Date: 1/31/2011
Time: 20:35 - Cape Town Time
Days abroad: 7
sorry for my long blabbery post yesterday....it was a long day and I was very exhausted...today, we had an African drumming class at IAPO orientation. It was so incredibly fun! It made me want to go buy a drum. Only a coupe more days of orientation then I have about a week and a half of freedom before classes start on February 14th. A whole bunch of people are taking a tour up the East coast of S. Africa on a trip called the Garden Route but I think I am going to save my money for a spring break trip and spend my free week exploring Cape Town. A friend (named Alex, I know, I came all the way to Africa and met ANOTHER Alex...I think they are drawn to me) and I found a good deal on a shark cage diving trip so we will probably do that during that week.
I hope all is well Stateside! I am missing everyone a lot and I love hearing from you guys!
Love
Monday, January 31, 2011
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Week one
Date: 1/30/2011
Time: 22:00-Cape Town Time
Days abroad: 6
Oh my gosh, so much to share! Yesterday night was the first time I was able to access any internet since I've been in Cape Town, apologies for the long absence. This city is absolutely incredible.
I'm just letting everyone know that the internet here is slow...and I have to pay per MB of upload or download so facebook is out except when I run down to Main Road to use the internet cafe...I'm not ignoring all of your notifications, I promise, facebook just uses a lot of download space which gets expensive quickly...I got a cell phone here, it costs a small fortune for me to call or text home but if you call or text me it doesnt cost me anything...so maybe international phone cards on the states end is going to be the cheapest form of communication besides email. If you would like my number, email me and I can send it to you :)
I'm not even sure where to start...I guess the beginning...
I arrived late at night the 24th and a very nice man named Godfrey Manuel picked me up from the airport and took me to a City Lodge hotel where I stayed the night. Tuesday Godfrey picked me up at about 11 and took me to the University of Cape Town Campus. Literally as soon as he dropped me off the RAs (our South African student mentors) rushed me through checking in and finding my room for the week of orientation...they dragged my gigantic suitcases upstairs, tossed them in a room and said "put on shorts and close-toed shoes, we're going to walk up Table Mountain". Then they dragged about 100 groggy, jet-lagged, starving Americans up the side of a mountain...it was not a walk. It was a HIKE. There were times when I had to use my hands to help myself get up over rocks...worst hour and a half of my life...I took exactly 1 picture:
It's not even from the top...by the time I got to the top I just wanted to die. I couldnt have cared less about dumb pictures. So...this is Cape Town from about halfway up the side of Table Mountain. Next time, I'm taking the cable car. As you can see, it was quite a beautiful day, one of the warmest since I've been here...probably close to 90ish...everything is in Celsius and I'm not very good with converting it...haha. I walked up with one of our RAs, his name is Remy and he is from Rwanda...he asked me and another girl where we were from and the other girl said "Tennesee" and Remy goes, "Oh, Tennessee! Nashville is the capital!" and she said "hey, you're right, most Americans dont even know that, they all think it is Memphis." and Remy said "I've been studying my states trivia the last two weeks. Most South Africans think the capital of Tennessee is Kentucky." Hahaha. Then he asked what the capital of Oregon is and I told him Salem and his response was "oh yes, now I remember, where the Witch Trials are!" hahaha, so I told him that was Salem, Massachusetts but close enough...I gave him an A for effort. After we climbed in silence for a while, Remy yelled out from behind me "THE VOLUNTEER STATE! That's Tennessee" apparently he had been trying to remember that for the previous five minutes. I thought it was funny that he tried to memorize all the state capital and nicknames...It's a little embarrassing to admit but, I dont even know all the state capitals.
That evening we got back to our dorm at 8ish and I went up to my jail-cell of a bedroom after dinner and passed out cold.
