Culture Shock

I used to lament every time GW had a study abroad event, like the pre-departure orientation and other similar events. Why? Because all the talked about was culture shock. Here I was, apparently feeling invincible to the inevitable effects of culture shock. How wrong I was. However, I’m lucky enough that (for now) the effects are not debilitating. There are just a couple things I want to vent about Cape Town; these things are not necessarily problems that cannot be overcome, just things that I want to air my grievances about.

1) Air conditioning is exceedingly rare in South Africa. Currently, it is 11:30 PM, and it is 75 degrees Fahrenheit outside. My room is always about 10 degrees hotter. What this means is that, while I want to go to sleep tonight, I will wake up just as sweaty as I was when I went to bed, which right now is scary, because everyone knows I sweat more than your average human, and this is becoming unbearable even as I type.

2) There are no dryers (or as they call them here, “tumblers”) anywhere close by. I have to air dry my clothes. Which means that laundry is not just an afternoon (although I complain about spending 2 hours doing laundry at GW, I’d trade that in a heartbeat) endeavor, it takes at least an entire day.

3) One of my classes had a paper due on Thursday about a reading that we were never given. When we asked our tutor about it, she said she knew nothing about it. There is hardly conversation between the tutors and the professor. To make matters worse, my professor is only our professor until next week. After that, she has no idea who is teaching our class. So, we have no idea what we are going to discuss after that, nor who is going to teach, nor if there will even be people to teach us.

4) In order to go on my spring break trip, I am going to have to buy malaria pills that give me hallucinogenic dreams. Although I anticipated this upon signing up, given that everyone in Cape Town seems to have nightmares more than they have at home, I’m somewhat frightened about the prospect of dealing with these scary dreams.

5) There are no TVs here. All I want to do is watch an episode of Modern Family or The Bad Girls Club.

6) As a secondary problem to that, we have to pay for our internet usage, which is charged per megabyte. Downloading and/or streaming any video is absurdly expensive, so I haven’t even been able to watch any TV online. Combine that with the fact that I have a lot more free time now that classes have started, I am getting slowly more and more irritated when I get bored.

7) My house has become infested with bugs. Whether they be the ants that torment our kitchen, or the mosquitoes that always find a way into everyone’s bedrooms, we all now have bug bites left and right that we cannot get rid of.

8) The most random items are expensive for no reason. I spent $15 today on shampoo because it was the cheapest they had. Where is my 99cent shampoo when I need it!

9) Juices don’t come without pulp. I HATE pulp.

I hope no one reading this thinks that I’m not enjoying my time here. These are just literally the most minor of things that have been becoming slightly grating on my experience here, but things I just like to share to remind myself of what I’m doing here. I’m sure when I get home I will think differently.

Also, I am talking to Parul right now, and just got the best piece of advice: “you just have to not compare it to here (the US) and you’ll be fine”. I think I need to remind myself of that. We all have been so privileged to have exceedingly comfortable lives, while there are people who live in even less lucky circumstances than we do here in Rondebosch.

In other news, I’m going to have a great time this weekend when my seminar class goes to Johannesburg! I’ve wanted to go to Joburg for a long time, and so now we’ll finally have the chance to go! The seminar that went last week raved about their trip, so hopefully ours will be just as awesome. We’re also going to be planning our spring break trip soon, so I’m planning on being fortunate enough to have the time to go to some great countries in southern Africa, and to do some INCREDIBLE things!

On a More Serious Note..

Normally, I use this blog as a platform to tell everyone back at home about all the awesome things that I get to do in Cape Town. Unfortunately, this one is a little bit different. On a tremendously more serious note than I am used to, I’m going to write about the real South Africa. Not the American student living in South Africa, but about some of the problems this country is facing that I currently have to deal with. All of this, by the way, if it gives you any indication of where I’m going, is inspired by a quote my professor said during Crime & Deviance in South African Cities:

“We are living in a war zone. There isn’t a war going on, but we essentially live in a war zone.”

She said this in reference to today’s lecture, which was a statistical look at violent crime in South Africa. To give you a point of reference, here are just some quick facts I wrote down about the crime rates in South Africa:

·      9 times out of 10, a private security firm like ADT will arrive at a crime scene faster than the police.

·      In 1994, 25% of the police in South Africa were functionally illiterate.

·      46% of the South African population lives in rural areas.

o   65% of those living in rural areas never see a police officer, or see one less than once a month.

o   Of those living in rural areas who have experience violent crime, only 20% have reported it to the police.

o   64% of those living in rural areas live from 11km-50km from a police station

o   96% of those living in rural areas don’t have a cell phone, while 94.7% don’t have a phone in their house, and the nearest phone for 42% in rural areas is between half an hour to two hours away

·      From April 2008-April 2009 there are 2.1 million reported crimes (in a country of 48 million); per capita (for every 100,00 people), there were 4414 crimes reported

o   According to “iceberg theory”, this is only a small percentage of “real crime”, as in crimes that actually take place

·      South Africa has the second highest rate of homicide, second only to Colombia, and ahead of Brazil and other countries that have histories of civil war

·      The murder rate is the lowest of all violent crimes, behind such crimes as robberies and aggravated assaults

·      There is a new drug popular in South Africa that involves smoking anti-Retrovirals, which are medications people take when they have HIV

o   Thus, individuals with HIV are being robbed for their medicine, and cannot take it

Although my friends and I lovingly refer to our suburb as “Robdebosch”, and the street outside our house as “Rape Row”, the fact of the matter is this is still a dangerous place to be. Having lived in a city for two and a half years already, I’ve gotten a certain confidence about me which makes me feel like I can do almost anything in DC. The same is not true about Cape Town. I’m not paranoid, nor am I afraid, I just have a very heightened sense of awareness. Already, I have a friend who has both been pickpocketed and had a bag of clothing stolen from a property she thought was safe. It’s only been a month.

