heeey campers

So I survived my first week of classes while managing to do no homework whatsoever, but unfortunately I need to do some tonight. booo. But I've have a week filled with camping and hiking, so I can't complain. On Wednesday I went with the hiking club up Lion's Head Mountain, which is one of the smaller mountains next to Table Mountain, for the sunset. They claimed it was an "easy" hike but there were part of it where you had to use chains and rock climb straight up so I hate to see what their idea of a hard hike is. But at least it only took about an hour to get to the top and the view was amazing. We were actually in the clouds for a while, but you still had a view of the entire city, plus a bunch of the beaches and surrounding mountains and the sunset over the ocean. We ended up stumbling down in the dark a little bit, but it was worth it to see the sunset.

Then the same club had their "freshers hike" this weekend and 150 people ended up going! We drove about two hours outside of Cape Town to a really remote area and hiked a little bit up to a dam to go swimming. Apparently, though, it is a tradition for people to jump off the dam into the water, which was 30 feet high. Jumping off of high objects (usually cliffs) into the water is actually a really popular thing to do in South Africa, and they call it kloofing. At first I was very happy to just watch other people and hear the awful sounding SMACK when they hit the water, but then my roommate Zoe jumped, so I decided I had to. I know I can be kind of a wimp when it comes to heights but this was really realllly high, especially when you are looking straight down (bad idea). So I was just nervously debating up there and finally convinced myself to crawl under the railing, looked down, almost had a heart attack, turned around to climb back over, and the guy next to me just yelled "JUMP!" really loud, which half-startled me off the edge anyway, so I just took a breath and jumped. I think the worst feeling was the first second when you're in the air and you're just thinking "what did i just do?!?" and knowing it's too late. But you also expect the water to come must sooner that it actually does. But needless to say, I was just fine, so I'm glad I did it. We spent the rest of the afternoon climbing up to our campsite, where there was a river to swim in and lots of open space to just hang out. We slept under the stars, which were absolutely unbelievable. I've never seen so many in my life. I can't wait to do more hiking/camping trips!

Today was my second day of class, but I only had one and most of my roommates were done by noon so we decided to go surfing! It was soo much fun! One of my rooommates met a guy who is a UCT student now, but was a pro surfer for a couple years so he knows a bunch of people in the surf shops and hooked us up with boards and wetsuits and gave us lessons! I swear, I have never done anything more difficult that try to get that wetsuit on, but the water is really cold, so it's worth it. The whole way to the beach I was pretty nervous thinking about sharks because they have shark spotters at the beaches that keep a lookout and put up flags when one has been seen recently, but once I was in the water I had other problems to worry about. Right before we got in, he warned us to try to avoid these little stinging blue jellyfish but there's absoultely no way you'd be looking out for those when there are huge waves crashing towards you. I've never been in the ocean with such powerful waves. They were flinging my board all over the place and I looked extremely foolish trying to keep it pointed straight. So I'd trudge out to where the water was just below my waist, which was an excrutiatingly difficult task involving being swept back to shore at least five times in the process, only to get tangled in these enormous seaweed type plants that were everywhere. So finally the surfer guy would come to my rescue and effortlessly paddle me through the waves. When you're paddling into them, the waves sure look huge, but it's even worse when he turns the board around and you get a glimpse of the wave that he's going to push you into. And then he just gives you a shove and yells "UP!" at which point I panic slightly, push up with all my might, and fly ungracefully head first into the ocean, swallowing a least a gallon of it in the process. But I finally got up a couple of times and it was so fun! They weren't actually large waves at all, but it's a start. I road my last wave all the way in, feeling kind of cool, and hopped off, only to have my board go flying, crash into me from behind, sweep me off my feet, and carry me into the sand, where I landed face first. It was a successful day :)

