Pick-up Trucks and Sweet Chilli Sauce

Friday:

In the afternoon a couple of people in my house were talking about this event on campus called “sixes and sevens” and we thought it sounded pretty interesting so we decided to go. I’ll do my best to describe it. There are teams of guys that all dress up in ridiculous costumes; i.e. diapers, trash bag dresses, capes, etc. Before the event, every team chugs a bunch of beers and food coloring, then the races begin. Everyone takes a lap around the track and then chugs a beer at the start line. The whole idea of this is to throw up weird colors – which I knew would be disgusting, but it got much, much worse. Not only do they throw up but the goal is to throw up on other people. So, they would all tackle a guy to the ground and then stick their fingers down their throat to make themselves throw up on the person… so. Disgusting. Then they started doing tricks like wheelbarrow style but spinning the other guy by the legs as he threw up in circles. So weird that this was allowed to happen ON CAMPUS, right on the cricket field. Fortunately, we had to leave early to go get ready for the home stay. We didn’t have much time so I rushed to get my stuff together and we walked over to the bus. I really am so into immersing myself in this culture and getting to know the people, food, language and everything about it but I was just not looking forward to this weekend at all. We don’t get much time to do things because of school, so the weekend is the time we can explore and travel and I just was not into the idea of spending mine in a stranger’s house. I was wrong though, I made some great friends and a couple that I know I’ll be seeing a lot more of this semester. When we first got to Ocean View it was extremely awkward. It is a colored neighborhood so we were very out of place with a huge group of white kids walking down the street to the high school where we ate dinner. The kids were pointing, laughing and waving at us – they don’t see white people there very often. This is when I met Ann, in the awkward setting of sitting down with someone that you’re hoping you’re going to like because you’ll be stuck with them for the next 48 hours. As soon as I said hi she pulled me in and gave me a big hug, I knew that this weekend might not be so bad after all. Ann, me, and my CIEE partner, Sarah, all left early – led by Ann, who wanted to get home faster so that we could go out. We jumped in the back of her husband’s pick-up truck and rode over to their home. It was small, but had all the necessities… it really puts into perspective what you actually need and what you could do away with. Life there is so simple. Sarah and I slept in the other bedroom they had, that contained also the freezer and acted as a storage place for Jerry’s, her husband, work supplies. He’s an engineer. The room I think used to be her daughter’s, btu she passed away a couple years ago and Ann never really told us what happened. We quickly we offered beer after beer after Ann drilled us about what kind of alcohol we drink. Then we headed over to her sister’s house where 2 other CIEE students were, as well. So many of her family members were all there, it’s pretty awesome how close they all are and how often they’re with each other. Every time our glasses we empty, Jerry would make us a new drink and we spent the night dancing in a circle with everyone to rap, and Mexican music. It was really fun. Ann made us some tea when we got home and we went right to sleep, directed to sleep as late as we wanted and that breakfast would be ready whenever we got up.

Saturday:

We got up around 10:30 and started to get ready for the day. A shower is never something I really saw as a luxury, but in their bathroom they only had a tub and a toilet. No sink, no shower. It was certainly interesting to “shower” in a tub, but I pulled it off with little difficultly. This day was so much fun. First we stopped at Ann’s mom’s house, met her, and picked up Ann’s niece. The three of us sat in the back of the pick-up truck (my new favorite ride of choice) and we toured all around the cape, stopping at various places along the way like Chapman’s Peak and Fish Hoek. After we went to Imgoff’s Farm, which is kind of a flea market with lots of interesting little shops and craft stores. I got a cloth wall hanging that’s painted and has giraffe’s on it. I had told Ann I was looking for some original jewelry and I couldn’t really find it there, which is when I found out that Ann’s sister makes jewelry! I was so excited. It was a long, but wonderful day. This night Ann and Jerry had a Braii for their 15^th wedding anniversary. SO MUCH FOOD. I actually made a pasta salad for the braii that turned out to be pretty good, I was very impressed with myself. There we also samosa’s there which are I think a Muslim food that are like some beef mixture in a little fried pasty which we dipped in sour cream and sweet chilli sauce – BEST THING I’VE EVER EATEN. Again, drink after drink, and we just sat around the fire with some more of Ann’s family talking about different things that we do and say in our cultures. They thought the idea of State Patty’s was hilarious, and I was disappointed to hear that Halloween is not really celebrated here. They also said that they couldn’t even pick a favorite holiday, because they spend them all the same way, and that was what we were doing that night. Ann’s sister also brought over some of her jewelry and it was all so pretty and cool. We ended the night again with tea and watched Saw V, interesting movie choice but I love scary movies so that was great.

