OceanView

I have been in South Africa for over one month now (which I can't believe) and each day is just as exciting as the last! On Monday we went to the township called Mitchel's Plain (its outside of Cape Town) and met up a group of people that were being forced out of their houses and had no idea where they were going to go. We brought food to them, talked with them and played with their kids. There were lots of Rastafarian's there and I found it extremely interesting to learn about them and their religion. At home when we think Rastafarian, we think of someone from Jamaica with dreads who smokes a ton of weed, and that is so far from the truth. They showed me in the Bible where it says not to shave your hair (hence the dreads, it is a way to have hair that is hygienic when you can't shave it). We are keeping in contact with them so we can come visit them in their new homes and hang out and help them. On Wednedsay I went into Cape Town with some friends and we took swing classes and a dance studio called Que Pasa. Dancing may not be my thing. I love watching people dance BUT I think I should stick to the watching and not the dancing. I sure do have 2 left feet and they both stepped on my dance partners feet...........lots of times. But then on Thursday I joined UCT's Ballroom Dance club and made even more of a fool on myself. Managed to trip over my partner.awkwarddddd. But I am hoping that with each time I go I will make giant strides in improving.  This weekend, our program, CIEE, planed a homestay for us in the township Oceanview. Oceanview is a colored township and I made my family chocolate chip cookies. They don't have chocolate chip cookies in the stores here, so I took a chocolate bar and chopped it up into pieces. yum yum! Friday evening we met our families. Abby and I were placed with Natalie and Marcel. They had the two cutest/precious children I have ever met. Keyanna and Corde. I hope the spelling of the names is correct or close to it. Keyanna was 5 and Corde was 3. What was really special was that Natalie's sister lived next door and was also hosting students and her mother lived up the block and was also hosting students. So on Saturday, all 3 families got together and cooked, eat and drank. I felt like I was back home in Marvin.  I found that I became very attached to the family and it was only over a 3 day period. In 3 days I had fallen in love with this family and had to hold back tears when we said our goodbyes. But it was only goodbye for the time being because we are all going to go back in visit some time in March we hope for the Navy festival. 

Robben Island

This Friday we went to Cliffton 4  beach after classes. The water is so freakin COLD!!! I put my feet in the water and the water was so cold that it too my breath away!! So needless to say I did not spend too much time in the water. I thought I was in Grand Cayman because the water was crystal clear, little to no waves and palm trees surrounding us but there were so differences such as the water being COLD and we were surrounded by mountains. The only unfortunate thing was that as windy as it is here, it blew sand all over us!!! We did not rent chairs so we just laid down our towels and got pelted by sand. I still have sand in my hair, scalp, fingernails, ears and just about everywhere else. Saturday me and some friends went into Cape Town to Green Market Square. Green Market Square is stall after stall after stall of souvenirs that you can haggle and buy. They had bags, dresses, bracelets, African masks, earings, shoes, figurines of animals, paintings, etc... Anything that you could think of, they had it at this market. We also walked into the Flower Market and saw BEAUTIFUL bouquets of flowers. Later that night we had a braai (kind of like having a cookout or BBQ back home) and then some of us took a mini-cab to Cliffton 4 for a concert. They played 60's,70's and 80's American music. It was a blast. There were tons of families and all the kids had glow-sticks and I was really envious of them. After the concert we stayed at the beach and looked up at the stars and I even saw a shooting star!!! Sunday we went to Robben Island, which is where Nelson Mandela was held in prison. We took a 25 min boat ride out to Robben Island. The tour of the rooms where the political prisoners (political and criminal prisoners were kept separate) were held were given by ex-prisoners. I found this to be shocking because how could you work somewhere that once tortured you and striped you off all your rights and your family? I think that part of it has to do with forgiveness and out of despair rises hope. 

Fire Drill

First week of classes down!!!! Sorry that I am a week behind on posting but we lost internet for the weekend and then I have  been going non-stop all weekend but here was last week. I have most of my class 3 to 5 times a week unlike at home where I either have them 2-3 times a week. We also have tutorials (discussion groups) that happen once a week also so we spend a lot of time in the classroom. My schedule is classes from 9-3, which leaves the afternoon open to do whatever I am feeling like doing. The walk from Forest Hill is like ascending Mt. Everest! The first 5 mins are flat/downhill but the last 15 mins are a vertical climb. The day that climbing those steps is easy will be the day that I know I am in the best shape of my life!!! But at the same time, Table Mountain is the in the background, so just being in awe of it helps the walk considerably.  I am taking Sex, Love and Taboo in the African Languages (by far my favorite class), Afrikaans (I should have stuck with Spanish), SA history up to 1900 and the Odyssey. In all of my classes we will have different professors teaching us throughout the semester. I am excited to get different perspectives and teaching styles on the same subject. In Afrikaans, we have one teacher for Tuesday and Wednesday and another teacher on Thursday and Friday. This is wonderful because we get to hear two different ways to pronounce words by native speakers but at the same time they didn’t really communicate about how much we covered in just 2 days and started on a harder lesson that we weren’t ready for. BUT I think my favorite thing that happened was the firedrill at 5am Wednesday night. I woke up to sirens and thought it was a fire truck driving by or something like that so I fall back to sleep. A couple of minutes later, I hear banging on our apartment door and a guy yelling something. Half asleep I think to myself, Oh dear God I am going to die; we are having a riot/rally/attack. But then I hear someone yelling FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE!!!!!!!!!! Now I think you have got to be kidding me; there can be no way we are on fire. Then we hear FIRE DRILL FIRE FIRE DRILL. I feel like they should have been saying that the whole time instead of just fire.  So me and my flat mates all go outside to the courtyard and wait in line with all the other students who live in the D block. Granted there are Blocks A-E so it took a while to find ours. Then we stood outside for about 15 mins while everyone else awoke from their slumbers and came outside. Then we waited in a line and told a girl with a clipboard our room # and name and she checked us off and let us go back to bed, 30 mins later. It was the most intense firedrill I have ever been in. The thing I was wondering about was if there is a real fire what alarm goes off because the alarm we heard was being hand cranked my a student in charge of the fire drill??? We didn’t hear any internal alarm!! 