Ahhh the weekend. Sure felt good after that one whole day of class :) My first class went really well though! It was the Soc class and we're basically going to be studying poverty in South Africa, why the situtation is the way it is, and what the government/public can do about. Out professor seemed really nice too and fairly entertaining, which will be good at 8am. Friday night was the "Big Bash," which is a huge party fundraiser for SHAWCO, the volunteer organization that I'm going to be working with. It's for UCT students only, but 7000 (!!!) people come! They have to hold it in this Great America-type venue because it's so huge and they have lots of live bands (and some apparently very famous South African hip-hop artist that the guy next to me really wanted me to sing along too, but I was obviously clueless) and DJs and it goes til 6 in the morning. I'm a wimp though and only made it till two. It was definitely fun, but also a bit overwhelming. Other than that, we just had a nice weekend of laying on the beach (I'm even getting a flip-flop tan now...) and having another braai. First actual week of class starts tomorrow!

So I am officially in love with Stellenbosch, South Africa. We went on a wine tasting today and the scenery was absolutely gorgeous. I love the city area of Cape Town, but I think I am a country girl at heart and the entire area of Stellenbosch is much more spread out. Lots of valleys filled with vineyards surrounded by mountains. We took the train in super early this morning and the train kind of felt like it was a stick shift or something, it was that jerky. And it made crazy screeching noises. Once the train route gets into the country, there are zebras and ostrich just grazing with the rest of the cattle. But we got there in one piece and walked to the Stumble Inn (sounds very promising eh?), which was where our tour started. We ended up driving to four different vineyards, getting a cellar tour, four wine tastings, a cheese tasting, and lunch. I tried an African dish for lunch and it was a stew made out of springbok meat (a deer-ish animal that is all over South Africa and kind of a trademark here). It was pretty good, but I am definitely not used to eating red meat, but I figured I should try it while I'm here. We also stopped for ice cream after lunch and I had the best mint chocolate chip ice cream I have ever had. And I even learned a little about wine! My knowledge probably jumped from 2 to 200 (the two initial points coming from knowing the color of the label on the bottle that Becky told me I shouldn't buy anymore). And I actually liked some of the wines! We tasted at least 25 different ones throughout the course of the day, and my favorite one was a red wine that tasted like Christmas. It was a mouraverdre, or something like that, if anyone knows/cares what that is :) I have a crazy picture of us all sitting around a table with our 7 wine glasses a piece. And really good wine here isn't even that expensive. Only about 80-90 rand for the best bottles the vineyards sell, which is about 13 U.S. dollars. I had no idea that wine could taste like different fruits and spices and such. And that you could use words like "structured," "feminine," and "boyfriends old socks" (as our tour guide put it...he was pretty dorky...he easily could have been Eugene the internet guy's brother. but he did cut open a bottle of champpagne with a sword, so that was pretty sweet) to describe wine. I am by no means knowledgeble on the subject, but I guess I've got a bit of a start now.

It's back to beautiful weather here (I heard U of I had a snow day today...ouch, sorry guys!) and we have been out and about. We went down to the V & A Waterfront the other day, which is really beautiful, especially at night because they light up all the buildings, but is definitely a touristy area. It was nice to visit, but I wouldn't want to spend a lot of time there. They have a HUGE mall with every kind of designer store you could imagine, but it's also a harbor, so there are boats going in and out and seals in the water! We ate outside at one of the restaurants and watched the sun set. Today we went to Clifton beach, which is apparently one of the most popular beaches in the area. The sun here is amazingly overpowering. I think I put SFP 50 sunscreen on at least three times, but you just feel like you're baking within the first two minutes. The water is absolutely freezing though! So it's a crazy cycle of baking in the sun, running into the water to cool off, and then getting out again within the next two minutes, only to dry off instantly. We hung out on the beach again for the sunset.

I promise I am going to go to school here too at some point :) I'm actually ready to get into some sort of routine, because it has been feeling a little bit like an extended vacation out here, except we're not really in a rush to do anything in particular because we figure we've got five more mounths to fit stuff in. Signing up for classes was quite the ordeal, but it looks like I'm sticking with a Soc class on Poverty and Globalisation, a History class on Liberation Movements in Southern Africa, and a Media and Society class. I have my first lectures on Friday, so I hope all goes well!