Sunday:

In the morning, breakfast was prepared again and we went over to Ann’s sister’s to buy some of her jewelry and stop by her house. The whole morning she was preparing lunch, so when we got back we just hung out for a little and then ate. It was so so good and I’m now obsessed with sweet chilli sauce and rooibus tea. I bought both today from the supermarket. At 3:00 we were supposed to go back to the high school to take the busses back to campus and we took some pictures with Ann and Jerry and said bye after exchanges phone numbers, e-mail addresses and facebook names. Five minutes later, Anna comes back over to us and goes, “girls, want to just stay with us for the day, and we’ll drive you back later?” At this point she hadn’t asked our director but we said yes of course and jumped right back in the pick-up truck. We drove with them to pick up Ann’s other sister from work and then went to her house. Her house was in Bellville and was really nice; it was also the first place I’ve been in that had air conditioning, which was a plus. We hung out and watched the Manchester United soccer game and just talked to them. At around 7, they drove us both home and we made plans to go back soon and to learn how to make the samosas, which I’m ecstatic about. It was a girl in my houses’ 21^st birthdays so my house went out to dinner at Camp’s Bay to a really nice restaurant. Amazing chicken burger and margarita’s. Afterwards we went to Goldfish again because it was their last concert of the summer and also we were pretty much just under the club. We got a picture with Goldfish too after they performed which was cool. Both back and forth our fun taxi driver from the other weekend, Evie, drove us and blasted some more music.

Monday:

Today was very hectic, but great. In the morning I had to get up early and go to the grocery store to buy some more air time for my phone because I’d run out early the night before and had no way of contacting anyone. Then I went to my first and only class of the day. After, I went to my first real day of my internship at PASSOP. This meant that I would have to get all the way to Wynberg by myself, which at first scared me a little bit but I know I’ve gotten pretty confident with public transportation and it was during the day. I actually took the campus bus to a town closer to Wynberg so I would just have to take the crazy mini-bus one stop. I even remembered exactly where the office was and went right up. I met the program coordinator today, David, who is probably about 24-25. He’d been in a surfing accident the day before we came to take a tour of the office so I hadn’t seen him then. We sat down and had a meeting about PASSOP and what it does, and how I would relate and help them with fundraising. I have some pretty big jobs on my plate, but it was awesome showing him THON’s website and telling him about all the fundraising we do. He was so impressed with THON and really liked the THONline donations, which we might try to replicate on their website. Anyway, I’m going to be in charge of figuring out how to set it up so that people can make donations directly from their website (no idea how to do this) as well as register them as an NGO in the United States so that they can get a tax return number to make it easier to receive donations from the States (also, clueless). Right now I’m just supposed to research so that I can ultimately work with them to finalize it and figure it out. I’m also in charge of organizing and heading 2 fundraising events before I leave, which is more what I’m really excited about. It was really cool knowing that what I do here at PASSOP will have a lasting impression there and really will make such a difference in their organization. After I spent about 2.5 hours there, I made my way back on the mini-bus which was again, not scary at all (getting so good at this!) and got back to Rondebosch just in time to change and head to social rugby club. We got there super early, and so we just hung out with the guys who were setting up. Today we learned how to play rugby from some of the guys on the second-string team and one actual rugby player who didn’t go to the away game tonight because he’s injured. It was a little difficult to pick up on because I kept thinking of it like football, and it’s nothing like football. We also only played touch rugby today because we’re just trying to start a girl’s intramural team and none of us knew how to play. I think they were pretty amused by us. I got a little messy because I dove for a pass, which I was told was good because he said I was starting to ACTUALLY play some kind of real rugby. It was so hot today too, so after running (rugby involves SO much running) for over an hour we were all so sweaty and hot. The one guy says, “Come on over here, we have some drinks for you.” We run over thinking that it’s water, and they hand us all beers. Not as refreshing as I had had in mind, but we took them nonetheless. I still always feel so weird drinking on campus; it’s so normal here because everyone in college can drink. Since the game was away, they played it on a big projector screen in the rugby club (they have a bar in the sports complex just for the rugby team) and we went in and watched for a little bit. Touch rugby and real rugby are very, very different sports. Real rugby is so much more scary and hardcore. We played barefoot too which was so cool so I just walked home that way, I absolutely love how that is s normal here. Tonight I just went grocery shopping and Reinhard (our RA) made us the African version of sloppy joes… again, so good. I am in love with the food here. And everything else here too. 

If asked to join a bachelor party, always say yes.

