Just a little hello

Why hello cyberfriends!
It is my 4th day in Africa and so far it has been a mixed experience. I have loved a lot of it and been quite annoyed with other things. One thing I have loved is the BEACH!!! We went to the local beach today and it was FANtastic! The water was perfect, the sky was blue and the mountains were beautiful. Things I have not liked so much: the lack of fresh food I have been able to get my hands on so far. We are going to a fresh fruit and veggie market tomorrow though (so hopefully that will change). My roommates are both really nice but I have a feeling they will not end up being my best friends in the world. Not because I don't like them, more because they are quite girly and we are just simply into different things.

Well, enough ranting about my day to day life, lets talk about what I have done so far.

The 24th was my second day of orientation in which our whole program went on a campus tour. UCT (University of Cape Town) is beautiful. I really love it. There are four (I think) different parts of campus. We live on lower campus and the library and other main buildings are on upper campus. Than there is middle and some other campus which... well I have no idea what's there. The important ones are upper and lower campus. Upper campus is situated literally in the shadow of the mountain and you have to walk up serious hills to get anywhere. Luckily we have the Jammie, which is what they call the shuttle system for UCT students and also what they call the main square on campus (it is a bit confusing). I, myself, think it is a pretty darn cute name regardless.

So near the end of our tour we decided to take a little hike up to the Rhodes memorial. The view from up there was amazing. We could see the entire city of Cape Town and the ocean (no idea if it was the Atlantic or the Indian). While we were up there we had a lovely (relatively cheap) lunch at this really awesome restaurant on top of the mountain. My greek salad was the only really fresh veggies I've had since I've been here. After the tour was over we went to Cavendish mall to get some supplies for our new apartment. When we got back I cooked dinner for myself, ate and than went to sleep early. It was lovely.

The next day on the other hand was so long and so boring I could feel myself losing brain cells. We spent the ENTIRE day in a dark, UCT classroom listening to orientation stuff. From class registration to trip opertunities. It was okay until about the 4th hour...

After all of that talking, Interstudy was nice enough to cater our dinner at an on campus restaurant. It was okay, a lot of meat (which seems to be a trend around Cape Town). Once dinner was over we decided to lay out on the grass in front of Jammie square. Since the sun was still out and it was a beautiful day we thought we'd do what any normal UCT student would do and "just chill out." It was really nice. The rest of the night consisted of a walk back down to lower campus and some more friendly conversation in one of my neighbors apartments.

Yesterday was our Tourist day. We took a bus at 8:30am to one of the local townships to see what that was all about. Parts of it reminded me of Indian slums and other parts reminded me of Española, so there was a wide range of living arrangements. It was interesting to say the least. At the end of the tour they took us to this "pub" (which was really just a little shack) and had us taste their homemade "beer." It tasted like lime, vinegar and milk? water... very strange, but strangely good.

After our stint in poverty we had lunch on the waterfront (nearish to the world cup soccer stadium). Lets just say the difference between these two places was like the difference between a bumblebee and a hedgehog. The next part of our tour was a boat trip to Robben Island. Robben means seal in Dutch, by the way. It has some really crazy history, aside from its infamous imprisonment of Nelson Mandela. That was pretty much the end of our Tour day and by than we had been out for over 12 hours. It was long, but really an awesome experience of contrasts and contradictions.

S. Africa so far is filled with similar contrasts and contradictions. It is a huge jumble of different kinds of people living in a place that walks the thin line between a first and third world country. It has been and I almost guarantee it will give me an amazing lesson in not taking ANYTHING at face value.