Date: 13 Feb 2011
Time: 14:36 in Cape Town
Days abroad: 21
It’s been a while…10 days..? yikes. I would say I’ve just been too busy to blog but that may not be entirely true. Last week we had a week of freedom before classes start so most of the people in my program took off to do something called the Garden Route. Basically, they drove along the coast of South Africa for a week stopping at various animal parks and tourist destinations. I decided to stay here (in Cape Town) that week and try to get comfortable navigating the city and campus before school gets into full swing. I finally got all registered for my classes about a week ago…and Friday they had like an intro day where we went to classes and the professors gave an overview of the course…I think my classes will be very interesting. I’m taking a little break from my usual parade if science classes and labs…I registered for a sociology class, medical anthropology, health psychology, and intro to politics. It should be cool because all of them focus on South Africa specifically; so, for health psychology we will be talking about chronic diseases in South Africa (TB, HIV, cancer, asthma…etc).
This picture is of Jameson Hall, which is the big main building on upper campus. It is all administration and the library and stuff, no classes are taught here, but it was the campus’ first building. It is gorgeous with the mountain in the background…there are 100 stairs between where I was standing when I took the picture and the front door of the building…I had already climbed 2 flights of stairs, crossed a rugby field, and hiked up a hill for about 6 blocks by the time I got here. My calves are going to be so toned when I get home…
Anyway, enough about boring classes. I did some fun things last week while I was hanging around town…one of the RAs wanted to take us to a Mexican restaurant in a suburb called Clairemont one night (Clairemont is next to our suburb, Rondebosch) so about 15 of us caught the shuttle from campus. The campus shuttles are called the Jammie shuttle and they go all over the place…two go to different places downtown, one goes to Clairemont, one goes to Mowbray (another suburb), they go between res halls, and their main function is to go from lower campus to upper campus because UCTs campus is literally built ON A MOUNTAIN. It is like a half hour hike up a huge hill then up one million stairs from my house which is located near middle campus to the upper campus where classes are held…shoot, I’m rambling…ok, so we caught the Jammie to Clairemont. And it took like 20 minutes to get to the Clairemont mall, ok cool, 20 minutes isn’t bad. Then we walked to the restaurant…it was called something Havana, which made me think maybe it was Cuban…? The waitress called them case-a-dill-ahs. And the case-a-dill-ahs had crazy stuff in them…like pickles. And mayonnaise. So I asked the RA who took us if there are Latinos in South Africa. He laughed…I took that as a no. hahaa. Well, after we were done eating, the Jammie had stopped running for the night so we were just going to call some cabs but a friend of the RA who lives in my house happened to be at the restaurant too so he took 4 of us home…the car ride took about 2 minutes. It was like left turn, right turn, home. I looked at one of the guys in the backseat and I was like..umm, where on earth did the Jammie take us that it took TWENTY MINUTES to get there. It was hilarious. That is how things tend to work here. Also, I don’t think the Jammie has a schedule. I cant find one anywhere. I just go to the Jammie stop and stand there and wait until one that has the name of where I want to go shows up. Sometimes it’s within 5 minutes and sometimes I have to wait 40 minutes. It’s really bizarre.
