Wine festival... cheetahs and owls?

Saturday started out real strong. We all got up early to catch a mini bus into Cape Town to then catch the train to go to Spier, where they were holding their annual harvest festival. So we got to Cape Town with no problem and went to catch the train but soon realized that we had just missed it and the next one wasn’t coming for another hour and a half. Super. So we walked around for a little, went to green market square and bought some cool bracelets and what not then headed back to the train station to hope on! Train ride was uneventful, trains in Africa are sketchy. It’s fine. We finally got to Spier and it was a wine festival but they also had a cheetah outreach and a bird sanctuary. Wine, food,… cheetahs… and birds? It was 60 rand to get into the festival, which is not even $10, and you got a free wine glass and 5 tickets to try 5 different kinds of wines. We got some food and then started indulging in the wines. They were all delicioussss as we suspected. I got a chicken shawarma at one point/ a coffee chocolate bar? We then ventured into the middle of the festival area and we stumbled upon the do it yourself wine aka you shmash the grapes yourself, with your feet. So for only 2 of our tickets we could go into these barrels and smash them. Hysterical. Kara and I went into one as seen below…

And then Mack and Sarah went in the one next to us. You legit stomp them out with your feet and then they open up the little spout coming out of the barrel and someone gathers some in a wine glass for you, not kidding. I couldn’t bring myself to trying the wine that people had been stomping their feet through all day. Sarah on the other hand took the plunge and tried some of the wine. She said it was delishhh. Still I couldn’t do it. The feeling of your feet smashing the grapes was disgusting enough. Kaka. So then we moved to the cheetah outreach I saw one of the cheetahs and then decided to go see the owls instead. They were SO cute omg. We got to pet the baby owls! One was named woody and the other was coco. Then onto the NEXT owl station there were 3 barn owls that were dancing to the music! The head owl man was playing some main stream song on his phone next to the owls and they were bobbing up and down to the beat. 

 Here's woody he was veryyyyyyy sleepy

 There are the barn owls that were jammin to the beats

And here is my friend piggy and his friend that i cant seem to remember their names, they were cool. Note the eyes... weird

Owls are awesome. So then the  keeper of all owls lead us into the owl sanctuary where there were 4 owls perched up on all the trees and logs. He told us to put gloves on and they owls would just come to your hand. They weren’t kidding. The second I put the glove on and flipped my hand over Piggy came flying over and landed onto my hand. We stayed friends for about 15 minutes he didn’t want to get down. I asked the guy if I could have an owl for a pet. He very politely told me there was no way in hell I could EVER have an owl as a pet. L. Sad. The rest of the birds were cool too but they were just chillin in the cage, random. There was one tortoise in the one of the birds cage, he was cool. We decided that we should probably leave because we didn’t want to miss the last train going to cape town. So we said our last good byes to woody and coco who were verrryyyy sleepy at this point, but they did wake up to say their goodbyes. We get to the train station and a train comes within about 10 minutes of us getting there yet the train wasn’t supposed to be there for another 15 minutes and it was going in the wrong direction. Umm? I decided ti ask the lady getting on the train and she said that the train will be coming back in an hour. Ummmm????? An hour, okay we figure whatever, we will go get some munchies at a gas station that was right across the railroad tracks. Once we figure out how to get over there we quickly found out that it was closed, mind you this is like 5:30 pm. Who is closed at that time on a Saturday?? Fail. Back to the platform. Sarah, Mack, and Elise picked some grapes off of the grape vines that were behind the train stop, they were good. And then all of a sudden we heard the train coming. Thank God. The train is starting to stop at the station we are at and we realize that 1^st class are the first cars of the train not the last. Great. We start walking very briskly to get to 1^st class before the train left. That brisk walk turn into a full out run. I finally made it to the first 1^st class doors and as soon as I went to step in the doors closed. Totally sealed and shut. I was trying to pry the door open with my hands and it wasn’t having any of it. Two seconds the train started moving away from the platform. We missed the train we had been waiting an hour and a half for. You have GOT to be kidding me. All of a sudden as the 3^rd class trains were moving by this very large purple object came flying through the sky and hit Sarah straight in the forehead. Obviously I was VERY confused about this situation and looked down to see what it was that had been thrown at her. A plum. Someone threw a plum at Sarah’s head. This is not real. We just missed the train that we had been waiting for and Sarah got hit in the head with a plum and there were no more trains going to Cape Town. Not to mention we were in NOWHERESville South Africa. Oh My God, literally. I thought that was the end of us. 

 note. middle of NOWHERE.