For almost every single one of us here, this is our first time going to school in such a dangerous place. We all recognize that the safety precautions like “don’t walk home alone at night,” “beware of someone trying to help you with the ATM,” and “make sure you’re always aware” are more than just precautions; they are things you must do in order to protect yourself. And I’ve noticed myself making changes to my routine to ensure this. I lock my bedroom door, as well as any gate that stands between the front door and me when I leave the house. I carry my wallet only in my front pocket, because I will notice better if someone is pickpocketing me. This kind of stuff, which seems so trivial, is vital to ensure my own safety, as well as the safety of my belongings.

But, my question just becomes, why? Why is there so much violent crime? And why is there so much other crime? One would think that after South Africa became a democracy, and apartheid was formally over, the country’s crime rate would have decreased. That is what logic tells me. Unfortunately, that is not the case, and hopefully my Crime & Deviance class will get me closer to the answers.

Still, it is unnerving to feel like almost anything can happen at any moment. I remember yesterday Kayla telling me that she had to walk the long way home because her intuition told her that the park she was about to walk through with two men standing in it alone wasn’t a good idea. Normally, I wouldn’t trouble myself to think about something like that, but it’s a very real possibility that something may have happened to her had she walked through. I think that’s what scares me the most; you can never really know what’s about to happen to you.

This isn’t to say that Cape Town isn’t a fantastic city, and that I don’t feel safe here at all. I walk every day up to UCT feeling perfectly fine (albeit very sweaty) knowing that nothing is really going to go wrong. However, it’s the little things that have been adding up, and making me more and more careful.

Please don’t worry about me though, I’ll totally be fine!

Part of Your World

“Look at this trove

Treasures untold

How many wonders can one cavern hold?”

I’ve had some serious trouble keeping up this blog for the last week. In an ideal world, I’d be able to update every day, giving everyone the intimate details of my day-to-day life. In all honesty, I would appreciate that even for myself, because each and every experience I have in Cape Town is something that I want to cherish for the rest of my life. Whether it be yelling “Wynburg!” (anyone whose been to Cape Town knows how the gaichis in the minibus taxes yell constantly at you to take their cab) to just a fun day spent at the beach walking along the water with a friend and laughing as a man stomps in the water and splashes us with the coldest water we’ve ever felt, everything in Cape Town is a memory. However, I’m living this, and am living it so fully that I never want to separate myself from these experiences. Thus, I’ve arrived at a place like today, where I have to describe all the incredible things I’ve done over the last couple days in the most synopsized way possible. If I could say one thing about this week, though, it would be that I’ve found the place I want to be forever. I want to be a part of this world.

Last week was our first week of classes. Class at UCT is definitely different than at GW. Any of my VIPs will tell you that the teacher/student ratio at GW is 13:1, with an average class size of 28. Not UCT. The smallest of my classes at UCT has about 50 students, with the largest being somewhere in the 200 student range. I’m going to have to learn really quickly how to deal with these large class sizes, to be sure that I get the most out of my educational experience. I actually had a major scare earlier this week about credit transference, because I wasn’t sure if I would end up being billed more by GW than I would normally be, because the credit amounts here are very different than at GW. I’m taking 4 24-credit classes, and they are: 1) Social and Cultural Life in the 21^st Century, 2) Crime and Deviance in South African Cities, 3) War and Society, and 4) African Dance for Semester Study Abroad students. I’m also taking a Living and Learning Seminar with my student abroad provider (CIEE), which is actually going to be bringing us to Johannesburg in about 2 weeks! Each of these classes actually promises to be really interesting. The only problem with motivation is that 1) you have to climb Table Mountain (partially) to get to class, and 2) the classes meet about 4 times a week each for 45 minutes, so I’m spending a lot more time in class than I’m used to. Luckily, I have at least 1 friend in every class, so I will have someone to study with and things like that once the workload really starts to pick up.

My social life has definitely remained at about the same place that it has been for the last couple of weeks since I’ve been here. Devonshire is maintaining our reputation for being the house that always goes out together (which is great, because everyone in this house is such a character and contributes so much to the overall chill vibe that we have), but also of being one of the most fun groups of people here. In fact, our security guard, John, who also works at another house, told us that he likes us more, because the other house (Cristow) is really quiet, whereas Devonshire is the opposite of quiet. I went out a bunch of nights this week, and each night had a very different vibe. Whether it be our trip to The Waiting Room for the second time, where I met a South African who described herself as the “Queen of Cape Town”, as well as 3 of the funniest South African guys I’d met thus far in Cape Town, to our great Ikhaya Day House party at Tiger Tiger (where we waited for about a half hour to get our 3 free drinks), every night is a blast. It was also Kayla’s 21^st birthday this Sunday (keeping up the string of 21^sts that Devonshire has had), so we went out to a club called Bronx on Saturday night, where we were potentially the only people under 35 there. The nightlife in Cape Town has been so incredible, but I’m glad to finally be putting on the breaks and taking it easy here, because school is probably going to pick up a bit soon.