It's actually been cold (yeah, we're roughin' it here in the 55 degree weather...) and kind of rainy here the last couple of days, so no beach or hiking adventures yet. It's supposed to warm up soon though. But we went into town to Long Street, which is where a lot of the backpacking hostels are, so there are lots of cool restaurants and markets. The markets have lots of very touristy things and you see a lot of the same pieces at different stalls, so it's probably mass-produced with tourists in mind, but l will definitely end up buying stuff regardless :) You have to haggle on prices, which is definitely not my strong suit. And it's a little intimidating being pressured to buy things, but they have a lot of jewelery and art and drums and such. We had lunch on Long street and one of my adventurous roommates ordered ostrich, which I was not brave enough to try, although I did order sticky toffee pudding, which, as Becks knows, is quite possibly the best dessert ever created. We also had our first braai (aka BBQ) at the house today! Even though is rained a little bit, it was still nice to cook all together and we had a lot of fun using the word "braai" as often as possible. Mom, we even made bananas with chocolate on the grill...delicious.

Also, we asked our cab driver the other day what the huge fenced in area right down the road from us is and he told it that it is the Parliament building and President Mbeke's house! You can't see any building from outside the fence, so we had no idea. I can't believe we didn't hear anything about that before now, but kinda cool, yeah?

Other good news, though, is that we actually have working internet in our house now! Every time someone has to come to your house to install something or fix something, they never call ahead or schedule a time or anything. Its just kind of "well, I should come by sometime tomorrow (read: next Tuesday) and we'll have that in for you juuuuuuuuuuuuust now." So you either have to wait around for a week, or cross your fingers that someone is home to let the person in. So, needless to say, after a couple times of missing the internet guy (who was very nice, but also quite dorky so we dubbed him Eugene even though his name turned out to be Barry...) we are up and running! When Eugene was installing it, that last thing he had to do was glue one of the wires to the wall, and we all sat, impatient and antsy, in the living room and starred as he VERY meticulously glued a single centimeter of the wire down the length of the wall and then waited for that centimeter to dry before moving on. I'm surprised someone didn't strangle him before he finished. We were all so overjoyed to have internet that we stayed in on Friday and all sat around on our computers...kinda sad, but it was amazing what a loss we were at without it. So anyway, hopefully I should be more reliable with emails and such now. Miss you guys.

It's been a week already!

Howzit!? Yeah, I’m learning to speak Cape Townese, cause our orientation leaders keep teasing us about our American accents. All our “awesomes” and “sweets” really do sound ridiculous when they imitate it. I know this is realllly long, but I guess I’m half using this as a journal for myself, so read at your leisure or skip around or whatever.

Phew, so orientation is finally just about over. We had to go through a whole pre-registration process that involved standing in lines all day and checking passports/visas/insurance and everything else you could think of. We also got to know campus a little better by finding all the different departments (they call them faculties here) and having them pre-approve courses for us. You have to go to a different building to find out what time each class is, then another to find out where it is and who the professor is. They also like to say that they’ll do things “just now,” which, depending on how long you hold the first syllable of “just” can range anywhere from 10 minutes to never. We finally get to register on Friday morning and I think my ideal schedule, assuming everything works out, is going to be an intro to African music class, a medical anthropology class, and a history course on the different liberation movements in Southern Africa. Cool, huh? Well, I’m excited  Despite this whole process being kind of annoying after being used to signing up for classes online, in the end, you still get registered and it has been working just fine like this for over a hundred years here, so really you just get a little more exercise in the process and get to learn your way around a bit better. Corny as it sounds, it’s becoming painfully obvious how many Americans are used to having everything done instantaneously and conveniently. Like our one orientation speaker said, who cares if you have to make a sandwich (or two) while your email loads…it still loads in the end. And I like sandwiches.