 We end up calling the director of our program to try to figure out what we were going to do now. He texted me a number to call to get a ride. Lenny it was. He told us it would be around 350 rand, which wasn’t too bad considering we were like a half our outside of Cape Town. Great. We decided to go back to Spier because it was the only safe place within miles. We sat at the restaurant at Spier called Moyo which was cool until about a half hour went by and I got a text from Lenny saying he had messed up the numbers and it would actually be 80 rand per person. This was now going to be 480 rand, such a rip off. Not to mention the fact that Lenny told me he was leaving right after we hung up the phone. Guess that didn’t happen. So once again great, it’s about 715 by this time so our only choice is to call the cab company. They said it was going to be 450 rand which is a lot but whatever we had no other choice. Then the decided to mention right as the phone call was ending that they wouldn’t be there for an hour. This day was getting worse and worse as the seconds passed. Sarah, Elise, and I decided to go to the hotel and see if they could call us a cab or something of that nature. After about a 15 minute walk we found the hotel and asked the lady about the cab nonsense. The only option they had for us was to drive us with their personal driver for 490 rand. No thanks. Time was moving extraaaa slow until about 815 when the cab driver FINALLY called me to tell me he was at the welcome center. The best words I have ever heard in my whole life. Of course we didn’t have enough money to pay for the cab so we had to make it wait while we ran into the seven eleven to get more money out. What a major fail of a day Mr. Delivery delivered me some delicious pad thai and apps that Mack and I split about an hour and a half after we got home. Basically it took forever, so typical of this day. The food was very good though and well worth the wait. Thank god this day finally came to an end. Oh and I forgot to add than when I was getting money out guess who I look over to see waving at me? ….. The waiter I had on Thursday night that told me “if I think it is morally right to take the food and not pay then I should do it”. This was not real life I kept thinking. He of course the proceeded to ask me how my pad thai was and if it was actually worth it. FML worst/best day ever.

Souper Sandwich

Friday! Best day of the week

 Classes on Friday are brutal; I don’t know why the even exist. The people who even bother going to class on Friday are the people who just want to get the credit for being in class. They don’t pay attention, they hate the kids who try to have actual conversations with the teacher about the readings they didn’t do, and usually at some point end up dozing off to the point where they have no idea what is going on by the time the class is over. Take my religion class for example. The teacher with the thick Arab accent and the stutter, he decided to discuss Libya on Friday. Well first off I have no access to any news reports so the little info I have about the conflicts going on there have nothing to do with some Marxist theory that SOMEHOW who the hell knows how relates back to the conflicts. Right. So this one kid and him were arguing the entire class about something, I couldn’t understand either of them and it ended up making the class go longer than it should have. Seriously? It’s Friday I’m just trying to get out of that class and get some souper sandwich obviously. We decided that on every Friday we are going to get souper sandwich (get it??) and this Friday was the second annual? Not the right word? Meeting of the delicious mouth-watering souper sandwich establishment. YUM so good as usual. After I inhaled the sandwich we finished planning our spring break trip. Soooo exciting!! We decided that we are going to start our adventure in Zambia where we are going to stay at the adventure village in a tent on a slab which is right on the Zambezi river. Then we are going to do a day is Botswana and do the Chobe game drive and head over to Zimbabwe for a little Victoria Falls action (one of the 10 wonders of the world) and stay the night in Zimbabwe and head back to Zambia for an elephant back safari and end the night with a sunset cruise down the Zambezi river. Legit.  So it had been a successful day so far. The gym was so hot and smelled so bad that we had to end the session early, very typical of THE ZONE. Rearranged my room, looks much better now, I didn’t even realize that my window was twice the size that I thought it was.

SHAWCO

Wendnesday:

Nothing eventful happened on Wednesday. Wednesday is such a stupid day. First off it is hump day and the Arcadia class meets on Wednesdays. Such a miserable experience. The class is all about African history. I hate history. I just want someone to sum up the 400 years in a half hour not every Wednesday for 2 and a half hours. Brutal. Oh wait something eventful did happen. When Sarah and I went to go to the store to buy candies, normal, these 2 Asian ladies came up to the gate and were saying something about how they had a message from the holy mother that they HAD to tell me about. SO they were very persistent and started to take the bible out of their bag and were asking me all about god and the holy mother and by this point I am literally walking out of the gate, Sarah retreated for the house and no one else would come out and help me. It was just met and the Asian god lovers. This was getting dangerous. I was trying to think quickly of what I could tell them that would get them away from me so I could just go get my candies in peace. I decided to tell them that I don’t believe in the bible or god so they needed to stop talking to me. As soon as I said this they were like OHHHH and just stood there starring at me. Awkward. They apologized and I walked away. About 5 feet away from them I literally just burst out laughing, as did Sarah, also normal. It was one of those situations where you don’t realize how ridiculous it is during it but as soon as it is done you think about it and cannot handle what happened. I need to learn how to control myself.

Thursday:

Such a great day. Condom group met at 9 which was kind of lame because I didn’t have class until 11 so I had to trek my butt up to campus wayyy to early for a Thursday. This was my first day of my volunteering project SHAWCO. I picked to do a program called Mazizame, where we go to a children’s home in the township and tutor them in, well I’m going to be tutoring in math and science and “life orientation”. When we got to the Home all the kids were running up to the bus. SO CUTE. Omg. All of us walked out of the bus and there were like 15 of them hugging everyone as soon as you stepped foot onto the ground. One girl grabbed my hand so I guess she was my buddy for the day. I couldn’t pronounce her name so I’m not even going to try to type it here, she was adorable. We first started out with a huge circle playing all these games where the kids went into the middle and danced to a little jingle that I couldn’t even tell you what the words were, and then we broke unto smaller groups and tried to play organized games which ended REAL fast. Basically after that it was a just a free for all, the kids were jumping all over us and running around and dancing to this one girl who was playing some CRAZY bongos. I asked her to teach me her ways. Right after that 3 of the kids came up to me and asked me if 1 of the girls could be my chicken baby. Naturally I was vuuuuuryyy confused by this statement. So I asked them to explain what this chicken baby was. All I could get out of it was that I was going to be her chicken mother and that she wanted to get on my back so I could spin her around. Should I bring feathers next time? I’m still confused. When we went to leave none of the kids wanted us to leave they were hanging on us and hugging us it was so sad L.  But there is always next week.

