South Africa

SOUTH AFRICA
South Africa is AMAZING, well Cape Town is at least. I didn’t leave Cape Town so I didn’t see anything else in South Africa. There is SO much to do in Cape Town/South Africa, I want to move here, it is the coolest city ever. It’s not too big, but it is still a city, and it’s very quaint. It is kind of like California, but a way better atmosphere. There really aren’t many skyscrapers at all either. The only bad thing about Cape Town is the crime, there were TONS of kids that got pick pocketed and a few that got jumped. It’s amazing apartheid was here not too long ago because everything seems to be so integrated. The guys in South Africa are really good looking too, haha. Long Street is the main street in Cape Town that has tons of shopping, restaurants, bars, etc. It is so cute, I loved Long Street, we went there a lot.

The first day I had an FDP (field directed practica, it was a trip with SAS that I had to do for a paper for my finance class) called Wine Production and Management. The FDP started at 12, so I had like 2 hours to kill until then, so I just walked around the shops right outside the ship. The ship was located in a great location, it was in this really busy part with tons of restaurants and a huge mall, it was really convenient. When the FDP finally started, we took a bus out to the winelands, which was maybe an hour away. The first winery we went to was called something with a B, I don’t remember, I have it somewhere., it was a family business. The winelands are SO gorgeous, driving out there was so pretty, everything is so green and there are tons of random mountains. We learned about their production and finance crap, and then we got to do the wine tasting. We learned how to properly taste wine. We had 5 different wine glasses in front of us, two were white wine, two were red, and one was brandy. I really liked all the wine, it was so good. The wine we were drinking would be $300 bottles in the U.S., the wine is so good, and it would only cost like $30 to buy a bottle in South Africa, it’s SO expensive in the U.S. because of all the import taxes on it. The brandy was SOOOO strong, but it was so good, I don’t like brandy and I even liked it, even though it was really hard to take down straight. After the wine tasting we went to the shop to buy whatever, but I didn’t but anything. The next winery we went to was about 10-15 minutes away and seemed smaller than the previous winery. We learned about their company and everything, then we got a tour of the cellar, which was filled with tons of huge tanks, and it smelled so strongly of wine. The guy talked for so long and it was really boring, I totally tuned out for this part. After the cellar we went to the wine tasting and with this one we got cheese and crackers, everyone was so excited, we were all starving. I like all this wine too, I think we tried 4 again, maybe 3, some red and white again. After the wine tasting we went to buy stuff again, I bought some wine glasses, they were pretty inexpensive, like 2 bucks each, they were nice too, they are engraved and everything. Anyways, we got back on the bus and headed back to the ship. We got back around 6:15, and all of my friends left at 6 for this spiritual dance, which I really wanted to go to, but I missed them by 15 minutes (we do spiritual dance on the ship it’s really fun, this life long learner Jenny does it and she was taking us to this more traditional one in Cape Town, I was bummed I missed it). So I found some random people to go out with on the ship because all my friends were gone. It was fun though, its nice to hang out with new people sometimes. We just went to Mitchell’s for a drink, which was a local hotspot on the waterfront that everyone went to all the time while we were here. Then we went out to Long Street where everyone was going out, and we ran into basically everyone on SAS, I ended up seeing my friends out later that night.