So, here I am again. I told myself I would write again semi-early in the week so that my next post can be strictly about the homestay this weekend. We’re leaving on Friday at around 6 pm and staying with a family in Ocean view where is a nearby township. We’ll be with one other person from CIEE and I’ve heard such good things about this homestay so I’m really excited, and it doesn’t hurt to have a weekend off from going out either.

I guess I’ll start with Friday. We did end up going to the Yacht Club Party, which started with us standing in a huge crowd pushing to get on the buses that would take us to the party, that we were told was on a “lake”. I didn’t get on the first bus because there were just way too many people, even though the second bus we got on was still packed and I had to stand smashed between people. We honestly didn’t really know where we were going, and we only started questioning this when we got close and the area looked a little shady. Later I met someone from the Yacht Club that told me that this was the most dangerous part of the Cape Flatts and the area where the most murders occur in Cape Town…. But that I shouldn’t be scared because they had tons of hired security guards… but still not to leave the area, unless I was getting back on the bus to leave. Anyway, the party was fun/funny. It was like a frat party outside by a swamp (definitely not a lake by any means). People were shot-gunning, funneling, and there was a bar where you could get a drink, beer, or cider for 10 R which is like $1.25 so super cheap drinks. I met so many UCT students from South Africa so that was awesome to talk to them. Overall, a good night minus the murder-city we were partying in. Hurray Yacht Club.

Saturday we went back to Old Biscuit Mill (the flea market I’m obsessed with) and wandered around all morning. There was this one stall where this man makes these shoes that are literally so awesome and unique, obsession is an understatement and this week he had boots, too! I had to try them on… and so consequently fell in love with them. I didn’t have enough cash so he told me I could go to the ATM and he’d save them for me but then the only debit card I had with me was not working (Thanks, Dad for sending me another useless card. At least it didn’t get eaten this time). So, I went back to the stall cash-less, and sad. This guys goes, “You can just take them”. My response... “Excuse me… what???” He let me take them without paying! He told me that he trusted me to give him the money later and just gave me his phone number, without any of my information I just walked away with the boots. People here seriously shock you everyday. They are so open and trustworthy and this guy just blew my mind. They were expensive (comparatively, for how cheap everything is) and he made them by hand! I’m going to transfer the money to him this week but it boggles my mind that I could have just taken them. Afterwards, we took a trip to Clifton Beach, my first time there. Again, shocked, beach after beach is more beautiful than the previous. It was so nice outside and we stayed for about 3 hours. This day we also met a great taxi drive, Evie, who we called all day for every ride. We liked him because he blasted American Pop music and let us put the windows down. Made it feel like summer at home, but he was really awesome. I won’t go into details about my night because I know that I will get yelled at by everyone for what we did that night. All you need to know is that we were parkouring (The Office style, aka jumping off random things and screaming parkour) down Long Street, which is like the main road in downtown Cape Town, and then we joined a bachelor party. We might have climbed over a barbed wire fence at some point, but it was all in good fun, promise.

Sunday was a lazy day. I wanted to hike Table Mountain that day, but it just wasn’t going to happen. I sat in the coffee shop most of the day just doing homework and reading. I have 2 essay responses due on Thursday! Real work… not okay at all. All night I watched THON on the live stream and cried through all of the final four hours. Totally worth it. So proud of what was accomplished this weekend and year at Penn State after all that happened this year. Truly amazing. Monday was just typical school. Last night we went to see the movie Safehouse at 10:50 and there was absolutely no one in the theater. In South Africa, you’re also allowed to bring candy and drinks into the theater! The movie was really good and it took place in Cape Town so it was cool to see a lot of places that we recognized. Definitely recommend it. Today was a long school day as well, I spent a lot of time in the library reading and doing my essays. Tonight Isabel and me went on a run to Claremont, which is a couple towns down, took about an hour. My plan of getting in shape here is actually on its way and working! Tomorrow night someone here is turning 21 so there’s going to be a big party, but I’ll see if I’m up for it after classes. These 8 am’s are killing me. Nothing too big for the week planned, besides that and the home stay. Classes are going really well and I actually like them, besides the homework. So the next time I’ll be writing I’ll fill you in on the homestay!

Lesson of the week: If asked to join a bachelor party, always say yes. 

