Settling In

Day 15 in South Africa and still having the time of my life. I have never felt so happy and excited and just an overall thrill for life.

Since the last time I blogged, I have made another trip into Cape Town as well as making a trip to the Cape of Good Hope and visited the most southern tip of Africa.

Our beach day in Cape Town ended up being a windy disaster. Found sand in places I never knew existed and we all seemed to forget that clouds can still burn you. The next day we all soaked ourselves in aloe vera and wrapped up in wet towels. None the less it was a great time. Went around and saw all the venders and I am excited to bring home some incredible gifts for my friends and family.

Yesterday we drove to boulder beach where we saw penguins and got to spend some time near the ocean, and then we drove to Cape of Good Hope. If anyone has seen the Planet of the Apes movie; it’s happening. Baboons were everywhere and have come to find they’re the ass holes of the monkeys. Example one, while I was walking back to the bus a baboon stole my muffin and I am pretty positive I saw it give one of its friends a high five afterwards. And example two, apparently a poor kid got his wallet pick pocketed by one only an hour before our group had arrived. What monkeys are doing with currency is beyond me but all I have to say is the monkey apocalypse is here.  

I am still meeting some great people here and having lots of fun. Me and my friend Hannah met some locals and got to go watch the sun rise then hiked up and swam in a river a little bit outside of Stellenbosch. It was an amazing experience and it was nice to hear what this country has to offer from actual locals and not from reading a pamphlet.

Friday I had my first meetings for a couple of the classes I am interested in and they both seem like a lot of fun. I also had my meeting for a volunteer group called LCE. It’s a volunteer opportunity where we get to go visit a school Kayamandi and help kids with their school work and get to do activities like dancing, art, sports and music. The instructor for the class is absolutely amazing. He was incredibly inspirational and just the meeting alone was very moving. He does amazing work for these kids and he has an amazing outlook on the circumstance that these children are in. They even refer to him as the ghandi of Africa. Because of my schedule for school, the timing for the volunteer group happens to conflict with my schedule, but I have been talking to the instructor and am trying to arrange a different opportunity to volunteer and see a different side to South Africa.

I have my very first class today in drawing and I am incredibly excited! I need structure and routine back in my life because I was starting to feel like everyone is just on vacation here. It also doesn’t help with a handful of people turning 21 that it has made the idea of sleep a completely new concept to me. But I am finally somewhat well rested and ready for my first class as a student at Stellenbosch University. I also am finally starting to understand my way around here with the occasional walking the exact opposite direction of where I was intending to go. So I am hoping that I don’t look too foreign on campus.

Although it has only been a little bit over two weeks here, I can already tell how much this experience is going to change me as a person. I already feel like I have grown so much. I feel like time is going by too fast and before I know it, I will be on the plane back home. As much as I miss all of my friends and family, I can’t help but feel nervous about going back home to my usual way of life as a person who has grown so rapidly and has developed a completely different perspective on life then when she came here. But I can’t wait to come home and share my experience with all of you besides having to read it.

I still feel like I am living in a fantasy land and I am not really sure if it will ever register in my mind that I am in Africa. I still can’t wait for more memories to make and more things to share.