Culturally, I have done 3 incredible things worth noting. First, on Friday afternoon, the members of the CIEE Seminar were brought on a tour of Downtown Cape Town historic sites. We first went to the Castle, commissioned by Jan van Riebeek, the man from the VOC who founded the city of Cape Town. We didn’t get to go inside, but were able to see outside, and I plan on going back there as soon as possible. We then walked across the Grand Parade to City Hall, where on the day Mandela was released he came to make a speech (which I had read about in Long Walk to Freedom). To see this area, knowing that only 15 years ago it was jam-packed with South Africans finally knowing that freedom was on the horizon was a pretty powerful moment. From there, we walked to the Slave Lodge, a building that bears the truth of its name. It was a place where slaves, who were mainly brought from the Far East to work for Cape settlers, were forced to stay. We saw the original tree stump upon which the slaves were sold, as well as the horrible conditions in which they were forced to live. From there, we walked through the Gardens, which afforded yet another beautiful view of Table Mountain (I have to count the number of pictures I have of Table Mountain – it’s far too many, but also every time I go somewhere new I see yet another view of the mountain and am still so impressed). From there, we went to Bo-Kaap, a neighborhood of vibrantly colored buildings and Cape Malay culture (slaves lived there after the neighborhood was cleared of whites). In Bo-Kaap, we went to the home of a woman who made us the most delicious Cape Malay cuisine, and my house is actually going back there to take a cooking class and learn how to make this stuff! I absolutely can’t wait. After that we came back home, and I realized how much of Cape Town history I have yet to see, and can’t wait to experience all of it!

On Sunday, we were brought to see a soccer game at Athlone stadium. I instantly became a Kaiser Chiefs fan, solely because the woman next to me told me that everyone there was a Chiefs fan. Apparently, there are two major South African football clubs, the Chiefs, and the Orlando Pirates. We were watching the Chiefs play Engen Santos, whom they ended up tying. Everyone was surprised to see just how into the game I got, but they hadn’t seen me at an organized sporting event yet, and didn’t know how competitive I can be. I also had gone to Cybar before the match with my friend Alex, where we had split a pitcher, and after singing happy birthday to Kayla who we saw on the street, helped her finish her fishbowl, along with some other friends. That made the soccer game infinitely more fun! I can’t even describe how much fun a South African soccer game is; soccer culture is incredible here! People don’t get violent or upset or anything, they just love the game, and want to see their team do well. There may be rivalries, but everyone just appreciates the game.

Today, after class, my friends and I decided to go to the UCT Rugby game, as they took on Nelson Mandela Memorial University. I don’t know a single thing about rugby, but the game was so much fun. I bought a shirt to support the team, and hopefully am starting to blend in with the South Africans around me. To see the school spirit here was awesome, knowing how lacking it is at GW. I can’t wait to go back on March 7^th, as UCT takes on their main rival, Stellenbosch, at home for the first time in a couple of years. That game promises to be incredible.

Perhaps now would be a good time to start my homework? Something like that. All I know is, in the time I’ve spent writing this, as great as it is to record my thoughts, my FOMO has been out of control, and I want to go back and hang out with my friends!

Reflection

I know all the blog posts I’ve written so far have been essentially about the incredible things I’ve been fortunate enough to get to experience in my short time here in Cape Town, but after 3 weeks I think it’s finally time for some serious reflection on what I’ve been learning here. Every day I learn something new, whether it be about myself, my country, my life, or the state of the world I live in. Each and every experience has provoked an internal dialogue, and it’s time to put my thoughts into words.

I’ve noticed that I’m way more comfortable spending my money on things because I convert the Rand value back into my head as dollars, and say “oh well it’s not that much, so it’s okay.” In fact, I’ve caught myself saying to people who are debating purchasing something “it doesn’t matter, its just Rand”. That’s a very scary thought. Though many things are cheaper here, it shouldn’t come across my mean that that’s a justifiable reason to have something. I’m starting now to make a concerted effort to think about things not in terms of dollars but in terms of Rand. Hopefully that will make my budget balancing a little bit easier too.

Complaining is another of my major problems. I will be the first to admit that I always want more and better, and don’t hesitate to complain about my supposed problems. Today I was on a line for lunch with my friend Lindsay, and I was so jealous that she had a TV in her house, knowing how often I have complained about not being able to watch my TV whenever I want. TV shouldn’t be a priority; I’m here for school and a cultural experience, not to watch American reality shows. I also complain a lot about my walk to school. Though it is not the most appealing thing to walk up a mountain to get to my classes, I need to take a step back and really appreciate the beauty of the area and the University of Cape Town itself. It’s not in the cards for everyone to get to see Table Mountain looming above, with clouds zipping post Devil’s Peak, every morning. On the way back down, I get to see the beautiful Southern Suburbs of Cape Town in front of me. And yet I still complain about the distance and the elevation change.

Perhaps the thing that has stood out to me most about myself is my reliance on the Internet. Whether it is having the instant answer from Wikipedia on my BlackBerry to vegging out and checking Facebook in between each of my classes (which, I admit, I’m still a little guilty of), the Internet plays a very large role in my life. Now, to know that I have to pay for Internet access, and to actually see the number of purchased Internet credits dwindling every time I click on a new page has forced me to really reform my habits. I now only open one tab at a time, and finish everything I need to do on that site before moving on to another. I can’t even imagine what it’s going to be like once I have to start writing papers and doing research, because I am constantly sifting back and forth between documents that I will now have to use Internet credit to download.

Social life in South Africa is also very different than in the US. I’ve noticed that people here are significantly nicer, friendlier, and more willing to accept a new person’s friendship, even if it’s just chatting with someone on line or at a bar or in class. I don’t know why it is that I have felt the need back home and at school to put on a “don’t talk to me” front. I am (I hope) a genuinely nice and well-meaning person, so I hope to catch some of that openness from my time here in Cape Town.