Old Biscuit Mill

On Friday night UCT RAG held Big Bash. UCT RAG is a club of students who raise money for SHAWCO which is an organization that the Students Health and Welfare Centres Organisation, is a student-run, non-profit community outreach organisation based at UCT. The Big Bash was a lot of African DJ's spinning some tunes so students could dance to. The campaign was drinking for the children!!!! Smirnoff Ice was one of the sponsors and the $$$ went to SHAWCO.  

So Saturday morning we decided to go to the Old Biscuit Mill in Woodstock (abt a 15 min walk from Forest Hill). Old Biscuit Mill is a market where they have booths set up with fresh fruits, vegetables, meat, cheese, breads, sweets, etc..... Then they have a section where you can buy meals, I had a nutella banana crepe (the best thing I have ever tasted). They had sandwiches that looked like they  had fallen from heaven, they had pizza's, omelets, hummus, coffee, just about anything you could wish or want. They also had cute little shops where you could buy scarves, headbands, ear rings, clothing, bags etc..... I am going every Saturday morning!!!!

The Garden Route........Cool Bananas

The Garden Route was 3 nights and 4 days of FUN!!!!!! The eastern cape of SA has a very very similar climate to Greece, and by that I mean that its very dry with lots of shrubs and mountains that arise from the sea. Our first stop was at a private game reserve. We saw 4 of the Big 5 (Lions, leopards, rhinos, elephants, and water buffalo. We saw a cheetah that was literally 2 feet away from us feeding on a half eaten Springbok!!  Then we went to our hostel that was on the beach in Mossel Bay. The sunset there was amazing, especially because it was over the Indian Ocean!! I felt like I was back in the time the dinosaurs because of the type of plants that were growing on the mountains that were practically acting as sand dunes.  The next day we canoed in the Wilderness National Park and saw a water fall.   Then we went to Tsitsikamma park and hiked all around the park and went on  suspension bridges that shook liked crazy!!! We stayed overnight in the forest and had dinner at a place that was dedicated to Elvis!!!! It was so weird eating at a place in the middle of SA that was all about Elvis!!!! Our 3 day was full adventure!! We bungee jumped off the highest birdge in the world!! 216 meters!!!! It was an out of body experience and next time I do it I am going to jump backwards!! I felt safe the whole entire time and you honestly don't have too much time to think about anything because it all happens so fast!! Later that day we went to Elephant Experience and walked hand-in-trunk with elephants that had been rescued. Lot of them were from Botswana. Our last day we went to an Ostrich farm and that is when I decided that they were the STUPIDEST creatures that God created. They may run faster then the speed of light but they are just so awkward!! i got to hug and feed them but there was no way I was going to hop on its back and ride it!!! Then we went to Cango Caves and went exploring through the caves and go to go through tunnels that caused us to craw on our stomachs and slide on our backs!! 

Muizenburg

So today we took the train to Muizenburg to go to the beach! We bought a "first class" ticket because we hoped into a first class car and got harassed by the ticket lady. She was yelling at us in IsiXhosa so therefore we had no idea what was going on. The beach at Muizenburg was prettier then any place I have ever see, including postcards and Nat Geo magazines. The water was clear and cold and their were mountains surrounding us. The water was packed with people trying to surf, it reminded me of Endless Summer. When we first got in the water there was a black flag up with a white shark in it so we figured that was okay and then later on in the day the flag was red with a white shark in it. We found out later that the red meant that a shark was VERY likely. That is exactly what i want to hear!!! The train ride back was an experience I will never forget. We rode third class back to Rosebank and the whole time the doors are open, which was really quite a blessing because there is no AC and it was hot as hell on the train with some many bodies pressed up on you. 

sooooooooooo many steps

                                                     View from Table Mountain 

Cape Point, the Southern most tip of Africa

I can finally blog!!!! It has taken 2 weeks to get internet and I am not too sure how stable it will be!! Cape Town has to be one the prettiest places on this earth, there are mountains that jut right out of the ocean!! It will be hard to try to put 2 weeks into one post so i will just put in the importance stuff. Yesterday we went Great White Shark cage diving, which is my biggest fear in the whole world coming true! When we climbed into the cage in the 10 degree Celsius water I felt like I was on shark week!! One of the great white's that we saw did the famous jump a little bit out of the water and open and then snap his mouth shut!! (I was trembling at this point) Couple of days ago I greatly underestimated the strength of the South African sun in the summer......The cool wind lulled me into a false sense of security. University of Cape Town (UCT) is located on Table Mountain and it is HILLY!!!! There are more steps on this campus in all of Wilmington times 100000000000000. and if you are not walking up steps then you are walking up a vertical incline! but it is great for running!!