By the next morning most of the CIEE students had arrived...I think there are 158 of us in total. Wednesday and Thursday were spent mostly in boring orientation talks...we broke up into smaller groups for lunches and ice breakers though. There were about 10 people per RA in the small groups. My RA is from Durbin, South Africa. Her name is Namonde and she is maybe 5 feet tall and has more energy than all 10 of us Americans in her group put together. She showed us all of the good places to eat on campus and told us which restaurants to avoid. The money conversion is strange and it kind of takes me by surprise when I calculate how cheap things are...like fast food. They dont have American fast food restaurants (except KFC...there are KFCs literally everywhere. oh, and mcdonalds, of course. though I havent seen one near campus...) but anyway, their fast food menu has like a meal and next to it it says something like 22.50 and at first I was like "holy moly! i'll be broke so fast!" but then I did the conversion and 22.50 rand is less than $4. For a whole meal. Anyway...I've kind of gotten off-topic here...orientation Wed. and Thurs. was fairly unexciting. Thursday we did what they called the AMA-zing race (their attempt to make fun of our American accents) we had to find 14 different locations around campus...My group (Namonde's group) finished first! It took us about 3 hours to get everywhere because the campus is built into the side of a cliff so we were running up and down hills and stairs all aftenoon. anyway, for first place we get to go to a fancy dinner at a place called the Africa Cafe later this week...the motto for the restaurant is "the food tastes so good, you'll wish you had bigger lips" whatever THAT is supposed to mean...
Friday. Friday was my favorite day in Cape Town (until today, that is). Friday we went and visited 3 potential volunteer sites around Cape Town. The study abroad company will provide transportation for us to go out and volunteer if we do it through one of the organizations they are affiliated with...we went to a TB hospital and played with babies first, oh my gosh they were so cute it just broke your heart. Many of the babies' parents had either dropped them off and left to get back to the rest of their children or died in the adult TB ward at the same hospital so the babies dont see their parents for sometimes years at a time, if ever again...they had 40 babies to care for that all were lying in their cribs when we got there. They were so adorable and so happy when we all stopped to talk to them and tickle them. Then we went to a place called the Ark which is a Christian organization that provides housing for orphans, abused women, and families who have lost their source of income and are homeless. When we pulled in hundreds of adorable children from toddlers all the way up to teenagers came running out to give us high fives and hugs and beg us to take pictures of them and their friends. They were so cute in their little school uniforms. The third place we went was a high school called the LEAP high school. What the school does is send tutors to township high schools every week and if a kid shows remarkable diligence and drive with regard to schoolwork, they are admitted to the LEAP school for grades 9-12. Because life in the townships is so hard, the schools are dreadful and most kids dont even finish high school, the idea of college is completely unheard of. so the LEAP school is trying to develop a model that they are hoping the government adopts to fill the gap between township schools and the "better" schools that were the white schools under the Apartheid regime. I think that is the volunteer work I am going to sign up for; I would be going out to the school 2 or 3 times a week and meeting with a group of about 5 girls. It will be the same girls every week and, basically, I will help them with their homework and let them talk to me about whatever they want to talk about. the idea is that they get to build a relationship with someone close to their age who is in school and make it seem like a real possibility to them that they can go to school and get an education and hopefully make a better life for their family then the one they were forced to grow up in.
Friday night they took us out to Stellenbosch to a beautiful winery for dinner. The restaurant was called Moyo and it was at a winery called Spier. Dinner was buffet style but instead of one huge buffet spread they had a bunch of booths with different things at each booth and the chef would cook it in front of you when you told them what you wanted from their booth. It was really cool. The whole restaurant was inside of a giant tent and there were African drummers and dancers and entertainment all night. Our waiter was from the DRC (the Congo) and we asked him to sit with us when we had finished our meal and we talked to him for about 45 minutes...he had a terribly sad story about growing up in the Congo.
Saturday we moved into our semester housing (finally)! I am in a house that is about 10 minutes walk from campus. There are 8 other americans and 1 South African RA (his name is Bule...it sounds like a mixture of boo-lah and boo-kah when they say it...and apparently none of us Americans can say it right....anyway he is from Johannesburg) in my house...there are 2 other houses on the same property, one has 8 Americans and one has 11 Americans and 1 South African so there are 30 of us all living on our little plot. We all have our own bedrooms and the bathroom ratio is about 2 or 3 people per bathroom so, not too bad...we had a moving in barbq yesterday except in South Africa they call it a Braai. They made us South African sausage and Mutton and Chicken. They "do not grill PATTIES here in South Africa" I assume that means they think we are crazy for grilling burgers in the states. They also thought we were crazy because several of us suggested buying some vegetables to grill...they dont do that here either. Haha.