Perhaps most importantly of all, safety has been a huge wake up call for me. I am so comfortable in the places I’ve come to call home that I’ve never truly felt unsafe. South Africa has changed all that. I keep my wallet, keys, and phone in my front pocket almost all the time for fear that someone will pickpocket me. I’m afraid to leave my door unlocked for fear that someone can get into my house. I’m afraid whenever someone walks behind me for fear that they are going to do something bad to me. It’s an incredible luxury to have come from a place where you don’t have to be this aware of your surroundings at all times. I think I will certainly learn a lot from being here, knowing that there are places where people do have to live this way, and I can count my blessings that I am not one of them.

Finally, my close-minded view of race is something that has radically shifted from coming to Africa. Race is not a hush-hush topic in South Africa the way that it is back in America, which is fortunate for me because I am able to really learn why this is the Rainbow Nation. Perhaps the change I’ve noticed most since coming to South Africa is that I’m no longer hesitant around black people. Back at home, I’ve often felt, for whatever reason, slightly uncomfortable around black people, and much more so when in a group where I am the minority. I don’t at all feel that way now. In fact, I’ve noticed myself becoming bothered when I’m in places where there are mostly white people, because it makes me question whether or not the place or the group of people are racist. That is a positive step towards breaking down my unfortunate past vision of race in America.

This actually may even have been my shortest blog post yet, but it’s definitely an important one for me. I know I have a long swath of time ahead of me in Cape Town, and I can’t wait to see how much more I’m going to learn while I’m here. 

Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah

“Mister Bluebird on my shoulder

It's the truth, it's actch'll

Ev'rything is satisfactch'll

Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay

Wonderful feeling, wonderful day!”

Whoever designed the UCT semester schedule needs to have a stern speaking too. I arrived in Cape Town three weeks ago, but am only about to really start classes tomorrow. How is that real?  The end result has been a dream vacation, but my body is no longer able to sustain the level of partying that we were hitting this last weekend. Suffice it to say that my housemates killing 2 bottles of Jose Cuervo in 2 days is the level we were getting to. Definitely something I shouldn’t be repeating any time soon.

After returning on Wednesday from the Garden Route, I took Thursday to perform what South Africans call “admin” which is the same thing as errands. Thursday night we had heard about this place to go out called Mercury, a little bit off of Long Street. It was a pretty cool place. At first there was some live music which was kind of bad but eventually it ended and they starting playing the music that South Africans like to listen to at bars, which is a very eclectic mix of American Top 40 and 80’s jams.  We ran into a bunch of Americans there, and generally had a good time. For some reason or other, everyone decided to leave that spot, and so we all ended up going over to Claremont, a more student-oriented bar area closer to UCT. This is when my culture shock started to get a little hectic; we left the bar and there wasn’t a cab waiting on the street like there normally is in DC. Then, a couple of cabs pulled up, but the standard practice here is to haggle with cab drivers to get yourself a good price to wherever you’re going. The cab drivers can tell we are American from our accents, and will try to do anything to get more money out of us, so I was getting madder and madder that no cab would bring us for a good price. I guess that’s just one of the annoying parts of traveling. Finally we found a cab that would take us, and so we got to Tin Roof in Claremont and the line looked really long, so two friends and I cruised to Pig & Swizzle, the seedy bar that we went to at the very beginning of the semester. Since the crowd seemed really strange and kind of sketchy, we left and walked down the street to Cybar, the bar that is right down the road from my house. Again, we were the only white people in the bar, but luckily some friends came and met us and we hung out for a little bit and chatted with some locals. Eventually, only me and my friend Kayla were left, and since I didn’t feel too hot at that point so we walked up the street and went home.

Friday was the “first day of classes.” I put that in quotes because apparently it is known among South Africans that that day isn’t important for class, so no one actually goes, except all the exchange students. I had a class at 9AM, and it’s actually almost the same as a class I took at GW but it will be from an African perspective so that’ll make it more interesting. I actually spoke a couple of times in class, and at one point started a debate. I can’t wait to start participating in class here and getting to talk more and more with some South African students! The rest of the day we just spent out home, laying out for a while and then cooking some dinner. Friday night at midnight was actually Ashley’s 21^st birthday, so we decided to make it a really fun night. We had a really fun pregame at our house, and a bunch of people showed up also, so that made it more entertaining. We went to a place called Tiger Tiger, a very local student hangout in Claremont. This is one of the very few places in South Africa where on most nights males have to be 21 to get in, so I was nervous I wasn’t going to be let in, but I breezed right past the bouncer. Apparently, this is because I was showing him an American driver’s license, and that immediately screams “will spend a lot of money.” Unfortunately, that proved true, as I bought a number of drinks at the bar. But it was a really fun club with great music and I got to see a bunch of people who had just come back from the Garden Route and jam with them so that made it all the more fun. Apparently, however, we were only there for about an hour or so before we came back home, and after hanging out for a little while I went to bed.

Saturday was our trip to Robben Island! CIEE (my program) provides us with up to 5 activities per month that we can get comped, and so Remy, my RA, set us up with a tour of Robben Island. We took cabs down to the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, the area seen in most of the pictures of Cape Town you ever see. It is a really beautiful area with shops and restaurants and a giant ferris wheel. After a short boat ride, we made it out to the Island. The tour was really informative as we drove around the island. I didn’t know too much about it aside from what I had read in Long Walk to Freedom, so to hear more of the history was really cool. For instance, I didn’t know that it was once a leper colony, and that there are over a thousand graves of lepers who died on the island. With only 100 residents of the island, that’s at least 10 leper graves per person. So after the island tour, we were brought to the Maximum Security Prison, and met a former prisoner who was going to give us our tour. It was incredible to see just how horrible the conditions were out on the island, and to remember that so many of South Africa’s leaders of today had to spend so many years in these conditions. Then, came the moment I had been waiting for: a visit to Nelson Mandela’s cell. We didn’t have much time at the cell, so I could only just snap some photos quickly before I have to leave, but it was very moving to see how the national hero of South Africa spent 18 years.

