would know I was going to Cape Town); the scene of goodbye with Ian, bus again; Nick Cage Gareth's drunk 21st at the Naughty Angel bar. Other Grahamstown streets have held more for me, but Bathurst seems to cut it tonight.

Driving home, the lights lined up and I wished so bad I was like the Dame-Lion Schumacher and carried a camera absolutely everywhere. The logistics of stopping my car in the middle of the road and trying to avoid windscreen flash reflection issues ran quickly trough my mind, and then I realised that NOPE, I DON'T HAVE A DIGICAM WITH UNIMAGINABLE MEGAPIXELS and so I just kept on truckin'.

My magazine, she eees finish. That has put me in a considerably better mood for the day. Tomorrow I start an 8000 word research paper. Good mood, not so much then.

The end is nigh. About 10 days nigh.

Haircut pics to come.

I have to mark Journ 2 tutorial print groups now...

after joint-spending R500 of an R800 bar tab (will return after marking to finish off the rest)

I have two weeks to finish and compile my portfolio and do an 8000 word essay

and...

I feel like dancing tonight.

Hmmm.

After three years of getting it right, will I really fuck it up now?

Sigh.

Things are strange of late. In 17 days, I will have handed in everything. I hope.

Humungous things have been happening too. Again, not open to revelation just yet. Good, now you're frustrated with curiosity and I'm frustrated with only being able to make vague references to what I really want to say.

Ah yes. The real news.

I cut my hair.

Pics of current hair length to ensue at a later stage. For now, let us reminisce at just how very long it was:

And, let us marvel at the gorgeousness of the granny res girls:

And let us ponder at the way in which my dependance on my car has impacted on my fitness level, to the point at which I'm sure I'll have a sore calf muscle from clutch control when I drive home around the 24th.

So I can now tell you about what this post was in reaction to.

I was at home in res, marking tests between glimpses at Survivor, when my German girl asked if I would drive her to a block of flats where her friend lives. I was at first a bit put out - I had just sat down, and it's Survivor - but she leaned down and whispered in my ear, and convinced me.

"P's neighbour wrote her a letter, it said he wants to ..."

At P's flat, or rather, her neighbour Charmaine's flat, we found her, looking shell-shocked.
I sat as the evening's events and the contents of the letter flooded out of her in German, nodding at what I thought were the appropriate places, joint-hugging her when she cried, trying not to look too shocked when her recitation of the letter was peppered with the English words he'd used, and when she used her hands to show what he'd meant.

It had all started innocently enough - he lived next door, and she saw him when she returned from gym one day. Before then, their only contact had consisted of short, clipped greetings in the passage. This day, he told her that he liked the way she brushed the sweat off her face with her hand. She thought it strange, but left it. A week later, he knocked on her door, she invited him in for coffee. They sat on her bed (she has no other furniture). She made tea. He gave her two pages of a letter.

It was sweet, she remembers. Saying that he liked her and would like to get to know her more. The second page ended abruptly and he told her that if she wanted the other pages, she'd have to ask him. She asked him for them, and he gave her another 3 pages.

By the end of the fourth page, she felt trapped. His words had gone from sweet to pornographic; this man, who was sitting on her bed, had written about the things they would do, in great detail, how long it would go on for, what she would say to him, how he wanted her to be; he wrote that he had been listening and so knew when she was showering, when she was sleeping. He thought of her while masturbating. She asked him to leave. He grabbed the letter away from her; she regrets not grabbing it back.

But, I told her...

a day ago, you would never had said this man could harrass and scare you like this. Today, you would never say he would have hurt you had you grabbed the letter back.

He didn't hurt her. We took her away, and there is a sexual harrassment case pending. She's leaving for home (Germany) in a week. She moved out that night - as we took her to my car, he peered through the window.

He is a lecturer. In my department. And something in his mind told him it would be okay to do this.

So the silence can be blamed on the crap load of work I have to do.

That is all.

I'll be at the pool if you need me.