Today was the best day of all! We got up very early and met the rest of the international students at UCT this semester on campus (they were all American, I think America is the only country that sends international students to UCT). We loaded up about 13 chartered buses and they took us on a tour of the entire peninsula south of Cape Town, all the way down to the Cape of Good Hope. We stopped to eat lunch in a township called Ocean View and the kids there put on a performance for us...one little boy did a Michael Jackson medley dance that was the cutest thing ever. I wanted to smuggle him back onto the bus and take him with me.
We saw a billion things but I've only included a couple pictures (I have to pay per MB...and this internet is soooo slow):
This is beach number 4 at Camps Bay...Camps is short for some unpronounceable German name, it isnt called that because people camp there...this is just south of the Cape Town Waterfront District. A very safe part of Cape Town as they have their own police force and the entire community is gated. The locals call the cloud that forms over the mountain the "cloud of death" I have no idea why or the "tablecloth" that one is abit more clear :). either way, it certainly makes for dramatic pictures...this was our first stop on our bus tour today. Also, the beaches at Camps Bay are named beach1, beach 2, beach 3, and beach 4....apparently the British are not very creative beach namers...
These are some of the kids waving goodbye as we left the township of Ocean View after lunch today. This is by far the cleanest and most progressed township I have seen since arriving in Cape Town. The housing here resembles government housing in the States...most of the townships housing consists of 3 sheets of corrugated tin leaned up against your neighbor's tin...horribly sad and unjust.
Our second stop was at the penguin colony!! I have dozens of pictures of them, they were so cute. They are called the African Jackass Penguin because they bray like a donkey. They were so funny to watch play around. And, like most penguins, they mate for life...adorable, right?
One of my fine feathered friends :) so cute
This is the view facing Antarctica from the lighthouse at the Cape of Good Hope. The Indian and Atlantic oceans meet about a 2 hour drive from here but they merge for miles and miles or, as they would say here, "many kilometers" so the water here is still almost a 50/50 mixture of icy Atlantic and warm Indian.
This is the direction post located at the lighthouse at the Cape of Good Hope...notice how everything is north. Rio de Janeiro was the least Northward pointing of all the signs and even it was angled Northwest.
Me and my climbing buddies at the sign. From left to right: Alex from Fort Worth, TX; me; Ariel...I dont remember where she's from; Becca from Virginia; and Chelsea...and I dont think I ever knew where she was from...I believe the east coast somewhere...
Sorry for this long rambling post...as you all can see, it has been an absolutely crazy week. It feels like I am living someone else's life. There are one million and three little details that I have left out but I really need to get off this internet before I spend all my dollars...I will have regular internet access for the rest of my trip and emails are always appreciated. I miss everyone back home! I hope everyone is well
Love
P.s. I received an email from the U of O that a boy who was in my department at school passed away last week. I have known Ellis since freshman year when we took writing 121 together and we have had at least 2 classes together every term since then. I wasn't extremely close to him but my department is quite small so I did know him fairly well. He was always so happy and friendly, overall just a nice, down-to-earth guy; please keep his family in your prayers this week.
Time: 22:00-Cape Town Time
Days abroad: 6
Oh my gosh, so much to share! Yesterday night was the first time I was able to access any internet since I've been in Cape Town, apologies for the long absence. This city is absolutely incredible.
I'm just letting everyone know that the internet here is slow...and I have to pay per MB of upload or download so facebook is out except when I run down to Main Road to use the internet cafe...I'm not ignoring all of your notifications, I promise, facebook just uses a lot of download space which gets expensive quickly...I got a cell phone here, it costs a small fortune for me to call or text home but if you call or text me it doesnt cost me anything...so maybe international phone cards on the states end is going to be the cheapest form of communication besides email. If you would like my number, email me and I can send it to you :)
I'm not even sure where to start...I guess the beginning...
