Quick Weekend Update

I don't have much time because I am meeting my family in Simon's Town to go see the penguins and then to have dinner with my homestay family in a township called Ocean View. We had a great weekend first bungee jumping, then going on two safaris, and lastly spelunking. It was a great 4-day vacation (though it may have been the longest drive our family has ever done), and there are some great pictures to see (there you are Carol). I'll write some more later.

Family

From The Fam's First Day

The family got in this morning and I met them at the guest house they're staying at. Unfortunately it's about a 15-minute walk from my house when there are a few guest houses a few minutes away but we booked the guest house before I even knew where I was living so it's not that bad (and only for one night). We went to my favorite restaurant in Rondebosch, Addeso, an italian restaurant with a nice outdoor tent on the sidewalk and amazing sandwiches (Ethan didn't think so but he doesn't know what he's talking about). We took the cable car up to table mountain and the guy told us to let go of the handrails and all of a sudden the floor started to move. It was a rotating gondola! Cool, but kind of made me dizzy. The top had some great views and you could see all the way down to Cape Point and the Indian Ocean. Unfortunately it was pretty cold and we were not prepared so after about 45 minutes at the top we headed back down and to the beaches of Camp's Bay. We had some hummus and pita watched the sun begin to set, and ended up getting the same cab driver for the ride home. We picked up some food for braiing and made ostrich burgers and lamb chops at my house with 4 of my friends. It was a great time but the jet lag began to set in and they went back at 10. We're leaving tomorrow morning for the Garden Route, go check out the pictures from today!

Thai Food, Pride, and Kirstenbosch

I added some gadgets on the right side of my blog (for those of you who don't read it by email) so you can see the weather in Cape Town along with links to photo albums. Anyways on with the blog...

Though I have a workshop every Friday from 11-2pm, I was able to finish all the work for it early so I could skip it and go to the beach. We first took the Jammie (the campus shuttle) downtown and had lunch at an African restaurant Nzola's. I had a delicious pita filled with mince (ground beef). After that, Amanda, Kelly, Lindsay and I got a minibus to take the 15-minute ride to Camps Bay Beach. Camps Bay is an affluent suburb south of Cape Town on the opposite side of the mountain from UCT on the Atlantic Ocean.

We found a nice spot by the water and all laid down to tan and relax. After about five minutes, I could hear the water much louder than before and before I could even open my eyes, they tide had come in right on top of us. I was able to get up with my towel before it got soaked and we relocated much further back this time. The water was much colder than the Indian Ocean, where we last went to the beach and after finally getting used to it, I failed to do any good body surfing. After a couple hours on the beach, we went to the Thai restaurant (at my insisting) to watch the sunset. We went early to make sure we got a good spot, so we really confused the waitor as we ordered everything as slowly as possible. The curry was delicious and everything I hoped it would be after a month deprived of my favorite food.

To get back there are only two options, minibuses or a metered taxi. They told us the minibuses were not safe at night but it wasn't completely dark out so we decided to try it out for ourselves. The first minibus to get us from Camps Bay to Cape Town was perfectly safe besides the very happy and loud drunk next to me who enjoyed talking about poo and the hotel he wanted to build in the middle of the ocean. He was a large fellow and along with almost being on top of me as he waved his arms around as he talked, his hand would end up on my leg. It was all unintentional but quite annoying and I was very glad when the minibus cleared out and I could move. The ride home was a little less safe as the driver paid more attention to his ridiculous political rant with the passenger next to him than the road and sent a woman in the seat in front of me flying forward (luckily she was fine). The minibus was also more expensive after 7pm so I don't think that will be our favored mode of transportation at night anymore.

On Saturday we had lunch at Rcafe on Long Street and then walked to the Pride Parade. We had assumed that people would be along the parade route waiting for the parade to come by but it seemed pretty empty. By the time we were a few blocks from where the parade started it was scheduled to begin but we still saw nobody. We were starting to think we got the day wrong, when were heard music and then police cars and a float. We joined the parade right around where there was a Harley Davidson party going on (must have surprised them!) and started walking along with it.

There were only a smattering of people watching and marching along at first but before we knew it we had picked up crowds of people after only traveling a few blocks. I'd been saying all morning that I wanted to get on a float, so after scoping out one with an open spot and good music, we positioned ourselves behind it so I could hop on. After seeing a couple kids hop on, I hopped on as well and joined the dance party atop the float. That is where I remained for the rest of the parade, trying to get up and dance a few times but would always be jolted back to sit down dancing after a sudden stop.

The carnival afterward was more of a braii with entertainment. It was fun to relax in the shade with people and the belly dancers were good but after an hour or two we headed back home on the mini bus.

From Marimba, Hiking, and Kirstenbosch

At night, we went to the large theatre where Beauty and the Beast was playing on the big stage and Marimba Extravaganza on the small stage which we went to. It was a really fun show with some very crazy audience members and even though it was at first a sit-down show they got us up after intermission.

From Marimba, Hiking, and Kirstenbosch

I had picked up some people's tickets to the Kirstenbosch concert early so we could hike to the gardens on Sunday. At around 1pm in the blistering heat (quite similar to today) Amanda, Lexie, Ayano, and I left Consolata and hiked up the mountain past UCT, over a fence (there were stairs), and up another 15 minutes to Rhodes Memorial. We stopped for some pictures since as much as I dislike Cecil Rhodes he has some good locations for memorials.

From Marimba, Hiking, and Kirstenbosch

Amanda had hiked part of the contour path already so we relied on her to get us there from Rhodes Memorial. We climbed for about a half hour until we finally reached the path that was supposed to take us all the way to Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. We had heard that it was about an hour long walk. Though we were fully equipped with a GPS (my iPhone) and a human compass (mua) it would have also helped to have a good map of all the paths on the mountain. Unfortunately, those do not exist online so we just had to guess on which forks to take. I never thought we were lost as we were never walking that far from civilization. Eventually we hit some houses and instead of trying to go around we just went back onto the road and walked the rest of the 1/2 mile to Kirstenbosch. We arrived at 3:30pm just as the bus arrived with everyone else so it turned out to be quite a hike especially on a hot day.

We were wiped so we did a little bit of walking and then laid on the grass in front of the stage. The concert was a lot of fun and perfect for the venue and just relaxing. School is starting to get harder now that we have regular homework and I volunteered at LEAP for the first time Tuesday. LEAP is a science and math high school outside of Cape Town which is a private school who mostly accepts children from the townships. It seems like I'll be doing a mix of tutoring and hanging out with the kids during their downtime as well as during their classes (we go where they go).

We sat in on their Life Orientation class where they generally just talk about issues they may be facing in their life now and in the future. Bones (the person who runs the class and our volunteer program) started off the session by saying, "I heard one of the guys beat on a girl in this class." It turns out some boys were taking more food than the rest of the group at lunch and leaving some kids with no food. The leader of the group tried to take back the extra food one of the boys had taken and he elbowed her in the eye. It was quite difficult to understand what was going on because much of it was in Xhosa but I picked up the ghist of it and it turned out to be the boy I had been chatting to before class had started sitting right next to me. Anyhow, it seems like it will be quite an interesting experience and I'm excited to get started. I just need to work on my clicks, as some of their names (plus the name of the language itself) have them.

I have an hour before we do take a bus to our homestay at Oceanview, a township south of Cape Town so I will certainly have much to write about in my next blog post.