First Day in Cape Town!

After an almost 12 hour flight from London, I arrived in Cape Town today around 9:00 am. The program RA’s were there to meet us and we were taken back to campus in a Jammy, or a university shuttle bus. As we drove to campus, we passed a shanty town. Even though its residents were obviously poor, it had an upbeat feel to it. All of the houses were painted bright colors and many of them had really beautiful murals. When we drove by, there were horses wandering around the outskirts of the area and through the town, which struck me as odd. Hopefully I will have a chance to visit and learn more about the community. I would have liked to take pictures, but we had already passed it by the time I got out my camera, but I did get a picture of some acacia(?) trees.

For orientation week we will be staying in a dorm, otherwise known as a res, before we move into our permanent living spaces. I am sharing my room with Sydney, who I know from AU. There are a lot of other students from American here which is nice because I already know some people right off the bat. After I got settled in, the RA’s took us to a barbecue restaurant that is just a few blocks away from the res. Because there were so many of us we had to get it for ‘take away’ and brought it back to campus to eat.

At 3:00 the program took us on an outing to Table Mountain. We had the option to hike up or take the cable cars to the top, but since we were told that the hike was an easy 45 minutes most people decided to do the hike. It was VERY steep—imagine doing a Jillian workout that only involves your calves and quads for an hour and a half, which was how long it actually took us. Thank goodness that I had a backpack that carried extra water bottles, emergen-c, and sunscreen comfortably! But when we got to the top the view from the mountain was amazing—the pictures don’t do it justice.

At the top, I met an Afrikaans man and his English wife who took my picture for me. They explained to me that most white people in South Africa are fluent in both Afrikaans and English and learn a little bit of an African language in school while most black people in South Africa speak English and their tribal language and most can also understand Zulu, although Xhosa is more predominant in Cape Town. His children go to an English school because it is the only one in the area, but his sons also speak Afrikaans when they are trying to persuade him to do something (otherwise they prefer English). He also taught me that a braai is a barbecue made out of coal (not on a gas barbecue) and that hello is pronounced the same in both Afrikaans and English (hallow).