The Past Two Weeks...

I really need to start getting on top of these blog posts. It seems like everytime I want to write the internet isn't working and suddenly I'm two weeks behind.

As usual, I've been really busy here! Classes have started to actually require work and I had to write my fist paper at UCT. The past two weeks have been amazingly fun and exciting.

So here is what has been going on...

Valentines Day was spent at a concert at the beautiful Kirstenbosch Gardens. I didn't realize the "holiday" would be celebrated here and was surprised at how lovey everyone at the concert was. We de-romanticized it by bringing lots of wine, cheese and fruit and singing loudly in our American accents. Kirstenbosch is a pretty big garden with lots of gorgeous flowers and landscaping. The stage is set up with huge mountains in the back and combined with the sunset, makes for a pretty beautiful (and romantic) evening.

Picnicing at Kirstenbosch Gardens

Later in the week we went into Cape Town to see the "Infecting the City" art show. Different exhibitions of modern art were spread throughout the city and you had to follow a little map to get to each one. My favorite was the Wishing Wall where people in South Africa would come and write their "wishes" on a piece of paper and tape it up on to a wall in the middle of the city. There were easily thousands of wishes on the wall and people of all ages/races were writing on it. The wishes ranged from materialistic, to sad, to hopeful, to romantic. My favorite wish was "I wish communication could always be this simple". My second favorite exhibition was a mural that was made on the floor of a local church. The mural was made completely out of sand collected from sites in South Africa where human rights violations have occurred. I didn't get to see the finished piece but what I did see looked amazing.

The Wishing Wall

After "Infecting the City" we spent the day at a rugby match between the Cape Town Stormers and an Australian Team. Cape Town won by a huge amount and we had front row seats. Later, my entire house drove up to the top of Signal Hill to watch the sunset and have a pot luck. The food all turned out really good but the wind on top of the hill was so strong that the food was flying everywhere. The sunset was beautiful even though there were some clouds in the way. It was still great to watch a sunset from the top of a mountain for the first time.

My whole house at Signal Hill

Last weekend we spent Saturday at a wine festival in Stellenbosch. Although I consider myself more of a beer drinker, it was fun to try all different kinds of wines and hear about how they are made etc. The best part of the festival though was getting to stomp grapes with my feet!

Stomping grapes in Stellenbosch

What was probably the best part of the past few weeks was hiking up Lion's Head last Sunday night. Lion's head is a huge mountain that basically looks like Pride Rock from the Lion King. Each month when there is a full moon a bunch of people hike up the mountain at night for what was literally the most beautiful sight I have ever seen. The hike itself wasn't too bad. It took us about an hour and a half to get up and I was proud that I had my first true rock climbing experience. When we got to the top there were about 40 other people already sitting and eating. When you looked to one side, you saw the sun setting over the ocean. If you looked to the other side you would see the full moon rising over the city. Words or pictures do not do justice to how incredible this view was. It's definitely something I plan on doing again next month and something I'll remember forever. The hike down was really scary at first. Like I said, this was actual rock climbing on the side of a huge mountain. Doing this in the pitch black at 10 PM was pretty frightening but we all made it down!

Starting the hike!

Full moon rising over the city

In between all of these adventures has been normal school work and volunteering. I plan on dedicating a post to volunteering and what an amazing experience its been thus far. More pictures will be on facebook soon!

African Dance...and Other UCT Classes

Since I am here for school (and not just elephants, monkeys, and bungee jumping) I figured I'd write a little about the classes I'm taking concentrating mostly on my new favorite thing: African Dance.

As I already explained, the process of getting classes was a nightmare but it seems to have worked out for the best. The courses are pretty different here than at Northeastern. The classes are huge (one of mine has 500 people) and are only 45 minutes 3 or 4 times a week. We were told that students didn't talk during the lecture but I've seen otherwise. The class is actually very involved with the lectures and sometimes challenge the lecturer in ways that make me feel slightly uncomfortable. Each class has a tutorial as well which is basically a 45 minute session with a group of 15 kids where you discuss what went on in the lecture. I'm actually finding this system really helpful and informative. The tutorials force you to understand and talk about the material in a small group which is a lot better than many of the courses I've taken.

I'm taking 4 classes altogeher: Culture in the 21st Century, Intro to Philosophy, Gender, Sexuality, and Politics: Debates from an African Context, and African Dance. Gender, Sexuality, and Politics is the most interesting class by far.