After the trip to Robben Island, we grabbed a quick lunch/dinner at the Waterfront, and then came back to Rondebosch to chill out for a little bit. All of a sudden, we realized that the sun was starting to set, which was hindering our plans to watch the sun set from Signal Hill, a park right by Lion’s Head. So, me and 5 other people packed into the 1970 or so beetle that Anders had rented for the semester, to attempt the drive. I have never been laughed at so many times by the people we passed while driving, but I have to admit I would laugh too if I saw a group of Americans packed into a beetle. After a very adventurous drive, we might it to the top, but unfortunately had already missed the sunset. We still had fun, though, because Devonshire always has fun when we go anywhere. After a little bit up there, we walked down the road to get a view of Cape Town at night. I don’t think I’ll ever lose the sense of awe I get every time I see Cape Town lit up. This city is absolutely magical at night.

Finally, we came back home to start getting ready to go out for Ashley’s 21^st birthday. We all ended up drinking a lot, but it was just Devonshire for the most part here and we were all having a blast just hanging out before we left. Finally, it was time to go, so we went down to Mercury again because they were having a dubstep concert. I ended up in the second wave of cabs, and so we went down to the street to try and get one. So, Daniel starts flagging some down, and haggling to get a good price. Unfortunately, this was when the police showed up. Apparently, a lot of the cabs I’ve been taking have been illegal. Some guys buy little taxi signs and just put them on top of their cars and pick up people. Now I know not to use any more of these taxis, as one of them even ended up being cuffed in front of us. All in all, 4 cabs were pulled over while we were trying to go out. Eventually, we made it to Mercury, and I was annoyed because there was a line (I haven’t yet had to wait on a line in Cape Town), but it was TOTALLY worth it. Saturday night was one of the most fun nights I’ve had in Cape Town thus far. There were a ton of American kids there, but way more South Africans. The place was super packed, and everyone was really into the music. I spent a while upstairs listening to the dubstep, but then met some friends at the downstairs bar where they were blasting 80’s jams again. All of us were getting SO into it and loving it so we ended up having a great time down there, which was a lot less crowded. Finally, we left, and I really wanted McDonalds, so my cab driver drove us over but unfortunately there were cops surrounding McDonalds, so we couldn’t go. TIA. Finally we got back home around 3 and everyone was still just hanging out and having more and more fun. I eventually started to get a little tired so I lay down on a beach towel in my backyard, chatting with Kayla and Daniel for a while. I got cold, so I went and got my blanket from my bed, and brought it downstairs because we wanted to watch the sunrise. However, I ended up sleeping on the living room couch, and did not make it to the sunset.

Today, after I woke up on the living room couch (which was one of the funniest feelings I’ve had), a bunch of us decided to go down to Muizenberg to lie on the beach. So we suited up and went off to the train station, and it was only along the way that we realized that on weekends trains only come once an hour. The wait for the train was pretty painful; we realized that we would eventually only have about an hour or two at the beach. TIA. But, it was a nice relaxing beach day. After we came back home and had a house meeting we all just decided to stay in and relax. I spent the night in the kitchen, kicking it with my housemates, and realizing how lucky I am that I got assigned such a good group to live with. I literally wouldn’t trade Devonshire for anything. 

I'll Make a Man Out of You

"Tranquil as a forest

But on fire within

Once you find your center

You are sure to win

You're a spineless, pale, pathetic lot

And you haven't got a clue

Somehow I'll make a man out of you!"

I have never been one to really push my physical and adrenal boundaries, preferring my vacations instead to be more relaxing than filled with incredible activities. Instead, this vacation forced me to come face to face at some points with my humanity, and really made me test my limits. What I’ve found is that I can do anything that I want to do, and can push myself to abandon fear and embrace the incredible experiences that I am awarded every day.

 For whatever reason, the UCT schedule actually has built in it a week where students have nothing to do before school starts, so almost all of my program picked up and went on a trek around the Garden Route, the area between Cape Town and Port Elizabeth, known for its spectacular views, beaches, and adventure tourism. I went with 4 friends, Lacey, Daniel, Marina, and Lindsay, and was kind of thrown for a loop when I realized on Friday that we were leaving the next day, not on Sunday. So, Saturday morning we picked up our car and headed off!

Saturday was a pretty normal day. We just made the 4 or so hour drive from Cape Town to Mossel Bay, a beach town that is a normal stopover for travelers on the way to beginning their real trek through the towns of the Garden Route. The car ride was hilarious; I ended up going with a group of people that just wanted to have a great time and didn’t have any real expectations whatsoever, so that made everything a lot easier on all of us. We actually realized that we didn’t have a map, but no one seemed to care, which made our traveling experience all the more entertaining. Luckily, the drive from Cape Town to Mossel Bay literally consists, like most of the Garden Route, of 1 ride, the N2. It was a beautiful drive, but unfortunately that’s where the beauty ended. We had decided to stay at the Santos Express Lodge, which according to our Coast to Coast travel guide had seemed like a good place to go. It was a train on the beach! Turns out, that’s what it actually was: an old train on the beach. Rather than stewing in the hostel all night, we decided to go out to a local bar, but that didn’t turn out much better because Mossel Bay during the offseason is essentially a ghost town. Then we went back to the train hostel, and I had a rough night sleep because it seemed about half the time that the train was going to tip over because of the wind whipping around.