For dinner we decided to go to this place called Taste of Asia. The guys in the other house said it was really good so we took their word for it and went. Our food started coming out and it was all cool. But then the entrees started coming out like one by one by one until everyone had their food and had been eating it and mine wasn’t out yet. I went to go talk to the people about it and I ran into the owner who was extremely Asian like hardly even spoke English so she went to get the waiter that we had. I some how ended up in the kitchen of this restaurant and there were some HUGE African ladies in there speaking Xhosa I’m pretty sure. All of a sudden around the corner comes the husband of the lady and he was pushing a baby stroller around the restaurant and at this point into the kitchen. I had to get out so I retreated back to the table and they said they would bring it out. The waiter came back and was like
“soo they screwed up your order and made the basil chicken not the chicken Pad Thai, do you just want that for take away for free” so I was just like whatever yeah that’s fine. He left and another 15-20 minutes went by and nothing had come out so we buzzed him back in and he just goes “what’s up”. Mind you at this point everyone is done eating and ready for the bill so I described to him how I never got my food and he was like oh yeah well they actually didn’t screw it up they just confused you with another table and the Pad Thai is coming out right now. TIA. So I got the Pad Thai take away and we got the bill and it was on there. He said it was going to be free so when he came back in we were describing this to him and he goes “well if you are walking out of the restaurant with the food I would prefer if you pay for it.” AWKWARD so I went onto to say how he said the other one was going to be free and he was like yeah I was confused I didn’t mean to say that. Like WHAT!? So in the end he goes “if you think it is morally right not to pay for your meal then don’t pay for it”. Could this guy make it anymore awkward? In the end I just walked out with my food and didn’t pay. I don’t think I can ever go back there.

Sushi Tuesdays

Tuesday:

SO Tuesday was the first day of my African Instruments class! WEEEE! So much fun omg. The period before the class is when my “studio” meets. Studio is a class with about 8 people in it and we all sit in a circle and hit bong drums for 45 minutes. SO LEGIT. We were having “drum communication” during our session. Dizu is my teacher and he’s so great. We have to do a bro handshake with him, which means, “hi how are you”… in a nutshell. So I learned how to do all the different hits in the bongo and learned how to hold it properly. I’m going to become a PRO-FESH-INAL. Watch out. So then after studio the actual class met which is called ensemble. During this period the whole class meets which is about 40 students. This class we all stood in a circle and learned a Xhosa song and an African dance to the song. I soon came to the conclusion that Dizu can shake his hips WAY better than I ever will be able to. SO we basically were chanting and dancing around in a circle banging our feet on the floor for 45 minutes. So great, I can’t wait to have that class every week.

Tuesdays have become our weekly sushi nights. My one roommate Kara and I go every Tuesday. So there were about 6 of us that went this week. To sum it up, it’s half price sushi from Monday-Thursday from 5PM on… Heaven? I got 3 plates of sushi and a glass of wine for $10. That is NOT real like actually. I don’t know what I’m going to do when I get back to the states and that meal would have been about $40. Not excited about that. Sushi is usually ended with Marcel’s, the DELICIOUS soft/hard frozen yogurt place in the town next to us. This week I decided to indulge in English toffee and chocolate twist. To die for. 

Oh and forgot to add that for my sex class we have to do a group presentation, I picked the group that was doing condoms. naturally.

IKEYYYYYYY tigers..?

Monday:

First Rugby game!!! But first let me go into my day at school. WELLL my Mondays start out with my 9am sex class, always a great time for all. This class we all split up into groups and we were talking about euphemisms within different cultures based around words like sex, death, weight, and different names for “sexual body parts”. Right. So my group had 2 Americans in it and the rest were either Xhosa or Zulu except for this one random old woman who is in our class. The discussion started out well until they asked me what other words we used in America for the topics we were presenting. I started out with how some people say DID YOU GET IT IN LAST NIGHT BRO!? Aka did you tap that/get laid/ have sex. The lady couldn’t handle it she started dying laughing and then made weird comments to the Xhosa boy behind me. Basically it got awkward REAL fast. The next epic event was when she was like "I just heard that Americans call vagina VAJAYJAY" and just started dying laughing. Fml. We had to present these words to the whole class, once again I looked like a stupid dirty minded American. Typical. After that I was supposed to have my intro to sociology tutorial. I went to the classroom it was in and there were about 10 students there so we all were waiting in the room, 5 min, 10min, 15min, 25 minutes later no teacher had showed up. So I got the hell outta there and went down to ask the people at the desk why our teacher wasn’t there and she looked at me like a total idiot and said “tutorials don’t start until next week, it’s on Vula you should have looked…" okay #1 it is NOT on Vula anywhere I searched the hell out of that thing, so no it’s not lady thanks. You are probably wondering what Vula is, it’s basically a ghetto version of blackboard in which sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. It basically has a mind of it’s own. TIA

But thennnnn that night all the children in my house and I went to the first home rugby game!  I was so excited, Rugby is HUGE here and it’s such a big deal when the IKey tigers play.

 

Yeah that is what we are. It stems from some Jewish thing that I cannot remember the story to. Typical. So we got to the game and the only seats left were SO far away from the field but we didn’t want to stand so we sat there. Soon I realized that I had NO idea what the hell was going on in the game/ the guys playing looked the size of my pinky finger. Not fun.  What I got out of the game is that one guy passes the ball and then all of a sudden he is tackled and then the ball comes lose and they chase after it. I think I need to learn the game before I got to another.