Anyways, as another part of orientation, we got to have an African drum lesson! It was really fun because all 400 study abroad students were (trying) to play in sync, so the sound definitely carried. The leader showed us a couple different ways to hit it to make different sounds and then we repeated different rhythms back to him. Phil and Andrew, I hope I made you proud!

We also got a to visit one of the townships today with the student organization SHAWCO, which is the largest student-run volunteer program in the country. They travel to sites at four different townships and help kids 9-17 with school work, sports, and just any kind of mentoring. They also go to orphanages, do IT training, and young adult job skill mentoring. There’s obviously lots of different projects to get involved in with them, so I’ll get to pick one to sign up for sometime next week. It sounds like a really rewarding and eye-opening organization to get involved with. Even though the actual city of Cape Town has 3 million people, there were 2 million people in the one township that I visited alone, and it stretches as far as you can see in two directions. Many of the families live with 7 or more people in one room. Within the tourist-filled city and the safety of the campus, it’s easy to think of the South Africa as a wealthy nation, but it’s quite obvious that there is still a lot of development and social work that needs to happen here.

We also got to learn a bit of background on the University, which was an all-white University until the end of apartheid in 1994. They’ve done a ton of work to get the student population to begin to reflect the larger population of South Africa, and now the student population is just under 50% white, which clearly does not represent the whole population of the country, but certainly seems like significant progress for a country who does a lot of things “juuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuust now.” A lot of our orientation leaders were from other African countries too. If you want a crash-course in diversity, this seems like the place to be. Ok, enough ramblings for now. Sending love from Cape Town!

It's beautiful here!

I made it! There were two kids from U of I on both of my flights and I found them waiting in O’Hare, so it was nice to have company, but let me tell you, I did not sleep for a good 34 hours (but I passed out for 14 hours the next night before I begrudgingly hauled myself out of bed this morning). All but one of my roommates are here. There’s a couple from Norway, a girl from Germany, and two other American girls, one American guy, and one girl from Canada who all seem really nice. We’re all a little lost and unsure about where we should and should not go, especially at night, so we stayed in and played cards the last two nights, and it was fun to get to know them. Our house is very cozy and much newer than our Urbana house (although I love our Urbana house, despite its various infestations, dilapidations, and poisonous gases). But the scenery is unbelievably beautiful. We took a walk around campus today and the view has table mountain as a backdrop to ivy-clad buildings and scattered palm trees. If you look the other way, you’ve got a perfect view overlooking the entire city (my internet/computer situation is still very much up in the air, but pictures soon, I hope!). In some ways, I seem very far from home, especially when we drove past the townships on our way from the airport and they really are nothing but strategically balanced sheets of metal. We also have to buy our electricity on cards at the grocery store. But I’ve also seen two KFC’s, eaten at a fast food burger restaurant (they had veggie burgers!) that was playing a Beyonce music video in the background, and bought skippy peanut butter in the grocery store. Oh, and the O.C. was on the South African Broadcasting Network tonight, but I think it was several seasons old. We had our first day of orientation today, which was exhausting and beautiful. We went on a tour of the Cape Peninsula, which included Boulder Beach which has penguins! We went on a short hike by the Cape of Good Hope and stopped at some of the beaches along the coast. The entire way around the peninsula is one perfect white sand beach after another. The tour guide also kept making references to “”hippie” and “bohemian” areas of town, which sounds very promising  I’ve got lots of orientation lectures and signing up for classes in the next few days, but then classes don’t start until February 19th, so we’ll have lots of time for exploring! Oh, and I’ve also discovered Top Deck Cadbury chocolate, (white and milk chocolate…mmmm…) which is readily available in all grocery stores in dangerously giant packages (we’re talking a solid pound or so) for the equivalent of $1.25. I think I’m going to love it here, but I miss everyone! Hope all is well!