We woke up early the next morning because Lacey, Marina, and I had decided to go sandboarding which is exactly what it sounds like: snowboarding on sand! Our instructor, Leon, picked us up at the hostel and drove us out to the dunes, and even at one point let us ride on the back of the truck along the bumpy route to the dunes. Because I had never been snowboarding before, I was a little apprehensive about the idea of sandboarding, but after my first run I had done a good job and so from then on I had a great time. We did a couple of runs on snowboards down the small dune, and then eventually we progressed to a dune that had a run of 220m (more than 600 feet). This dune is actually the biggest sandboarding dune in South Africa, because during the winter (remember, it’s summer here!) it can reach a length of 320m! For this run, we were on smaller boards and lay on our stomachs for the whole way down. Leon pushed us each down twice, and it was incredible! After about 2 hours of sandboarding, Leon drove the three of us back to Mossel Bay, where we waited for Lindsay and Daniel to come pick us up at the hostel. They had, in the interim, found a bar that had 5rand (approximately 70 cents) shots of sambuca, so we decided to go there for lunch, and somehow I ended up with a pretty good buzz. Unfortunately, this stop set us back a little timewise, as we had about an hour and a half trek ahead of us to Oudtshoorn, which is a town up further north and off N2. We were going there to see the Cango Caves, which in actually it turns out were not worth the whole drive up to Oudtshoorn as they ended up being somewhat disappointing. The best part of that trip, though, was the drive there. The last tour left at 4PM, so we had to make sure that we were there before that to buy tickets. At one point, when in the town of Oudtshoorn, we realized it was around 3:30, and we still had over 30km to go to get to the Caves. What resulted was the fastest high speed chase I’ve ever been in, as a fiendishly drove around the mountains north of Oudtshoorn to make it in time. I still have my ticket to the caves to remember that moment, because bought our tickets at 3:58! After seeing the caves, we drove another hour and a half to Knysna, a really nice beach town. We stayed in a much nicer hostel, and went out to dinner on the waterfront, at a great restaurant. We luckily scored the best seats in the house according to the host, which was cool! Unfortunately, this was right by the Knysna Yacht Club, and our backpacking attire was not necessarily fitting in with the rest of the scene but that was okay. Since we were all wiped, we decided to just go to bed.

Monday morning we woke up and hung out in Knysna for a bit at a cool coffee shop. Here, I learned that “iced coffee” in South Africa really means coffee with an ice cube or two put in it. This means I shall have to say goodbye to getting my Iced Venti Vanilla Lattes for the duration of my stay in South Africa (they actually don’t even have Starbucks here). After staying there, we drove out to the Knysna Elephant Park, for one of the greatest moments of my life. I absolutely LOVE elephants (almost as much as I love lions), and we were able to feed them AND pet them AND take pictures with them AND walk around with them. I definitely had an incredible time with these elephants, and about 75% of my Cape Town photo album thus far is just elephants. They had “ellies” as they call them in this park ranging in ages from 3 years old up to 22, and they were all orphans that were rescued from the wild and brought there to remain alive. Once we left the Elephant Park, we drove on a bit to Plettenberg Bay, our stop for that night. While laying on the beach, I ran into a couple of GW friends from my program, and then actually ran into a bunch of my housemates, who had just come from bungy jumping, and actually managed to convince Lacey to jump with me! After relaxing on the beach for a while, we went back to our hostel, probably my favorite of the ones we stayed in. There happened to be a bunch of Lacey’s housemates staying at the hostel, as well as some cool British people that I spoke to at the hostel bar. Later on that night we went out to a bar to meet some friends. The bar turned out to be about 95% Americans, but it was a great time because we got to see a bunch of our friends who had been out in other places and swap stories. Also, this bar had 7rand shots of what was called “Blue Libido”, a delicious liqueur that has the same alcohol content as a bottle of wine. We went home after that, and went to bed because we were waking up early the next morning.

After a good night sleep, we woke up to a rainy day, which kind of put a damper on our hiking plans for the day. We drove out to the Tsitsikamma National Park so that we could go ziplining, which ended up being pretty fun. One of the lines that we went across was 211m long, which our guide informed us was exactly 5m less than the bungy jump we were going to be doing the next day. However, going across that made me less anxious to jump, because the length didn’t seem that horrible. After ziplining, we decided to go check into our next hostel, the Dijembe Adventure Lodge in Storm’s River Village. There is no correct way to describe just how small Storm’s River Village is except to say that we at one point located the post office/general store/internet café/bookstore combo place. Ironically, there is an Elvis/Marilyn Monroe themed American diner in this small town, where we went for lunch. Apparently, this tiny little town is home to Elvis Festival Africa, a yearly Elvis impersonator festival. Who would’ve ever thought that it would be the tiniest town in South Africa I’ve yet seen that would host such a random event? After eating there, we went back to Dijembe, where they had a braai going. We ate, and hung out the whole night at the hostel. There was a small bar there, but there was also a bartender who was shirtless and walking around roasting marshmallows on a sword and giving them out. But, it was cool to meet a bunch of English, Dutch, and other American travelers who were staying there, and we all had a really fun night together just relaxing.