Mizoli's

This weekend was full of early starts, today at 9 my roommate Sarah and I had SHAWCO training because we didn’t go to the one we hd signed up for on Friday, oops. SHAWCO is one of the main volunteer organizations here that most of the study abroad students/ UCT students in general participate in. They have a medical sector, which you have to be a 5^th or 6^th year medicine student to do L, denied haha, but they also had an education sector in which you go into the townships and teach kids a range of different things from normal school classes to life skills to teach kids how to play a sport. I signed up to teach middle school aged kids math and science and life skills. The program I’m doing is called Mazizame, which goes into 2 different Childrens’ homes in the same township.

The training was basically just a bunch of different icebreakers so we could get to know the people we are going to be working with and some free juice at the end that was in a triangular shaped container? Hmmm. One of the girls in our group, her name was so difficult to pronounce so she told us to just call her flower. I was thinking about making mine really hard to pronounce so I could tell people to call me BBD. Good idea?

Right as we got home this guy named Pappi, like pappi land.. drawing? Childhood TV? Anyone, anyone? Well anyways he picked us up and drove us out to a township that has this fantastic meat place that people go to on the weekends to eat called Mizoli’s. It was insane. We got there and got in line to order our food. All they have to eat there is meat and bread. So you walk into this little place and there is this huge display cooler of 3 meats, lamb, sausage, and chicken. Very interesting. So you literally point to the cuts of meats you want and how many you want of which kinds and they throw it all into a huge metal pan and then you pay by the pound for the meat. Once you have paid you bring the tray with the raw meat in it to the back where they have these huge grills that cook all the meat. Each person has a number so you keep coming back and checking if your meat is done or not like every 20 minutes. Once we ordered the meat we walked down the road into this random family’s house to buy beer out of their fridge. There was no sign on the house or anything telling you they had things for sale you just had to know that they were selling it, thank goodness for Pappi. So everyone got their drinks and we set out to find a table. This place by 1130 was SO packed there were no tables left so all 12 of us sat around a little wooden table waiting for our meat to be done. After about an hour Pappi came back out with the metal tray filled to the top with meat YUM. There were no forks, no knives, and no plates. So six of us just dug in with our hands into the bin of meat. It was so primitive; we were literally pulling meat apart with our teeth and ripping it in all directions. Juice was flying everywhere, so much fun.  We also got some bread and this stuff called pop (spelling not so sure on that). Pop is kind of like grits but a little thicker and they are usually topped with this stuff that is kind of like salsa. By the end we all had the sauce all over our face and hands, one girl even had it on her arms. So funny. After we were all in food comas we walked around a little, there were a few stands right outside the place where we were eating that were selling cool glasses and tee-shirts, silly little things like that.

Here's Pappi holding our delicious raw meat before it was cooked on...

This cooooooool hot grill!

We all decided to leave after about a half hour of eating, just as we were pulling out of the main area a car was driving towards us trying to move around the 100s of semester at sea kids that are docked in Cape Town for the next few days and he hit one of the girls. Not kidding. She was walking forward and the car hit her from behind, she fell down hit her head and then he ran over her leg. He didn’t realize that he had run her over and stopped the car right on top of her leg. OMG. Finally he pulled away and got out of the car to go see if she was okay. By this time people had picked her up and moved her off to the side and into one of the people who live in the townships front yard. The guy causes a huge traffic jam so once he got back out her asked him how she was and he said that she could kind of move her toes but they had to bring her to the hospital. All of us were literally traumatized. I couldn’t believe that we had just witnessed a girl being hit by a car. Never again do I ever want to see that. Not to mention this girl was only here for like 5 days, she was in a township, and got ran over by a native African man. Holy hell.

So needless to say that kind of put a damper on our day. We got home after that and went to coco wawa, the free internet café and I attempted to upload pictures on facebook, big fail. So we got some groceries and headed home. Naturally, it being Sunday it is family dinner so we are all waiting for dinner to be done, baked ziti and salad, yummy. Don’t want to go to class tomorrow, boooooooring.

First hike of table mountain

My first hike on Table Mountain. Oh em gee. Well, if you don’t know what table mountain is look it up, it’s cool. This was one of the Arcadia planned trips in which they pay for everything involved. Thumbs up on those. So we embarked on our journey at 9am, so early. Our plan was to take the cable car up the mountain and then have a leisurely 3 hour hike down in which we would pass cool waterfalls and awesome flower patches. Yeahhh…. Didn’t really go as planned. Here is what really happened.

The cable car was fabulous, really cool to be in because the outside rotated so you could always see out to see the beaaauuuuutiful view which was chill. Once we got the top there were a bunch of different paths you could take around the top to see off the different sides and take it all in. There was also a café and gift shop at the top. We all decided we should probably go to the bathroom before we hiked down so we went to use them and they were just like airplane bathrooms but at the top of a mountain. I was so confused/I hate airplane bathrooms, almost phobic actually. So that was a scarring experience. We walked around the top for about an hour and then started our descent down to the bottom, or so we thought. We seemed to be going the right way, for about an hour and then we realized that we hadn’t really gone down at all yet. In fact we were actually climbing up. Right. So we got to this point called Maclears Beacon, had no idea what that even meant. As we are all taking pictures of it and what not they told us it was the highest point on Table Mountain. Highest point? Right so we hadn’t begun our descent at all. 