I arrived late at night the 24th and a very nice man named Godfrey Manuel picked me up from the airport and took me to a City Lodge hotel where I stayed the night. Tuesday Godfrey picked me up at about 11 and took me to the University of Cape Town Campus. Literally as soon as he dropped me off the RAs (our South African student mentors) rushed me through checking in and finding my room for the week of orientation...they dragged my gigantic suitcases upstairs, tossed them in a room and said "put on shorts and close-toed shoes, we're going to walk up Table Mountain". Then they dragged about 100 groggy, jet-lagged, starving Americans up the side of a mountain...it was not a walk. It was a HIKE. There were times when I had to use my hands to help myself get up over rocks...worst hour and a half of my life...I took exactly 1 picture:
It's not even from the top...by the time I got to the top I just wanted to die. I couldnt have cared less about dumb pictures. So...this is Cape Town from about halfway up the side of Table Mountain. Next time, I'm taking the cable car. As you can see, it was quite a beautiful day, one of the warmest since I've been here...probably close to 90ish...everything is in Celsius and I'm not very good with converting it...haha. I walked up with one of our RAs, his name is Remy and he is from Rwanda...he asked me and another girl where we were from and the other girl said "Tennesee" and Remy goes, "Oh, Tennessee! Nashville is the capital!" and she said "hey, you're right, most Americans dont even know that, they all think it is Memphis." and Remy said "I've been studying my states trivia the last two weeks. Most South Africans think the capital of Tennessee is Kentucky." Hahaha. Then he asked what the capital of Oregon is and I told him Salem and his response was "oh yes, now I remember, where the Witch Trials are!" hahaha, so I told him that was Salem, Massachusetts but close enough...I gave him an A for effort. After we climbed in silence for a while, Remy yelled out from behind me "THE VOLUNTEER STATE! That's Tennessee" apparently he had been trying to remember that for the previous five minutes. I thought it was funny that he tried to memorize all the state capital and nicknames...It's a little embarrassing to admit but, I dont even know all the state capitals.That evening we got back to our dorm at 8ish and I went up to my jail-cell of a bedroom after dinner and passed out cold.
By the next morning most of the CIEE students had arrived...I think there are 158 of us in total. Wednesday and Thursday were spent mostly in boring orientation talks...we broke up into smaller groups for lunches and ice breakers though. There were about 10 people per RA in the small groups. My RA is from Durbin, South Africa. Her name is Namonde and she is maybe 5 feet tall and has more energy than all 10 of us Americans in her group put together. She showed us all of the good places to eat on campus and told us which restaurants to avoid. The money conversion is strange and it kind of takes me by surprise when I calculate how cheap things are...like fast food. They dont have American fast food restaurants (except KFC...there are KFCs literally everywhere. oh, and mcdonalds, of course. though I havent seen one near campus...) but anyway, their fast food menu has like a meal and next to it it says something like 22.50 and at first I was like "holy moly! i'll be broke so fast!" but then I did the conversion and 22.50 rand is less than $4. For a whole meal. Anyway...I've kind of gotten off-topic here...orientation Wed. and Thurs. was fairly unexciting. Thursday we did what they called the AMA-zing race (their attempt to make fun of our American accents) we had to find 14 different locations around campus...My group (Namonde's group) finished first! It took us about 3 hours to get everywhere because the campus is built into the side of a cliff so we were running up and down hills and stairs all aftenoon. anyway, for first place we get to go to a fancy dinner at a place called the Africa Cafe later this week...the motto for the restaurant is "the food tastes so good, you'll wish you had bigger lips" whatever THAT is supposed to mean...