Back to School, Back to School

It’s been a long first-week of school. To kick off the week last Sunday, we decided that we would climb Lion’s Head. We took a cab to the bottom of the trail and started our 3-hour hike. The beginning of the trail was pretty easy and wide but as we got closer to the top we had to climb up some rocks. When we got to the top we were all pretty tired but it was well worth it – an amazing view of Cape Town from the top of the mountain. This was just a practice round though, this weekend we take on Table Mountain or Devil’s Peak, which are both pretty long and strenuous hikes that will take about 7 hours each. Sunday night everyone in my house went to the Goldfish concert in Camp’s Bay and it was a lot of fun. Goldfish is kinda techno-mix-up music, it’s hard to describe… but definitely worth looking it up. I really like two of my classes: Poverty, Globalization, and Development is one and the other is: Gender, Sexuality, and Politics in the context of South Africa. Both very interesting and I love my professors. I don’t love how often classes meet here though, which is 4 or 5 times a week. Also the periods are all in hour increments so you will have class for 45 minutes than 15 minutes to get to the next one. It seems like a high school schedule. The third class I was supposed to be taking was “Traditional African Religion”, which I thought would be interesting but I was horribly mistaken. It was a double period lecture and the teacher was literally reading off a piece of paper. Also, most of the things he said I just completely disagreed with so needless to say, I am no longer taking this class. I switched into two other classes instead. I’m taking Afrikaans which is a national language pretty closely tied to Dutch. This makes it a little easier for me because Dutch and German are similar in a lot of ways and I can already see a lot of overlapping words and sounds. I am also taking “Crime and Deviance in South Africa” which is a class pretty much filled with Americans and a lot of my friends. It has been pretty boring so far but I’m hoping it gets more interesting. Being on campus is pretty overwhelming. Since all the classes switch at the same time, there are always hoards of people grouped and walking and talking—it’s so loud and totally not what I’m used to. Not to mention, everyone here has such good fashion sense. Literally everyone is so beautiful it’s not even normal. I’m going to have to go shopping (Sorry, mom, I will control myself). Campus is so gorgeous too. I have to take pictures but I’m going to do that on a Saturday or Sunday, as I’m trying to conceal my American-ness as much as possible and walking around campus with a camera is definitely not a way to do that. There will be pictures on facebook at some point next week and you will be amazed that this is a college campus; ivy everywhere and Table Mountain just chilling behind it.

Even though I have my 8 am, I survived going out last night and still made it to class. A couple of us went to Long Street and stopped at a few bars, we met these guys that just opened a skate store and they showed us this other bar. Tomorrow we might go to this skate competition they invited us to: Ultimate X (which is their lamer version of our X Games). Should be cool.

Yesterday I also went to my internship for the first time. One of the guys in charge, Doug, picked us up in a van from lower campus and we made our way to PASSOP which is in Wynberg just a couple towns down from where I live. They’re an organization combating the inequality with refugees here in South Africa. (Check them out: http://www.passop.co.za/) We pretty much just got a picture of what the organization is about and the current refugee problems here. A lot of people get turned away and are asked completely inappropriate questions about why they were forced out of their country. It usually is something very personal about them being LGBTQ or domestic violence and it makes them feel really uncomfortable. The people basically try to make it seem like they are lying about why they had to leave their country. I also learned that South Africa doesn’t have born citizenship like the United States. If you are born in the South Africa, it doesn’t automatically give you citizenship. One of the volunteers at PASSOP came here and is trying to get refugee status and had a child in the mean time. Both are at risk of being deported. All of the people there seem so genuine and I’m so excited to get involved there. I’m specifically an intern with fundraising but they say our internships are really flexible and we can work with what we’re interested in so I’m hoping to get involved with the new LGBTQ area specifically.

This weekend I’m hopefully heading to Old Biscuit Mill tomorrow which is this awesome flea market (I think I mentioned it before) but I’m gonna try to take some pictures of it tomorrow. Last night the skate boys told us this is the “hipster flea market” and that we should go to the one in Holt Bay instead. Maybe we’ll take the advice, maybe not. It wouldn’t hurt to give Holt Bay a chance. Also this weekend is THON – big shout out to all the dancers and volunteers. I’m so sad I can’t be there this weekend, but I will be watching on live stream and I know it will be as amazing as ever. I was so excited to find out that Action News will be there this weekend! ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14gWVeANWUw&feature=youtu.be )
I’m trying real hard to keep this thing up to date but I just do not have the patience to sit and write about everything often so I hope I’ve been doing a good job of capturing my experiences thus far. I cannot believe that next Tuesday marks one month here. Time is going way too fast, may just have to cancel that return flight home (is that possible dad??)

Peace, love, and Cape Town.