Here is the highest point of Table Mountain, a lot less exciting than expected.

 Here's a pic of my attractive self at the top of the  mountain. You can see the clouds in the background, they are ALWAYS hanging over the mountain. Becuase they are always there they have obtained the name of the tablecloth. Weirdly enough they are always moving and bellowing over the mountain but you cant tell from far away that they are even moving. weird.

So we turned around and started back tracking but realized it was just bringing us back to the cable car. At this point people were nottttttt too happy about the situation so half of the group decided to take the cable car back down and half of the group including me decided to keep hiking down. We turned around and some how ended up off the beaten path where there were zero yellow footprints (these are what tell you that you are actually on a path) and it was SO cloudy/ foggy at the top that we couldn’t see anything around us. Sweet. Somehow after about 10 minutes of trying to get Google maps to work we found some yellow footprints and continued on our way. We got to the edge and realized that we had gone in a big circle and were going in the opposite direction of the leisurely hike they told us we would be going on. Once again, sweet. So they figured out how we were going to get down but didn’t tell us anything about it. We ended up in this gorge that was about an hour and a half hike down that was literally completely vertical. There were people crying off to the sides and falling down, not real life. I ended up leading the group and was going as fast as possible so we could just get to the bottom because we had been hiking FOREVER. After five and a half hours we FINALLY made it to the bottom and none of us could walk we were so tired. Not cool.

Since we didn’t think we would be gone for that long none of us packed any type of food or snacks of any sort so by the time we got to the bottom we were all starving.  Our program advisor took us out for the best burgers EVER in my life afterwards at this place called Hudsons in the city of Cape Town which was a fannnntastic end to a far from successful hike. We finally got home at 5pm and were all pooped, so the evening included a 7 11 trip which turned into 3 as the night went on and love actually. Early and lackadaisical night round 2.

First week of classes

First week of classes ovaaaaa! Thank god, finally have some type of a schedule in my life but like not really. Anyways, classes were stupid. My first class of the week was Sex, Love, and Taboo. This was the one that I wasn’t signed up for because they typed in the wrong numbers so of course their were tutorial sign-ups and I wasn’t signed up/ I don’t even know if I am still signed up. That class is cool though which is puuuuuurfect. The teacher is really silly/ loves her job, which is always a good thing. Most of the class we just talk about Xhosa (the click language) and compare it to English and how it is missing so many words we have and now words are very taboo in that language compared to English. On the other hand I’m taking a religion class in which I couldn’t pronounce the teachers name even if you paid me a million dollars. He is very very Arab as in has a very thick accent and has a stutter. Is that even possible? Try to imagine that. Do it. So that class is boring and it takes attendance which is whack, all we do is talk bout Karl Marx and some other people who I forget their names and then write 3 papers eventually throughout the semester. That class also meets 4 days a week, which is also whack. So those are my Monday Wednesday Fridays.

Now on Tuesday we add in my African instruments class and my Into to sociology class. African instruments, best. class. ever. I was originally signed up for African Music 1 and went to the first class realized that most of the people in my class were music majors and there was singing involved at some point. No Thank You. I cannot sing to save my life, I literally would probably kill someone with the horrid sound that would come out of my mouth. So needless to say I switched out of that real fast into my instrument class.  I had to meet the teacher after I had switched my classes because they had already made their ensemble groups. Try to find him was a joke, I found myself lost on the music campus with all these people singing and playing instruments around me. I didn’t know what to do/ the building I kept asking people about called Stables somehow no one had EVER heard of it. Fanfreakingtastic. Not to mention I was looking for this guy named Dizu. What? I ended up finding it and meeting the teacher who was SO COOL. First off he referred to me as sista and there were about 60 bongo drums in his office and that was it. Definitely the class I was trying to be in. So can’t wait to have that on Tuesday.  Onto sociology, I’m the only foreign exchange student in it/ the only person who is not a first year. Awkward. So the professor looks like someone who would be in Tarzan and is always bobbing up and down when he is talking, also awkward. This class is also boring; the first day the class was convinced that the U.S. started affirmative action because of the Jews. Is that a joke? I don’t know where these people get their information from. Wednesday and Thursday class went a little differently. It started out smooth once again talking about Affirmative Action but it soon started into this uprising of the Blacks and the Whites. The black students in the front were talking about they were less privileged than the whites and all of a sudden the white students from the back of the class chimed in and it was all over after that. People were clapping and yelling and hollering to the point where the teacher was trying to calm the 700 person class down and nothing was working. I needed to get out of there. Class ended and all was well, that was until Thursday when the first thing happened. What is happening in my life? This is quite the different experience from class at UVM, to say the least haha. I’d say the only similarity is the fact that most people don’t wear shoes here either.