Friday. Friday was my favorite day in Cape Town (until today, that is). Friday we went and visited 3 potential volunteer sites around Cape Town. The study abroad company will provide transportation for us to go out and volunteer if we do it through one of the organizations they are affiliated with...we went to a TB hospital and played with babies first, oh my gosh they were so cute it just broke your heart. Many of the babies' parents had either dropped them off and left to get back to the rest of their children or died in the adult TB ward at the same hospital so the babies dont see their parents for sometimes years at a time, if ever again...they had 40 babies to care for that all were lying in their cribs when we got there. They were so adorable and so happy when we all stopped to talk to them and tickle them. Then we went to a place called the Ark which is a Christian organization that provides housing for orphans, abused women, and families who have lost their source of income and are homeless. When we pulled in hundreds of adorable children from toddlers all the way up to teenagers came running out to give us high fives and hugs and beg us to take pictures of them and their friends. They were so cute in their little school uniforms. The third place we went was a high school called the LEAP high school. What the school does is send tutors to township high schools every week and if a kid shows remarkable diligence and drive with regard to schoolwork, they are admitted to the LEAP school for grades 9-12. Because life in the townships is so hard, the schools are dreadful and most kids dont even finish high school, the idea of college is completely unheard of. so the LEAP school is trying to develop a model that they are hoping the government adopts to fill the gap between township schools and the "better" schools that were the white schools under the Apartheid regime. I think that is the volunteer work I am going to sign up for; I would be going out to the school 2 or 3 times a week and meeting with a group of about 5 girls. It will be the same girls every week and, basically, I will help them with their homework and let them talk to me about whatever they want to talk about. the idea is that they get to build a relationship with someone close to their age who is in school and make it seem like a real possibility to them that they can go to school and get an education and hopefully make a better life for their family then the one they were forced to grow up in.
Friday night they took us out to Stellenbosch to a beautiful winery for dinner. The restaurant was called Moyo and it was at a winery called Spier. Dinner was buffet style but instead of one huge buffet spread they had a bunch of booths with different things at each booth and the chef would cook it in front of you when you told them what you wanted from their booth. It was really cool. The whole restaurant was inside of a giant tent and there were African drummers and dancers and entertainment all night. Our waiter was from the DRC (the Congo) and we asked him to sit with us when we had finished our meal and we talked to him for about 45 minutes...he had a terribly sad story about growing up in the Congo.
Saturday we moved into our semester housing (finally)! I am in a house that is about 10 minutes walk from campus. There are 8 other americans and 1 South African RA (his name is Bule...it sounds like a mixture of boo-lah and boo-kah when they say it...and apparently none of us Americans can say it right....anyway he is from Johannesburg) in my house...there are 2 other houses on the same property, one has 8 Americans and one has 11 Americans and 1 South African so there are 30 of us all living on our little plot. We all have our own bedrooms and the bathroom ratio is about 2 or 3 people per bathroom so, not too bad...we had a moving in barbq yesterday except in South Africa they call it a Braai. They made us South African sausage and Mutton and Chicken. They "do not grill PATTIES here in South Africa" I assume that means they think we are crazy for grilling burgers in the states. They also thought we were crazy because several of us suggested buying some vegetables to grill...they dont do that here either. Haha.
Today was the best day of all! We got up very early and met the rest of the international students at UCT this semester on campus (they were all American, I think America is the only country that sends international students to UCT). We loaded up about 13 chartered buses and they took us on a tour of the entire peninsula south of Cape Town, all the way down to the Cape of Good Hope. We stopped to eat lunch in a township called Ocean View and the kids there put on a performance for us...one little boy did a Michael Jackson medley dance that was the cutest thing ever. I wanted to smuggle him back onto the bus and take him with me.
We saw a billion things but I've only included a couple pictures (I have to pay per MB...and this internet is soooo slow):
This is beach number 4 at Camps Bay...Camps is short for some unpronounceable German name, it isnt called that because people camp there...this is just south of the Cape Town Waterfront District. A very safe part of Cape Town as they have their own police force and the entire community is gated. The locals call the cloud that forms over the mountain the "cloud of death" I have no idea why or the "tablecloth" that one is abit more clear :). either way, it certainly makes for dramatic pictures...this was our first stop on our bus tour today. Also, the beaches at Camps Bay are named beach1, beach 2, beach 3, and beach 4....apparently the British are not very creative beach namers...