Peace OUDTshoorn: Garden Route

For starters, I just want to apologize in advance to my parents for all the stupid things I did this week (stupid, safe things of course). This week was literally unreal. Our excuse… “It’s Africa... you can  do whatever you want”

So, on Sunday our rental car search finally ended and we found an automatic 4-seater car. We immediately began booking our hostels and planning our activities (which ended up changing multiple times anyway...). So, Monday morning around 10 am we started on our journey to Knysna. Our car ended up being a lot nicer than all of us had expected it to be. It took us about 5.5 hours to get to Knysna and we stopped at our hostel first. It seemed okay, but in the end it turned out to be the worst of all the places we would stay at. We stayed in the dorms there with two other people, one was an Irish girl that was just traveling, and the other was a creepy middle-aged guy, who didn’t say a word to us the whole time we were there. Monday night we just first just wandered around the waterfront and decided to get on a boat to get a tour of the lagoon and to see “The Heads”. We thought they were a much bigger deal than they ended up being.. which was not exciting. We had a couple ciders on the boat (I can only describe cider as like alcoholic applejuice, but it’s pretty good). After we wandered some more and got dinner at this Italian place. Italian food is just not the same here. We tried to get a cab back to our hostel because it was pretty late but the cab driver told us that he should be sleeping so… we then had no choice to walk. It was pretty dead out so the walk was fine and we got back to the hostel and showered. We woke up really early so that we could get to Storm’s River Village for our water tubing adventure.

Tuesday: We got to the tubing place on time and then the real fun began. We first had to basically sign our life away on a form that pretty much said if anything happened to us that it was not their fault and we were liable if we died. Then we went into the back room to get our wet suits on. These wet suits probably had a couple years on them and were covered with holes, but we didn’t really have another choice so we got on our wet suits, life vests, and helmets. We also had to get shoes from them because the water is black (Brown really, it’s stained like tea because of the sediments in the rocks) so I didn’t want to wear my own shoes. The shoes I wore were probably older than the wet suits and were cheetah… And I only found out after tubing that I would be charged 30 Rand for them, which is only like $3.50 but these shoes were not even worth anything. After we were all dressed, we piled into the trunk of a pick up truck and they took us down a extremely rocky, pot-hole filled road down to the river. When we got there, this guy gets out of the driver seat and comes around to let us out. Literally he looks like he’s homeless: long hair, leather cowboy hat, pants that had obviously been cut to capri-length except they were cut unevenly so one was slightly longer than the other. This is Brad, he gave us a safety talk which was the farthest thing from a safety talk and just was pretty inappropriate with his comments. We later found out that he owned the company, and the hostel we’d be staying at that night. We then had to carry our blown up tubes down an extremely steep hill down to the river, not an easy task in sole-less cheetah shoes. Our two guides were pretty professional and normal so that was fine and we started our river tubing by practicing tube jumps. On the river, there were a couple times when you could climb up onto a cliff or up a tree, 10 meters above the ground and jump into the river. I did the first jump and climbed the tree and jumped from there as well. The last jump was pretty scary because you had to jump out about 4 feet to avoid the actual mountain/dying on the way down. It was really fun though, afterwards Brad picked us up again and we got out of our wet suits and went to the hostel to shower. This hostel was my favorite place we stayed at. The whole theme was really cool and all the decorations were amazing. (I took a lot of pictures of this place so check it out on facebook). We then met Brad’s girlfriend, who we didn’t know was Brad’s girlfriend at the time and she told us Brad built and decorated the entire hostel so we were obviously shocked and she got a little confused. They made us dinner there and we started talking to another hostel-stayed, Danni, from Holland. At this point it was around 5pm, so mostly everything was closed and one of the people that worked at the hostel told us we should wait until 6 pm when the park was closed, and sneak into it to see the “Big Tree”. So this is what we did. We took Danni along for the ride because he had no way of transportation and was by himself (he was 24 and seemed like he was pretty non-threatening) It took us way to long to find this “big tree” but we finally found it and went for a little walk and took some pictures. Then we went to get some dinner, one of the only places we could find was this American Diner in town. It was pretty hilarious and was themed Elvis and Marilyn Monroe. There was a whole big room which old 50’s cars and costumes so of course we tried them on and took some more pictures. It was a pretty interesting experience but they did have grilled cheese so I was happy. After we went back to the hostel and had a few ciders with the bar tender, who had bungee jumped 16 times and was telling us all about the bungee jumping. I’m not sure if this calmed my nerves or made me more nervous. After a while we went to sleep because we had to do bungee jumping in the morning.