Wednesday was perhaps the best day of my life thus far. We woke up pretty early, around 8 or so, in order to make sure that we left in time to make it to my bungy jump reservation. If you have the time, be sure to look up the Bloukrans bungy jump. This was, in fact, the world’s highest commercial bungy jump, at 216m (over 600 feet). Who would’ve ever thought that I’d be so intent on bungy jumping, let alone on the world’s highest commercial jump? I was excited from the minute I got there, because you could see people going and the atmosphere was getting more tense. There was also a restaurant/bar where you could watch people’s jumps up close (what would eventually become the DVD that I bought of myself). After a short briefing, the group of Americans (as it turned out, the entire group I was with was American, mainly college students doing SSA) went out to the bridge. The scariest part of the entire jump was the walk out to the bridge, because you walk under the bridge in this kind of rickety cage-walkway that you could see through, and I accidentally looked down and saw just how far I was about to jump. However, once you could out to the jump area on the bridge, you immediately get pumped out hearing all the people who are coming back from their jump raving about how incredible it was. There is also a DJ booth there, and the DJ only plays pump-up jams to get everyone’s adrenaline flowing. So, I waited around. After all of my friends went, they were sent back in the first wave of returnees, and I was still there. I started feeling my adrenaline wane, and was starting to get more and more scared. However, just as it was my turn to bungy, another group came across the bridge, and it actually ended up being filled with my friends, which insantly got me more pumped up. Finally, it was my turn to jump, and I accidentally looked down, and I hear myself in my video screaming “OH MY GOD” before the guides told me to keep my eyes up before a jumped. After 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 BUNGY I put my best rockstar face on and leaped off the bridge. It was the most exhilarating moment of my life. With nothing to hold me up except the wraps around my ankle, I plummeted 216m in about 8 seconds, reaching speeds of close to 120km/hr (about 70mph). The first bungy was incredible, but the first rebound may have been my favorite part. I was actually flung back upright, and got to see from a standing up vantage point the entirety of the valley I was flying through, and it was absolutely beautiful. The cool thing about this bungy place is that your first jump is the highest commercial jump in the world, and your second rebound is equivalent to jumping Victoria Falls. The third rebound, in fact, is equivalent to Niagara Falls. So, I essentially bungy jumped three of the most desired jumps in the world in a couple of seconds! At one point, after I had stopped rebounding so much, I was looking straight down and heard a bird chirp, and it was perhaps the most serene moment I had ever had. It was crazy to have gone from such an adrenaline high the second after I jumped to such a peaceful mood in the span of about a minute, but that’s what happens with a jump of this height and in this serene a setting. However, after being hoisted back up, the adrenaline kicked back in, and I jumped around out of sheer excitement that I had done something so memorable and incredible!

After the jump, we drove back up to Oudtshoorn to go see cheetahs, but it ended up being too much money for too little of a value that we decided instead to just eat ostrich in the town. Oudtshoorn, apparently, used to be one of the biggest centers of ostrich farming in South Africa, so since we all wanted to try some, we stopped at a restaurant and ate ostrich. It was delicious, and is actually the healthiest of all meats (it has 0% fat), so I plan on adding ostrich as a stable in my diet while in South Africa. After leaving Oudtshoorn, we drove the 3 hours back to Swellendam, a strange small town in between Cape Town and Mossel Bay, where we planned to spend the night. However, since the backpackers there wasn’t very nice (it was filled with what Lindsay described as “bed bugs on steroids”), we decided to just grab a bite to eat at a really nice restaurant, and drive back to Cape Town. Driving through the pitch black, up a mountain, on a South African highway was one of the scariest moments of the trip (even scarier than the time we had to drive literally through a cloud on a mountain overpass into Oudtshoorn). But, even though we also ended up a bit lost in Cape Town, we managed to make it back home around 1:30AM.

I cannot have possibly put into words just how thrilling this trip was. To have no itinerary save the single bungy reservation, definitely conflicted with the way I normally like my vacations to be. I also learned really fast how to make new friends, and by the end of this trip the 5 of us literally were describing ourselves as a family. However, today was filled with running errands at UCT, because we start classes tomorrow. Finally, the dream has come to an end, and the reality of “studying” abroad is settling in. I am, however, excited for all the classes I’m taking, so it’ll be great to finally get started with all this!

Upendi

"In Upendi, where the passionfruit grows sweet!

And it's so divine that you lose your mind

As it sweeps you off your feet!"

There is nowhere in the world like Cape Town. I know I can’t say it enough, but this city has every opportunity that a person could want. You can literally spend a day in Cape Town and have every different type of fun that you could want. For example, as you’ll read later on, today (Wednesday, although it’s Thursday at 1:14 AM right now as I’m writing this) I have done everything going to the beach to climbing a mountain.

So, on Sunday night it was my housemate Akeem’s 21^st birthday, so we all decided to have a good night and go out to Long Street. We had planned on going to see a reggae/jazz-type band perform, but by the time we got there the concert was over. However, my friend Alex had already made friends with a South African named China, who ended up being so easy to talk to. He seemed to be about 30 or so, and was a DJ at the bar we were at. I ended up spending at least a half hour just talking to him about anything and everything, which was cool because most places you go the locals hate Americans, and especially hate American tourists. South Africans, however, love Americans and are so willing to talk to us and get to know us, which is great because I planned on meeting many South Africans when I came here and really embracing their culture. Luckily, China invited us back to this same bar on Saturday because his band is playing a selection of Bob Marley songs because Sunday is Bob Marley’s birthday, so I’m very excited to go back on Saturday and hang out with a bunch of South Africans!