Now onto African Dance. I was pretty unsure of what this class would actually require when i signed up for it. I expected to be in a classroom with the teacher showing us a couple of moves. When I showed up on the first day I was completely surprise to be in a dance studio with a full drumming band. We danced for 2 hours and I left dripping with sweat. Now after 2 weeks of classes I find myself getting excited every Tuesday and Thursday knowing that I have 2 hours of dancing that night. The thing about African dance is that you cannot have ANY inhibitions. You have to fully let go and "let the energy take over you" as my instructor says. We're going to have to perform in a recital at the end of the semester which is a little nerve racking. Anyway I love African Dance and maybe I'll bring some moves home to the US

"This is Africa...we eat with our hands"

I don’t think any entry can do the last few weeks justice. I had planned on updating before our Garden Route trip but I have been so incredibly busy and have barely been on my computer.

Since I last wrote there have been a ton of things going on. First was class registration. Thinking about how I have complained about how “slow” registering for classes online at Northeastern makes me laugh after the experience of a few weeks ago. Class registration is done in person which means VERY long lines in 100 degree weather. You basically have to wait on a line to get permission from each department of classes you want to take and then wait on another line to get it approved by an advisor then wait on another line to get your ID. The process was pretty tiring and took all day but I know I’ll never complain about Northeastern again.

Last Saturday we went to Mzoli’s, a butchery turned restaurant in the Gugulethu township, for lunch. We got there around 11:30 and were not prepared for the long wait ahead of us. Luckily we were kept occupied by the cheap 6 packs of beer being sold. I doubt that if I hadn’t been so hungry I would not have dug my hands into the huge pot full of meat that was put on our table around 3:00. When we asked for utensils the cook responded with “this is Africa, we eat with our hands!” So we all proceeded to eat questionable (but delicious) meat with our hands. There was a lot more to the Mzoli’s experience than just the food and cheap beer. The “restaurant” was really just a couple of tables covered by a tent and it felt like the entire township community was there.

On Sunday we took a tour of the African Peninsula. We went to beautiful beaches along the coast, saw little penguins on Boulder Island, ate lunch and saw a children’s music/dance group perform in the Ocean View township, then hiked up the Cape of Good Hope which is the most south-western point of the African continent.

The next morning we left for the Garden Route trip. The Garden Route is basically a highway that starts from Cape Town and runs along the southern coast of Africa. So bright and early on Monday 13 of us packed into a little bus and drove 8 hours to Wilderness National Park. Our first hostel was in an absolutely beautiful location. It was up on a hill overlooking the beach. We all shared one room and slept in bunkbeds. We spent the first day on the beach and then went out to dinner at night. Our hostel had a bar in it so we spent the rest of the night hanging out there with the other people staying there. In the morning we went into the National Park and went canoeing down a river. When we got to the other side we hiked for about an hour up to a waterfall. When we were finished we packed up our things and got back on the bus for the 2 hour drive to Plettenburg Bay. The first night we went out to an amazing seafood restaurant. I don’t think I’ve had mussels as good as what I’ve had in South Africa.

The next morning we woke up early to go bungee jumping off of Bloukrans Bridge. The jump is the highest in the world, and the fact that I sit here calmly writing about this is a pretty great achievment. I don’t think I have ever felt fear the way I did before bungee jumping. I had knots in my stomach for days thinking about what I was about to do. I kept thinking that anyone willing to jump off a bridge over 70 stories has to be at least slightly crazy. When we got there we paid and got all set up. In order to get to the jump sight you have to walk across a very thin and unstable bridge. Looking back on it, walking across that bridge was scarier than the actual jump. I refused to look down and was relived when we made it to the middle of the bridge where we would be jumping off. There were about 20 people waiting to jump and 15 guys working at the jump sight. Music was blasting and the workers all seemed to be in sync with the beat. They managed to pump everyone up and actually made me forget about what I was doing while I was up there. Even though I was definitely the most scared in my group, I was randomly called to be the first to jump out of the 10 of us. I sat down and held my breath while I got set up to jump. It went so quickly that I didn’t even have time to get scared about what I was about to do. All of a sudden I was getting picked up and carried over to the place where I had to jump. You can’t walk because your feet are tied together so running away wasn’t an option. The two men let go of me and put my arms up and counted down for me to jump. With a little push I jumped off and went flying down the 710 foot high canyon. The rush was one of the best feelings I have ever had and I am SO happy I actually went through with it. After about a minute of hanging upside down I was connected to another worker and brought back up to the platform. I spent the rest of the trip with that feeling of jumping. I bought the DVD of my jump and it is so funny to watch it again. Anyone who wants to see it can feel free once I get home.

After the jump we went off the elephant sanctuary. We got to walk with, touch and feed the elephants. It is really unbelievable how an animal so huge and powerful could be so calm. Next we were off to Monkey Land. I expected it to be more like a zoo where the monkeys would be in cages or behind nets. Instead we were in a huge forest where about thousand monkeys were running around and swinging over our heads. They would come right up to us and were all over the place. It was so cool to see them this way and get that close. We went back to the hostel and had a big barbeque and spent the rest of the night drinking and celebrating the fact that we were all still alive after the bungee jump. We left in the morning for a very long trip back to Cape Town and made it just in time for the first day of classes on Friday.

