Vensters and the Carnival

So today is becoming a lazy Sunday for me so I thought I would update on the cool events of this week. Officially, classes start Monday for the students here at US (Universiteit Stellenbosch) and this week was the settling in week for the first years and other students.

Residence culture is very big here and there are many residences, both traditional dorm style with male dorms and female dorms, and apartment style (as I live in). On Thursday night was Vensters which I was really impressed by. For the past week and a half, the residedences pair up, male dorm with female dorm, and work on a performance. They put together huge sets, organize the coreography, paint on makeup, design costumes, and rehearse.

The result is a 10 minute performance with 70+ people dancing and acting in both English and Afrikaans. It is really impressive to see because for the end song you literally have 70+ people on stage dancing in-sync and in time, and only after one week of practice. But its hard to explain so I will let the pictures speak for themselves.

 As you can see, lots of people come out for Vensters. Each show runs on a cycle so you can move on from one to the next and see all of them in one night. The sets are also huge.

 An example of the costumes and makeup. I only caught the last few minutes of this production but it looked very impressive.

My favorite set of the evening; Beauty and die Boer (aka Beauty and the Farmer). A re-telling of Beauty and the Beast except instead of a beast, there is a poor peasant Boer. After he falls in love with Beauty, he is transformed into a rich landower...and his servants back from farm animals to servants.

After Vensters, Friday is a more casual night with the local bars doing excellent business. Saturday (yesterday) was the Carnival and the town was packed. Not only do the students work to put on Vensters, they also construct floats for a parade. They march through town with some students driving the floats, themed from their Vensters presentation, and others follow in their Vensters costumes, running through the crowd collecting money for their respective charities.

 A float from the Chinese themed Venster, with the dragon head that swings back and forth. As you can see, the town was packed.

I had to include this one because the hippos were so cute. You can see the gap underneath where the students would physically lift and turn the hippos.

I only stayed at the carnival for a few hours in the morning. Later in the day there were beer gardens and live music, but I instead chose to go to the ocean/beach. Pictures next post!