Wednesday: We got up, had breakfast really fast then got in the car to go. Of course it was raining, and just as we were pulling out our car got stuck in the mud. Stuck. We got out and tried to push it, but we 3 girls it was pretty useless and one of the guys in the hostel must have heard us struggling so him and Danni came outside and he ended up pulling us out with his truck. Finally we got on our way to bungee jumping. I think there are very few times in my life that I was as nervous as I was getting weighed and getting my harness put on. The walk onto the middle of the bridge was probably the worst. It was a thin little tunnel and the bottom was a grate so you could see right through to the bottom of the gorge. It also shook a little so I was already completely nervous. When we got to the middle there was loud music playing to get us pumped and a lot of people from out program were there so I was getting a little less nervous after hitting a point where I thought I might not jump. When it was my turn they sat me down and wrapped my ankles, which was the main support when you jumped, with the second support (in case) being around your torso if the ankles failed. They held hold you as you hop to the edge (because your ankles are tied together) and you have your arms around their shoulders then you take your arms off and they count 1,2,3,4,5… BUNGEE! If you don’t jump yourself, they push you. At that point though there was no going back so I actually jumped. The first .5 seconds I literally felt like I was going to die but once you just keep falling, then bouncing back up a couple times I looked around and it was really just amazing. The whole view and experience was amazing and I was so happy I did it.. as the bungee jumping slogan goes “Fear is temporary, regret is forever”. Afterwards we were so hyper and pumped so when we got back to the restaurant/gift shop we took a quick Smirnoff shot to calm our nerves. After we got our pictures and videos we were off to see some animals. We first went to the elephant sanctuary were they keep elephants that they’ve saved from poaching, or other injuries. I got to walk them and also touch their skin, ears, feet… Their skin is so rough but they’re such smart, amazing animals. Afterwards, we went to Monkeyland, which is just basically a big forest where tons of different kinds of monkeys just roam free. We somehow snuck in with a group of old Belgians who were obviously in a tour group. The guide questioned us once about if we were actually with the group, which we acted like we were, even though it was pretty obvious that we weren’t. At the end we went out to our car and thought we got away with free tickets but then the security stopped us and our tour guide came out and basically caught us and we had to go back in to pay. The park was really cool and I got some great monkey pictures. That night we were planning on staying in Plettenberg Bay, but last minute we decided to go to Jeffrey’s Bay instead because on the first night in Knysna some drunk people on our boat told us this was the “place to go”. We found a room in a hostel and were on our way to Jeffrey’s Bay. This was probably our weirdest night. The two people that were there working were Kaio, who was from Brazil doing volunteer work and was 22 and Werner (verrr-ner) who was like 43. We put our stuff away and took showers then went to the bar and drank a couple ciders and talked to Kaio and Werner, both very interesting and funny people. We then went to another hostel to hang out with some other people from our program on the beach. The beach was so nice at night and some people went into the water, which was pretty insane cause it was freezing. Afterwards we went back to our hostel where it was still hopping. We hung out with Kaio, Werner, and their strange middle-aged friends, aka the “permanents” who lived in the hostel. I guess it pays to have friends that work in a hostel. One of them was a local artist – Buffy, who spray painted streets and buildings.. and his dog.. which was kind of weird. He had weird dreadlock-y/just dirty hair and a Braves jersey that he had painted on a shirt. Interesting guy to say the least. But, anyway he asked us to paint/spray paint the street, and so we did. He ended up getting arrested because a cop drove past, but this was obviously a common occurrence and so the police let him go. This is when we decided it was time for bed haha.

Thursday: The next day Kaio was going to give us free surfing lessons but we were just hanging out on the beach all day and became to lazy to actually try to surf so we had to cancel the lessons and just spent the day in the water, reading and whatever. We then went to shower in the beach bathrooms after and mid-way, they decided to close the bathrooms on us so we had to leave and we just stopped to eat before we started driving to Oudtshoorn. We ate at this really cute little restaurant and the food was amazing. The drive to Oudtshoorn took awhile and we only got to our hostel at like 9 pm… The drive was amazing, we were a little off the beaten track but it was so pretty. Well, we ran out of gas and had to get off a random exit and when we literally only had .4 liters left, we found a has station just in time. We also happened to see an Oudtshoorn sign so we looked at a map and just decided to take this way instead. We were happy though because it was beautiful and Ostrich filled. The hostel we stayed at this night was called “Oudtshoorn Backpackers and Joyrides” so we knew we were in for another weird night. When we got there, the power was out in the whole hostel so we were using flashlights while checking in and being shown around. This place was the nicest for sure out of all the places we stayed and there were a lot of Americans there from other programs. We put our stuff away and headed to the bar to make more friends. We spent most of the night joking around with these 3 guys from Austria and also the fake David Guetta (but seriously this guy looked exactly like David Guetta). We played pool and somehow made a cheerleading pyramid with the Austrian guys. We ended up being a little too loud and got sent to bed/probably almost kicked out of the hostel. But it was fun and well worth it.