Since I’m still figuring out my classes I’ll talk about that in my next post. I’m also still deciding what kind of clubs and volunteering I want to do. I can’t believe I’ve been here for 3 weeks and still haven’t even gotten into my normal schedule. I’m ready for classes to start though and am excited to start meeting more UCT students.

This past weekend we went to a huge UCT party, went to Robben Island (where Nelson Mandela was in prison for 18 years), and went out for Japanese food and Long Street for one of my housemate’s birthdays. Today I am happy to just have nothing to do and relax for a while. The superbowl comes on here around 2 AM so I think I will be skipping it this year.

Hopefully my updates will be more frequent for now on :)


P.S. internet sucks so look at facebook for more pictures!

First Week in Cape Town!

So I've been in Cape Town for a week now and am loving every second of it!


The flight was pretty intense and veryy boring. I wasn't able to sleep much and probably watched Enchanted 3 or 4 times. I also have to reconsider having a window seat because getting up was difficult and that became a problem after 13 hours and drinking lots of free wine. I had pretty bad jetlag and it took a couple of days to get used to the time difference. I'm still not ever really aware of what time it is. When we got off the plane it was actually raining and cold. I was nervous that maybe I misread what the temperature is like here but we were quickly assured that Cape Town was going through a "rare cold phase" and that it would soon be over. I was really surprised at how normal everything looked on the drive from the airport. I guess I always expected Africa to look different but I felt like I was driving down Sunrise Highway.

For orientation we (the 150 or so American students in my program) moved temporarily into some dorms on campus. They were pretty similar to the Northeastern dorms but it was annoying to live out of my suitcase that I so neatly packed for a couple of days. Orientation is somewhat of a blur. It was filled with a lot of speakers and ice breakers and trying to remember people's names.

During orientation we spent some time speaking to some volunteer groups. Cape Town itself is a really wealthy beautiful city, but the surrounding areas are extremely poor. The wealth gap is huge and we were able to see it firsthand. We took a bus out to 4 different volunteer sites located in the townships surrounding Cape Town. The houses are made up of different pieces of scrap metal and there are rocks and tires holding down the roofs. Kids walk around barefoot and clean water is nowhere to be found. It was really an unbelievable site and I've never seen anything so sad. I still haven't decided what I'm going to volunteer for but will update once I choose. Here's a picture of one of the townships taken from the highway...


The next day we went to the opening soccer game in the Fifa World Cup Stadium where two South African teams were playing. It was a pretty uneventful game but ended with penalty kicks which was great. I've never seen professional teams do penalties and it was really intense. The stadium is beautiful and I really hope I'll be able to stay for one of the World Cup games.


We've done a lottt of other things like "spit braii" (bbqs), had African drum lessons, went out to dinner in the city, went to the waterfront etc. I've gone out pretty much every night and the nightlife is amazing. The only problem is that everyone smokes in the bars. Those who know me well know I put on my own Truth campaign to everyone who smokes so I've been trying to hold back as much as possible.

This week we have UCT orientation. The campus is SO beautiful. It is basically split into 3 levels and built onto a mountain. Upper Campus has a view of the entire city and there are mountains everywhere you look. It's really stunning. Because it's built on a mountain there are about 5000 stairs and the walk to campus is completely uphill which is not fun in the 90 degree weather. I'm sure I'll get used to it though.

I'm living in a house with 30 people that is split into 3 apartments. My apartment has 8 people in it and looks like a real world house with a huge kitchen and living room. Everyone is really nice and from all over the US. We have two UCT students living with us but neither live in my apartment. My room is pretty small and empty but hopefully I won't be spending too much time in here.


That's about it for now. I will try to update again soon hopefully with pictures of baby penguins from the peninsula tour :)

10 Days 'Til Cape Town!

So just about a week and a half before I am off on my trip to the other side of the world. I've decided to keep this blog as an easy way to keep track of all the things I plan on doing. It might turn out to be a nice way to keep in touch with friends and family too. I'm just beginning to get everything together for my trip. Tomorrow I'm going to search Target for some summer clothes and buy mega size bottles of advil and cold medicine (only I can expect to get colds in the 90 degree African summer). I really can't believe this is happening so soon. The online orientation eased some of my anxiety but I do still have a lot that I'm nervous about. I'm sure I'll feel that way until I actually get there. Still, my excitement is definitely outweighing my fears and I can't wait to just get everything going. Yay!!