These are some of the kids waving goodbye as we left the township of Ocean View after lunch today. This is by far the cleanest and most progressed township I have seen since arriving in Cape Town. The housing here resembles government housing in the States...most of the townships housing consists of 3 sheets of corrugated tin leaned up against your neighbor's tin...horribly sad and unjust.
Our second stop was at the penguin colony!! I have dozens of pictures of them, they were so cute. They are called the African Jackass Penguin because they bray like a donkey. They were so funny to watch play around. And, like most penguins, they mate for life...adorable, right?
One of my fine feathered friends :) so cute
This is the view facing Antarctica from the lighthouse at the Cape of Good Hope. The Indian and Atlantic oceans meet about a 2 hour drive from here but they merge for miles and miles or, as they would say here, "many kilometers" so the water here is still almost a 50/50 mixture of icy Atlantic and warm Indian.
This is the direction post located at the lighthouse at the Cape of Good Hope...notice how everything is north. Rio de Janeiro was the least Northward pointing of all the signs and even it was angled Northwest.
Me and my climbing buddies at the sign. From left to right: Alex from Fort Worth, TX; me; Ariel...I dont remember where she's from; Becca from Virginia; and Chelsea...and I dont think I ever knew where she was from...I believe the east coast somewhere...Sorry for this long rambling post...as you all can see, it has been an absolutely crazy week. It feels like I am living someone else's life. There are one million and three little details that I have left out but I really need to get off this internet before I spend all my dollars...I will have regular internet access for the rest of my trip and emails are always appreciated. I miss everyone back home! I hope everyone is well
Love
P.s. I received an email from the U of O that a boy who was in my department at school passed away last week. I have known Ellis since freshman year when we took writing 121 together and we have had at least 2 classes together every term since then. I wasn't extremely close to him but my department is quite small so I did know him fairly well. He was always so happy and friendly, overall just a nice, down-to-earth guy; please keep his family in your prayers this week.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Tomorrow, Tomorrow...
Date: 1/22/2011 10:30PST
Days abroad: -1
Post #: 1
well...almost....
Tomorrow at 6:55am PST I am taking off on the adventure of a lifetime...18 weeks at the University of Cape Town in Cape Town, South Africa...well, technically, I'll be taking off for about 30 looooong hours. THEN the adventure of a lifetime! Tomorrow I hit Minneapolis then Amsterdam and the next day I'll touch down in Cape Town...I'm exhausted just thinking about it...
After months and months of stressful preparation, I apologize and whole-heartedly thank all of you who have helped, supported, guided, and listened to me whine while I pulled all of the loose ends of this trip together. Hopefully, this little blog will help make up for some of my griping...because, even though I couldn't pack any of you up into my little (cough, very large) suitcase, you can all bear witness to some of my adventures (and misadventures) as I try to navigate a new country.
I've never blogged before so bear with me as I try to use this thing...and I apologize in advance for the glitches I am sure to encounter.
I literally just spent half an hour trying to figure out how to download pictures off the fancy camera my mama has been kind enough to let me borrow...BUT! perseverance wins! pictures successfully downloaded! (and my favorite added to this post...as proof!)
As you can see...Mama is very excited about me going to Africa...haha. (actually, she got up at 1pm...yesterday. Then worked all night. then didnt sleep and ran all over the countryside for me...I guess I should cut her some slack...she's sleepy head.)
Anyways...you can all follow me on this lovely little blog :) isn't technology grand?
The best way to contact me between now and June is going to be by email. I'm at kailee.ramp@gmail.com if you would like more personal details (like an address) you can email me and I'll let you know...I dont have an exact mailing address yet. Plus, I dont want any creepy stalkers so I wont be a dummy and put my address up here for all to see. I will also have some access to social networking (that's a fancy way to say facebook, Dad) though it will definitely be more limited access than what I have here in the states...
I'm off to double check my passport and ticket confirmation for the one MILLIONTH time. then to pretend to get some sleep...4am comes awfully early
Love
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