One day I went with some friends down to a place in downtown called District 6 to go to the District 6 museum. I had heard it was one of the must-see things in downtown…so we thought we’d give it a shot. The museum was small but it was packed so full of information…I learned more that day than I have learned the rest of my trip. District 6 was a black neighborhood and in the 60s (under the Apartheid government) all the residents were forcibly removed and their homes were all bulldozed to make room for a white suburb. Crazy stuff. Now there is a plaque mounted outside the museum that they put up in the 90s when Apartheid ended…
Thursday, February 10, a couple of friends and I signed up for shark cage diving! Oh my gosh it was so much fun. A van picked us up at our house and drove us about 2ish hours south to a town called Kleinbaai which is located on the shore of the most densely populated great white waters in the world. On the way, our bus driver talked to us about different parts of Cape Town, mostly things we had heard on our tour of the cape peninsula a couple if weeks ago. But, I did learn as we drove through Khayelitsha (a township outside of Cape Town): 
that it is the largest township in the Cape Town area and that 1.4 MILLION PEOPLE live there. That is an insanely large amount of people. Once we got to Kleinbaai, they fed about 20 of us breakfast then put us on a boat and we headed out to sea. We learned that the great whites love to hang out in “shark alley” between 2 islands off the coast because one of the islands is home to about 40,000 seals. If you have seen the discovery channel, you know, sharks like seals. Apparently there are no residential great whites who stay here permanently. Most hang out for somewhere between a day and a week before they migrate elsewhere. They are one of the most nomadic animals on earth. So, the water in Kleinbaai is still a large portion Atlantic and only a small portion Indian ocean current so the water was COLD. Like Oregon Coast cold. They gave us wetsuits and we got in the cage 5 at a time.
The cage stayed attached to the boat and we just did simple hold your breath dives when a shark came around. We had goggles and weights and whatnot and there was a spotter on the boat who would yell “down down down!” whenever a shark came near enough to the cage that we could all see it and we would take a deep breath and pull ourselves to the bottom of the cage. Over the course of the day we saw about 15 different great whites which, the skipper told me, was a really really fortunate day. We didn’t have to wait any length of time for sharks to show up and more and more just kept coming around. 
At one point, one of the smaller sharks launched itself at the tuna head we were using as bait and missed and got the buoy on the end of the cage where I was. He thrashed violently and his eye rolled back and it was the most terrified I had ever been in my whole life. I thought for sure that I was going to lose an arm. I bought the DVD that the videographer on the boat made of the day as proof in case none of my underwater point and shoot camera pictures come out. That was, by far, the most exciting day of my week. Friday night a couple of us went to a party downtown hosted by RAG which is an on-campus fundraising group. The party was called the Big Bash, there was a huge stage and a DJ and it was sponsored by Smirnoff so there was a giant bar and tons of students. They closed off a big courtyard park thing in downtown for it…it was crazy but very fun. Unfortunately, a lot of the boys got pick-pocketed while on the dance floor. Several people who live in my house got their keys, phones, and wallets taken.
Oh! Also! A friend of mine in the program got mugged the other day. In the middle of the afternoon. In broad daylight. Scary! She is in a homestay and she walked home one day and she was waiting for her host-mom to buzz her in the gate and a guy walked up to her and showed her his knife and politely asked her for her phone and her wallet. Of course, she gave them to him and he walked away. Poor girl, I would’ve just died right there but she is so calm about it. The RA who took us to Mexican food, Faraih, told me that the muggers here are all really polite. They will just show you a knife and ask nicely for you to give them your things. They wont ever grab you or chase you down or anything. So, I guess that is good. If I’m going to be mugged, I would rather the mugger be polite and not really mean and threatening…right? I don’t carry anything with me that is worth taking. Usually just my cheap pay-as-you-go phone and like 200 rand in cash…which is about 28 US dollars. If he wants my $28 badly enough to show me a knife…he can have it. This explains why I haven’t taken massive amount of pictures…I am too scared to take my camera out if I’m going somewhere for the day…that is just one more thing that somebody might want to take…
Next weekend my RA is planning on taking us to Mzolies which is a township where you go and they give you a huge beer and a lot of meat to eat. They have a giant Braai (barbq) going all day and they just serve you meat. Tons of meat. Apparently it is like the ultimate experience that everyone has to do when they come here. Also, next weekend, we are going to Robben Island. Which is the island where Nelson Mandela was held as a prisoner until the prison on the island closed and he was sent to a max security prison in Cape Town. It should be an exciting weekend.
I fell like I have so much more to tell but theis post is already like a small novel. I also feel like the things I say on here cannot do justice to Cape Town…it is hard to capture the essence of a city on a blog.
I hope everyone is doing well in the states; I miss you all very very much. I need to go start some readings for school…homework, gross.
Enjoy the photos!
Love
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