That about sums up the beginning of the week, Thursday and Friday were nothing special besides the fact that I had some crazy stomach issue Thursday-Friday in which I was let’s just say I was stuck in the fetal position all day in my bed until my roommates dragged me out and made me go to the beach. Since the water at the beach is so cold it basically numbs your body it made me feel a little better and about after two hours at the beach I was feeling much better. Very strange couple days. We ended up staying on beach until around dinner time, when we walked to Camp’s Bay and grabbed some food at Cal Cacchio (spelling?) which is this really good flat bread pizza place. There we ate dinner and watched the sunset which was absolutely amazing as usual. We all planned on watching a movie and staying in butt the movie never happened and we all ended up passing out early. Sleeeeeeeeepy

 Here's a picture of the sunset from the window of the pizza place in Camp's Bay. Niceeeeeeeee

Abseiling Africa

So friday it was our first day of classes, or it was supposed to be. There two programs that uct uses on the computer that shows you which classes you are signed up for. One of them just tells you you are in the class and the other is sort of like blackboard. Well the blackboard one is the one that tells you where yours classes are and where they meet. When I went to look at this great website, Vula, is the name of it only 3 of my classes were posted and none of them said where they were or when they were meeting. HMMM So I missed my first 2 classes and ended up making it to my 3rd one BUT the professor did not even show up. FABULOUS. So basically I walked up to campus all sweaty and gross for no reason. Thank You UCT. We went to Poncho's for dinner which is this really good mexican restaurant. Everyone in there had a mullet including our waiter. These mullets seem to be quite the fashion statement down here. I don't really understand it.

Saturday was an adventure and a half. The day started at approximately 5:30am when my lovely alarm sounded. Showered and got ready to leave the house at 6:30am to grab a taxi to go into Cape Town.  So then at approximately 6:50am after the taxi driver went the wrong way about 3 times we arrived at Abseil Africa. Success. All of us walked in not realizing what we were getting ourselves into. We were told that this company was going to provide us with transportation, breakfast, lunch, dinner and a fun filled day of cliff jumping and abseiling. Cliff jumping, whatever been there done that abseiling on the other hand not so much. So they told us it was just repelling off the side of a moutain next to this waterfall, sounded pretty legit so we were all excited. After an hour of driving to Gordons bay we ended up at this little bungalo type place to eat breakfast, and then set on our journey into the Gorge. After about a 2 hour hike into the Gorge we had lost about 4 people out of the group but we had hit the pool where people were cliff jumping. 7 meters doesn't seem that high when you are just thinking about it but it is when you are on the edge of it. We started off hiking again, where all of a sudden it turned from hiking to mountain climbing. One step the wrong way and you were falling off the mountain.

Here is the picture of the view at one point. Literally if you looked down the edge of the moutain was right there. Once we all successfully made it to the top there was a huge pool with a waterfall. We ate lunch here and went for a swim before Abseiling. 

 Right to the right of this precarious rock structure is where we abseiled off of. It got so much steeper when you went around to the other side.

 Here is the pool that we came to on top of the Gorge where we ate lunch.

You had to balance yourself on the side of the moutain and you let yourself down on your own with your own rope into a waterfall and then down into another pool below it was unbelievable. The view when I was just hanging there when I spun around was amazing. After a 2 hour hike back and a man from Germany almost sliding down the moutain we were finally back to the little bungalo they served us boeri rolls which are sausage/hot dog type things that are so good. They are one of the foods many people eat in S.A.

Sunday my housemates and I all went school supplies shopping, mind you they do not sell five star notebooks or anything like that. First off their paper is much longer than ours and the notebooks are little like sketch books with lines, they are so weird and I don't know how I feel about them. Not to mention they are all the same color so how do they know what class it is?? Another peculiar situation. After that we all made family dinner, homemade pizza's. It was pretty good until about an hour later when we all felt so sick and had no idea why. Stupid Pizza's

Kalk Bay

Thursday 3 of my roommates and I went to Kalk Bay which is about 30 minutes away. The whole town is on the water and it’s where everyone surfs and has the biggest shark population. When I become a pro surfer from the surf club I’m going to be ripping up those waves, WATCH OUT! Hopefully I wont get eaten by a shark. We were talking about how if we got attacked by a shark and one of your limbs came off that we would just want to be thrown back into the water haha. We are sick people. But anyways back to Kalk bay it was such a cute town, we ate on the water at this little shack type place and I had the best chicken sandwich of my life wow. The food here is so good, I can’t stop eating. The shops in Muzenburg were all really really cute, they had a bunch of hippieish type stuff and a lot of really cute vintage clothing and jewelry. They also had these natural tide pools, which were really nice. To get to Kalk Bay we had to take the train, sketch city. This is what I was talking about earlier about 1^st class and 3^rd class. There are definitely some characters on the train. There were guys like going from car to car selling food and drinks and weird things. And then there was this guy who had a key board and he was blind so some other guy was dragging him from car to car while he was playing the key board that was hanging around his neck. It sounded really good and then I realized when he went to get off of the train and it was one of those keyboards where you set the music at the beginning and it gives you a background beat, riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Like where am I???

 Here is a picture of the place that we ate lunch and the tide pools that were surrounding it, pretty nice if i do say so myself.

 It’s so weird that everyone smokes here/ they can smoke wherever they want. Every time we go to dinner or anywhere there are always people smoking, yucky. Don't they know about this cancer thing?? So rude. Also it has been SO hot omg it's been over 100 for like 3 days. So basically it's a bunch of ciggy smoking sweaty people, kaka.

I found a place called marcels that sells soft serve frozen yogurt, success. I will be spending most of my time there.

Laundry Lady

Campus has been nuts the past few days. All of the Societies aka clubs have been promoting themselves on upper campus and it has basically been a crazy festival this whole week. I signed up for the surf club haha joke.  Also signed up for the Tennis social club, meaning you play tennis but you have to have a drink in your other hand the entire time while playing. Sounds like a fantastic time to me. It’s been over 100 here for the past 2 days. I literally just sweat all day and all night. GROSS. Showers up the wall. I did laundry for the fist time yesterday. They don’t have dryers here so you have to air dry everything but there also isn’t a clothes line, sooo basically it gets interesting when you have to dry them. I’m definitely just going to start dropping my clothes off at the laundry lady. She washes dries and irons your clothes for like $5 a load. I’m thinking yes?