Friday: Got up early again, got some breakfast and then we were off to the Cango Caves. We went on the “adventure tour” there. At first it didn’t seem very adventurous but that’s just because the beginning was the normal tour. Then it got adventuresome and we were climbing through small holes in rocks in the cave and through REALLY thin tunnels. I tried to take some pictures but they don’t really do the claustrophobia justice. It was still really fun and a great experience. After we finished the caves, we felt to a strange little restaurant to get a late lunch before we drove back to Cape Town. Not the best place, but still had cool, old antique-y decorations. Our drive back was about 5 hours and we finally had an AUX cable so we could actually listen to music. When I got back I just hung out for a while and went to sleep because this week has been pretty exhausting… Today I’m just spending time catching up on e-mails and getting ready for my classes, which start on Monday. It is not going to be fun or easy getting back into class-mode but I am kind of excited for my classes.

Anyway, I’m not going to post pictures on here because it’s too hard to figure out and they’re all on facebook anyway. I’ll also try to get my bungee jumping video up when I can figure that out. This entry was even longer than the last so I’ll still catch up on those other random things later when I have down time (which I’m sure I will when classes start).

Lesson of the week: Never judge a man by his asymmetrical pants. 

I love Cape Town

So, the whole reason I created this blog last summer was to practice blogging for being abroad and since I've been abroad I've completely neglected it. From here on out, I'm actually going to try to update it so I don't forget any of the places or people that I've encountered thus far and that I will for the rest of my time in Cape Town. I cannot believe that I am already going into my third week here.

I left from Newark on January 22, and took a 6.5-hour flight to Frankfurt. We had a 10-hour layover there and although we (the 4 other girls I flew with that were in my program) decided to venture out in Frankfurt despite our jetlag. We wandered around and found a little restaurant/bar called Bull & Bear where we got some lunch and had some German beer. We then made our way back to the airport and took turns taking naps across all the airport seats. The next flight to Cape Town was almost double this flight: 11 hours. I actually did get to sleep for a while on the plane so it wasn’t as bad as I expected.

From Tuesday (January 24^th) when I arrived until Saturday (28^th) we stayed in the dorms at UTC (University of Cape Town) and did a lot of orientation activities. We explored Cape Town and stopped at a couple bars on Long Street, which is the main street to go out in downtown Cape Town. We also took a cable car to the top of Table Mountain, which is always in sight pretty much wherever you are in Cape Town and it’s a beautiful sight to always be seeing. On the Friday night we went to this restaurant called Moyo in Stellenbosch, which is in the wine lands, and it was so gorgeous. The food was great and there were some weird things but I actually tried Ox. It wasn’t very good, but I don’t know if this was only because it was Ox and that’s all I could think about. We also visited a couple of the sites where we can do service. We went to the largest township in the South Africa, Khayelitsha. Its government provided housing but it looks like shacks made out of tin and everyone, including little children were walking around barefoot. These kids start to be sexually active at 8-9 years old and that's why AIDS is such a huge problem. We visited a lot of places where we can do service. The disparities in income/living conditions have such an enormous gap, it's really, really sad.
Saturday, January 28^th: We moved into our actual permanent houses that are not on campus! In my house there are 12 of us, 3 boys and 9 girls, and we all have our own rooms. I really like our house; it has really big common rooms and a porch outside where we spend a lot of time drinking wine. Our house is pretty much a fortress because it has barbed wire, an electric fence, and we have a security guard from 6pm until 6 am. On the first night we had a Braii, which is what they call a barbeque here and drank a lot of wine. Found out that alcohol stops being sold at 5 pm because it’s a “family night” on Saturdays. I went with my RA to go see how you get wine after hours. Basically you just stand around by the wine shelves and a guy will come over to you, knowing why you’re there. You just point to some bottles, leave a bag, and wander around the store for a while. When no one is in the store, it’s safe to go to the register and pay for it and you take your bag. It was a lot of fun drinking with everyone and getting to know each other.
Sunday, January 29^th: We had to get up early to go on a bus tour of Cape Town. We stopped at some really pretty places. The second stop we took a little walk down to the beach and we saw penguins. I was a little disappointed because we didn’t get to go too close to them but I still got some good pictures. The third stop we were told was a “little hike” up to the lighthouse. It seemed a lot longer because of the extreme heat and when we finally made it to the top, we learned that we had to still take another hike to the very tip of the peninsula. This took a lot longer than we anticipated but it was really cool because we ended at the southern most tip of Africa.