Monday ended up being what at the time I considered to be one of my best days thus far. We all woke up kind of early, but ended up leaving much later (as we slowly adjust to African time and the “chill” lifestyle of Cape Town) to go to Muizenberg beach. Muizenberg is considered to be the birthplace of surfing in Africa, and has warmer water than the Atlantic side beaches, so I was very excited to get a chance to go out there. Unfortunately, the weather happened to be working against us, and it was a very windy day. So windy in fact that when I came home I had approximately a quarter inch of sand stuck on my body. After we decided to leave Muizenberg, we walked along the water through St. James and into Kalk Bay, where our RA Remy took us to a local fish and chips spot. Normally, I am not a big fish eater, but the hake and chips that I had at that restaurant has convinced me that I love fish. We also then took the train back home. Apparently, trains in Cape Town are free? Both on the way to the beach and on the way back no one was around to ask anyone for the price of a fare, so we just hopped on and off at our spots. After coming home and hanging out, we all decided to go out to a bar in Claremont called Tin Roof, which seems to be a local hotspot among UCT students. One thing I will say about South African DJs is that they definitely have better taste than DJs back in the states, because they are so good about playing old school music that no one has heard in months but LOVES to hear.

Tuesday was a full morning of UCT orientation, where we learned about the incredibly long and tedious process of class registration. I, unluckily enough, happened to be one of the individuals who was assigned to pre-register for classes on Tuesday, in addition to the confusion of orientation. Suffice it to say, I will never get angry about the GW class registration process again, after knowing what it is like here. In order to register for classes, there is a 3-pronged process. First, you have to do what I did on Tuesday, which is pre-register. Pre-registration consists of bringing a couple of documents to the IAPO office. One would think it would be that simple and it couldn’t be that horrible, right? Instead, pre-registration consists of standing on a 2-hour long line, only to make it up to the final computer stand for someone to take 2 minutes to enter your information into a database. All I can say about that is TIA (which means “this is Africa” if you haven’t seen Blood Diamond and/or aren’t familiar with the K’Naan song, but it is an expression that we’ve all come to use to explain anything that seems very different from the US… I think the hashtag #firstworldproblems would also do many of the situations justice). Having left my house at 1:30 PM to do this, I ended up getting back to Devonshire at 5:30PM.  That, however, seems to be nothing compared to the lines I have to wait on in order to actually register for classes on Friday, nor compared to the amount of time I have to spend walking around to individual departments asking them to “pre-approve” me for courses. TIA! Tuesday night we ended up going back to Long Street and having a couple of drinks there, but I left early with some friends because I was getting really tired. However, once I got back with my friends to another house, I spent 45 minutes waiting for the guardian angel (a car service that brings us at night from house to house (this program totally hooks us up with all the best amenities!) which is similar to a GW 4ride). Again, all I can say is TIA!

Today, Wednesday, was one of the best days I’ve had in Cape Town thus far. Since I had nothing to do, a bunch of my housemates and I decided to head down to the beach. We decided not to take the train this time, because the beach we went to (Clifton 4^th, considered perhaps the best beach in Cape Town) is more accessible by taxi. However, we ended up taking the large minibus taxi service instead of a small car. Suffice it to say, personal space is non-existent in those. At one point, I counted 18 people sitting in one of these, and apparently that’s nothing compared to how packed they usually end up being. In order to get people to come into these cabs, a heckler will sit with his head out the window and yell to people his destination, and sometimes he’ll even get out and request people to come in. Not only did we take one of these, but we actually took two, because the first only brought us into Cape Town, so we needed another to bring us out to the beach. Luckily, it only cost in total 12 rand, the equivalent of perhaps $1.75. We spent most of the afternoon relaxing on the most beautiful beach I’ve ever been to. The wind was nonexistent, and though the sun was beating down on us, it was so easy to just jump into the water and cool off. After a couple of hours on the beach, we decided to leave to go get some “chow”, and ended up eating at a restaurant called Tuscany Beach in Camps Bay, one of the nicest and most wealthy parts of Cape Town. The houses in Camps Bay are what you would picture as the most ideal place to live: gorgeous architecture, large amounts of space, and the best location ever (right across from a beach). This restaurant had outdoor seating which was phenomenal, and perhaps the most apt way to describe the strip of road in Camps Bay where it’s located is that it is very similar to South Beach strips, but infinitely cooler because it’s in Africa. After that some people went back home, but I decided to stay with a few friends and wait to see the sunset. The hike up Lion’s Head (a mountain in Cape Town) was much easier than the hike up Table Mountain, although my friends and I were the only 4 people in “sloppies” (flip-flops), so perhaps next time I climb that I will be wearing better shoes. The reason we climbed this mountain was because we wanted to watch the sun set into the Atlantic Ocean. For anyone who has never seen a sun literally drop into the horizon, you have to do it one day in your life. The sunset off the Lincoln Memorial had been my favorite sunset, but it was blown away a thousandfold by this sunset. The hike down happened to be even easier (because we chose not to go in the direction this time that said “use of chains ahead, use at your own risk”). However, if I thought I had been blown away enough by the visual of the sunset, walking down the path around Lion’s Head and seeing all of Cape Town lit up with lights was only just slightly less thrilling. After having such a long day, I decided to spend the night in, and just hung out with some of my housemates and had a great time relaxing and unwinding on our outdoor patio.

I don’t know if I could ever say enough just how incredibly beautiful Cape Town is. I’ve already had a couple conversations with people where we wonder what we did in a past life to deserve to be so lucky as to come to this incredible city. I don’t think any other city in the world can ever have as many different activities to offer as Cape Town does. For the reason, I certainly plan on taking advantage of all those opportunities. Next week we are going to be traveling the Garden Route, which includes stops at the world’s highest commercial bungee jump, an elephant park, an ostrich farm (where you ride an ostrich and then eat ostrich meet after), and other incredible visuals. On Saturday I might be going skydiving. So, if I can’t update this blog until after I finish all that, suffice it to say that when I return there will be many more epic adventures to document. All of this also has happened/will happen in the first 3 weeks of my stay in Cape Town, so I cannot even imagine what’s in store for the rest of the semester.