Arcadia has a class that we all have to take in which our program director teaches it. It’s all about the languages spoken in Africa and African history. We learned how to speak Afrikaans, and Xhosa (aka click language) yesterday. Never in my life would I actually use them way to complicated. I found this place on campus called super sandwhich, honestly the best sandwhich I have ever had. Thai chicken with humus yum. Plus it was only 22R which is a little over $3, can’t go wrong with that!

Sharkbaiiiiiit

So Tuesday was pretty crazy. We were picked up at 630am, the earliest I have been up in about 5 years and taken about 2 hours away from Cape Town to go shark diving! When we got to the little fisherman shanty of a place we were given breakfast. NOM NOM NOM it was delish. There were 12 of us Arcadia folk and 27 people total who came on the boat with us to go diving.  Looking around inside the place there were pictures of sharks everywhere, to be expected and they were all about to eat everything in sight with their crazy teeth. This was when I thought what the hell am I doing. We got the debriefing about not to stick your limbs out of cage, you will get them bit off, a little background on the great white shark etc. etc. Once on the boat we took about a 20-minute ride out to an island that inhabits over 60,000 seals! I guess that’s where the sharks like to hang out. As we were driving up to the island there were 2 other boats parked, or anchored rather and there were sharks circling the boat. So we anchored and the first group got suited up in their wet suits and hopped in the cage. As you can see the cage fit 8 people and you would just take a huge breath in and then stay under for as long as you could when they told you to go down. They had this huge tuna head they would throw in and out of the water along with this foam thing that looked like a seal to attract the great whites. They also used this stuff called chum, which ew who know what that was. It smelled like ass is all I know. So literally though the sharks were bumping into the cage and rubbing up against it and everything. One touched one of the girls I live with. It was the craziest thing ever. They said that they have never had a death for the 15 years they had been running the shark diving establishment. I find that incredibly hard to believe. The first time I got into the cage the woman next to me started hyperventilating. Seriously?? I’m in this cage in the ocean with great whites circling around me and this older woman is about to drown. What does someone do in that situation?! The guy on the other side of her was just starring at her like he didn’t really know what was going on/ didn’t want to help her. So there I was trying to calm this 50-year-old woman down in this cage that was about 3 feet wide. Fanfreakingtastic. Luckily my calm words and smooth voice soothed her out of her panic and back into life. Success. So if any of you are ever about to hyperventilate in a shark cage let me know, I’ll be of great help.

 Here is the cage that 8 of us would go into at a time and that is the bait they would throw to attack the sharks. Note that shark legit came up and hit the cage. It's teeth were unreal.

 Here is Seal island where there are 60,000 seals. They were so stinky. There were also a couple of penguins chillin on the island. They were probably thinking wtf how did I get here and why a doesn't anyone look like me?

Seals are hilarious. If anyone hasn’t seen them in real life watch YouTube videos of them. I want to be a seal/ live amongst the seals in Africa.

We got back to the house around 5 and got ready to go out to dinner for one of the guys on my trip, Adam’s birthday. We went to this place called Cubana which I have been to before and it was delish but this time we went with 15 people and they only got 4 orders right out of all 15. 4 orders?! That had to be a joke. So we made a scene again, stupid Americans and they gave us free shots which I am convinced they were juice shots and took 200R off our bill, that’s like not even $30 hahaha. Typical.

suppppppper bowl

Tikka Chicken

The internet here I swear is not real, it doesn’t even work half of the time. Today is the first day it has been working in 3 days.

 This weekend was fabuloussss let’s get a little recap here

Saturday:

A day full of adventures! Our program has these random trips planned throughout the semester and so Saturday’s trip was out to Robben Island. This was where they kept all of the political prisoners during the apartheid such as Nelson Mandela.  It was pretty sick, but so insane. There was this one man who was kept there who wasn’t allowed to speak to anyone the whole time he was there so his vocal chords were permanently damaged. The tour guide we had was a former prisoner which made the tour that much more interesting. It’s so insane that this only happened like not even 20 years ago. I was 4 when this was going on, I cant even imagine living in a world such as these people did. Because of that though there is DEFINITELY still tension between the two races such as the 3^rd and 1^st class on the train. The train station sells white people 1^st class always but usually will allow black people to only ride in 3^rd class. It’s very strange. So that was an experience.

 Here is Nelson Mandela's cell that he was kept in for either 18 or 27 years I didn't really understand which one it was.

 These are the cards that people of color had to hold during the apartheid. They had to have this card on them at all times because they would be randomly asked by different people to present their card. If they did not have it on them there were SERIOUS consequences usually involving some type of imprisonment or torture.

 This is the rock pile that was formed when all of the prisoners came back to the island a year after the apartheid for a reuinion. They all grabbed a rock from the ground and added it to the pile, the pile has not been touched since. In the distance you can see a little hole in the limestone. This was where the prisoners would go for a break when they were working out in the field all day. They were given very few breaks and they were very short. They also went to the bathroom in there and it was one of the only places they were allowed to all be together.