The rest of the week we had some orientation activities for the University. We skipped a lot of the days because it wasn’t very important information and it meant we had to get up early. So instead, we explored and took many trips to the beach. The beach is seriously so incredible, it’s awesome to be surrounded by beautiful mountains and the sky has been blue the entire time. The water is a little cold and I’m weary to go in because of the presence of shark flags at all times. Even though it’s only really dangerous when there’s a RED flag. Red means that there has been a shark sighting. Black means it’s too murky to tell if there are sharks, white is that there has been one in the past 24 hours, and BLUE is a good sign that the water is safe. The fact that it is common enough to see a shark that they need these flags is enough to keep me out of that water. No surfing lessons for me. Muizenberg and Camp’s Bay are the two beaches I’ve ventured too. Camp’s Bay is in a little bit nicer of an area and has a lot of higher class bars/restaurants but is obviously pretty tourist-y. I also discovered a mall on one of these exploring days, and it is pretty comparable to our malls, so I’ve found my home away from home.
The only day of orientation that I had to really go to was when we registered for classes. This was an extremely long task because of the laid back mentality here that they call “Africa Time”. Everything is done on paper. If you didn’t have a class pre-registered, then you had to get a form signed by the head of the department that said that they cleared you for the class and you had to bring your transcript along to prove that you were able to take this class. This is a very tedious and frustrating task, especially because I only had to do it because it so happened that two of my classes overlapped and I didn’t know this because I wasn’t give the “handbook” until the day before. Did I also mention the list of classes is in a paperback book that you have to read through to find the classes and times? I don’t understand how they have not switched to a online listing of classes.. The first step was sitting in a line (“queue”) for an hour waiting to talk to an advisor that literally gave me no advice, just signed my paper and sent me off to the next station, then the next and the next, until I ended in a 1.5 hour line to get my student I.D., which also took only 2 minutes in the end. I’m obviously very impatient, so this will all take a little getting used to.
Yesterday some girls in my house and I took a trip to “Old Biscuit Mill”, literally heaven on earth. It was pretty much a huge flea market and lots of little shops with creative clothes, crafts, and many other things. It reminded me a little of peddler’s village except it’s all pretty much outside. There’s also an enormous tent with just about every food you could possibly imagine. Each stand specializes in a certain cuisine or sauce or anything and you can just buy whatever you’d like. I had a great chicken sandwich with some African sauce and guacamole, and also a drink called a “mule” it was so good and didn’t even taste like it was alcoholic. I also tried multiple sauces, pesto’s, cookies, etc. It was all so so so good. The atmosphere there is just so great too. There was a clothes tent and this is where I spent a lot of my time. I bought a skirt from a lady who made all of the clothes herself. I’m pretty much obsessed with it. Afterwards, we took a mini-bus to Camp’s Bay to go to the beach. It was extremely, extremely hot and we ended up only lying on the beach for 35 minutes because it was just too hot to even deal with. So then we just decided to go up to a restaurant and get some water and pita with hummus. The hummus here is so good.
So, you may be wandering where the “study” part of the “study abroad” part comes in… Well, class doesn’t start until February 13^th. The students at UCT are still on summer break (since their seasons are opposite of America) and their actual semester is only 12 weeks long. This is because at the end they have 3 WEEKS for finals. The teachers are nice here and actually spread out the exams so that you don’t get completely stressed out and stay awake for a week straight (hey, Penn State.. maybe you should look into this). The downside though is that your final grade is 50% of your grade. This means if you fail the final, you fail the class. Not so great anymore, I guess. This means that I have a whole other week off this week! Perfect for some travelling..

After a lot of car rental troubles we finally got a car today and 4 of us are taking off tomorrow to explore the Garden Route, which is basically all the towns along the southern coast. We’re going to an Elephant park, Monkey park, bungee jumping, and also going on a tubing tour of Storm’s river. We’re staying in a bunch of hostels along the way so it is definitely going to be an interesting adventure.

I have a lot more to write but this has been extremely long so I’ll continue to play catch up after my next couple entries. I’m obviously loving it here and can’t believe that in only 4 days I will have only exactly 4 months here. I’ve been learning so much from everyone here and I am so excited to continue learning, both in and out of the classroom. I don’t know if I’ll be able to update this until I get back on Friday so until then I just left some bullet points on the bottom of this of things I want to touch on. I tried to make them exciting so you’ll be excited to keep reading!

Stay happy, people.

Clubs/going out, transportation, food, retained credit card, Afrikaburn, FAKE ketchup, too much mayo, Internet.. or lack thereof