Sunday:

SUPERBOWLLLLLLL

So Sunday 3 of the people I live with and I went down to the waterfront and walked around looking at cool African stuff and stuff cool. We also ate down there, which was so nice. The place we ate was in a music shop, also strange. We ended up getting  a little lost but eventually found our way back to the mini bus station. Okay. Mini buses. DANGER. They are there GHETTO vans which seat like 14 people but they usually squeeze about 20 into each and they go from cape town to wynburg which is like 4 towns away. They only run on the main road and each one has a driver and a partner which hangs out the window trying to make you get into their mini bus. They legit drive about 40mph above the speed limit and cause accidents every day. They don’t stop at red lights or for other cars or anything. One would ask why the hell would I ever take this. WELLLL it’s only 5 rand which is not even a dollar in the US/they are always an experience. There are always silly Africans on them and they are always BLASTING music. I’m going to take a video the next time I take one which will probably be tomorrow seeing everyone takes them everywhere.

So then Sunday night we went to this bar/lounge in Camps Bay which is the NICEST area in cape town. It’s actually the most beautiful place I have been. So anyway… tangent over this lounge called st yves So nice wow. We sat on the deck and watched the sunset, I’ll try to get a pic from my friend when I get a chance to show you the sunset. So we hung out there for a while until all of us were starving so in our very classes nice clothes we walked our butts down to nandos. Hahahaha okay for all of you who don’t know what Nandos is, it is a chicken joint. All they have is chicken, chicken, and umm rice? Mind you we looked like fools but it was SO good wow. Yum. So then we went back to the lounge and there was a band playing called goldfish. They were so fun, they are like a electric dubstep type band yet they also place the chello and the saxophone while spinning it was so so cool. And the light show was awesome. At one point I was just standing on the table and I looked out at the beach and then looked back in  and was just like wow this is not real life why the hell wouldn’t even study abroad here.

The real mission of the night was the find a place that was airing the superbowl. IMPOSSIBLE. We ended up coming back to the area we live aka the ghetto. And paid a bar tender to put it on at this SKETCHY bar called African Africa. Mind you these were the people who were in there when we arrive: there was 3 homeless people 1 had a huge bandage on her hand and was telling us that she was going to go meet her man on club duvet around the corner. It doesn’t exist. The next guy I started a converstation with was this overweight male with a Hawaiian shirt on. His eyes were so small I don’t this it was possible he could see out of them. Also he was blinking so hard that his eye lids had to be tired after the hard work this guy made them do all day. The next time I saw him he was passed out on the bar stool talking in his sleep. Needless to say we were obnoxious and they closed the bar at 2 so we only got to see the 1^st quarter. WAHHHHHHHHHHHHH heard it was a good game though. Why are Americans so obnoxious?

Pig and Swizzle

Registration for classes here is the most unorganized process I have ever been through. First off we got there an hour early because the line gets so long that some people were there for 4 hours, like excuse me?! So here is the step by step process

1.wait

3. pick up forms, not told what to do with them

4.wait

5. sit at a desk with some random advisor

6. get yelled at because you hadn’t filled out the form yet was never told to

7. act like a stupid American

8. Get told a building to go to yet no direction as to where it is

9. get lost on campus

10. sit at a computer with an other UCT student while they fill in your classes, something that could be done by yourself online, much easier process

11. ERROR pops up next to one of your classes, you ask  if you should pick a different class because there is a time conflict with another one, they say no.

12. confusion as to how you can be in 2 classes at the same time

13. go take you picture for your id card

14. wait because there is only 1 photo machine and over 400 international students

15. YAY you’re done, go back to the house and realize that you didn’t get your id or login information because no one told you that was the last step

16. annoyed

I don’t understand why any of the process is necessary

 And on top of all of this the woman typed in the wrong numbers so now I am signed up for the click language instead of my sex love and taboo class. Rude. SOOOOO inorder to get that figured out I have to fill out this withdrawal form and then get 4 different signatures and then I cant drop the click and pick up the other until next week which is when classes start. WTF so behind the times here I do not understand. Haven’t they ever heard of the internet? People adding and dropping their own classes? OBVI NOT

O week

SOOOOOOOO this week is o-week, make what you want of that. We had a talk about AIDS, actually the 4th talk we have gotten since being here about AIDS but this one was on campus and they demonstrated how to put a condom on. Mind you this doesn't sound so bad but the penis they used was a huge black penis with little black balloons as the balls. This is Africa.

I had pre registration yesterday whatever that even means. All I know is that it took 2 hours and it was miserable, they do everything by hand nothing is done with computers. How is that even possible for 25,000 students?!?!? Registration is friday and they said that is even worse. FML

But we went to the mall yesterday wow SO nice I'm thinking of just moving in there. It's in a much better area then my slums of Africa area where all we have are homeless people pooping on trees and having sex on the sidewalks, not kidding. right.

Everyone says they can tell we are american from a million miles away because of our short shorts and the fact that we are loud and obnoxious, yet there is no way they could see that far. rude.

Here are some pics of my great fabulous room, the size of my left hand, yes those are bars on the windows. Note my choice on sheets, obviously trying to get the full african experience.

 here is the entrance in our house, pretty nice for africa. I was expecting some dirt floors haha, jk. but really. BBD

we just got back from the beach, wow so beautiful but the water is ICE cold omg like your legs go numb. So strange

Finally getting sushi for dinner tonight they have 1/2 monday-thursday riiiiiiight yum. I havent eaten at home one night yet/ probably am not going to. Food here is so cheap to eat out so convient

alright this is already too long sooorrryyyyyyyy! I'll try to be better about this thing