The next day I had to get up earlier because I had another SAS trip, it was called Operation Hunger. Operation Hunger is a NGO that helps with poor township communities and feeds them and looks out for them and so on. We had to meet at the bus at 8am so I was really tired when I got up. The first place we went was a clinic where people come to get food. There were tons of people waiting for food and there was like no food prepared. Some of the students handed a few of the meals out, but not everyone because there was not enough food for everyone to hand out. We were here for like maybe 20 minutes and we just listened to them talk forever. It was really sad to see everyone just waiting for food, I bet they wait there for so long. After the clinic we went to a township, it was called Los Angeles, it is one of the many townships that operation hunger is a part of. For those who don’t know what a township is, it is where black people lived during apartheid, which ended not too long ago, like 1992 I think. And there are still tons of people living in these poor townships. The township was seriously so sad, we walked in and it was just this desert area and all sandy, filled with tiny falling apart shacks all over the place, just one after another. This township, Los Angeles, looked poorer than some of the other ones we drove past. We walked like 5 minutes into the township to this area where there were tons of children. People leading the trip were talking for a while, but most of us weren’t listening and we were just playing with the kids, there were probably about 30 of them, they were so freaking cute, all of them. They were all ages from newborn (there weren’t too many of those) to like 14, most more around 7 or so, there were only a few older ones. Anyways, we were at this spot for SO long, we played with the kids the entire time, they absolutely loved us. They were hanging all over the guys. The guys were like running away because they wouldn’t give them a break, they were just sweating bullets. The little kids were OBSESSED with taking pictures on our cameras, there were always cameras being passed around with kids taking pictures, I have at least 20 photos of myself on my camera because they would just snap pictures of me. IT was so funny to see little African kids just running around all over with cameras all over the place. I didn’t take like any of the amazing pictures on my camera from the township. While we were at the township our job was to weigh all the kids, and then we wrote how much they weighed on their arm, and we took them over to the next station where they recorded their name, age, and weight. This took a really long time because the kids are so playful and it was so much work trying to get them all to get in line. I didn’t do the graphing part, but the data was analyzed and each kid had been analyzed to see how many standard deviations away from the mean they lied, so 0 was where they wanted to be, if they were plus 1 they were a little “overweight”, or -1, a little underweight. None of the kids were 0, they were mostly 1’s, -1’s, some 2’s and negative 2’s. Anyways, we were there until about 1pm, then we drove to get lunch at this like fast-food/gas station. There were boxed lunches, but I didn’t grab one, I just got a toasted sandwich at the fast food place. After lunch, we went back to the township to see this performance the kids were going to show us. We walked through the township again and up the hill to this little tiny shack. IT was really small and we all squeezed in. There were these 3 professional dancers, who were originally from here, I don’t know if they were from this specific township, but I know they were form around here, and they all like went to the US on dance scholarship and were like professionally dancing, anyways they moved back to Africa to give back to the community and help. They were such beautiful people and it really touched me how much they cared to help. They told us their story and then the kids did their dance. They had no music, so one of the teacher guys just used a drum and they would just do counts of like 8 for different little steps, the dance is the CUTEST thing I have ever seen in my entire life, I was like almost crying because they were so cute and the kids had absolutely nothing, and they were still so happy and they were so excited to show us their dance and these people were so amazing to help these little kids, it was just so amazing and I was trying so hard not to cry. I have a video of these kids dancing, it is so freaking cute, they are really good too. After the kids danced the professional dancers did a short little dance and they were SO good, I have a video of them too. After their dance, the kids did another little dance that was similar to the last one, but it was shorter, they were so freaking cute, I’m so glad I have it on video, it’s honestly the cutest thing I have ever seen. I watched the video so many times. After their dance, we walked back down to where we were earlier and we gave the kids food, a lot of it was our extra food from lunch. I have the most amazing pictures from this. This was such an amazing experience and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. IT was really emotional though, no one really knows what it’s like until they actually go there. I know I’ve heard about poor people in Africa my whole life, especially on this voyage before getting here, but you really truly don’t know until you actually go there and experience it. I think everyone should have an experience like this, it is so meaningful. I think it is necessary that everyone does this really. No matter how hard I try and explain it, words can’t even explain. It really truly makes you appreciate what you have, it really puts things into perspective too. These kids seem so happy with absolutely nothing, and we live these lives completely different that they do and we still complain. It makes me sick that we can complain about things in our lives that are meaningless, when we could be living in their situation and they are still happy; they don’t know anything better, I can’t even imagine how one of these children would react if they saw how we lived. This experience really had a huge impact on me. Anyways, after the township we got back on the bus and drove back to our box of a world on the ship. IT was around dinner time and I met my friend Noel on the ship. She was with this other girl Christina who I am kind of friends with, she actually went to Homestead. Anyways, us three went to get food on Long Street and we ended up seeing Lindsay, Laurel, and Emily (my other 3 good friends-linds is the roomie too) on the street. We all went to eat at this cute little place and most of us got the best veggie burgers EVER. I got this hummus veggie burger and it was awesome. I was so full after dinner. After dinner we went and got drinks at this really cute place that was outside. Then we went to this other place and sat outside and got drinks for “happy hour”, which was from 10pm to 11, I think. After that we were all so tired and crashing, so we took a taxi back to the ship and went to sleep.

The next day I hung out with Emily and Noel and we started our day going to the craft market, which was near the ship on the water front. It was really cute, they had really neat things. I like African markets so much more than all the other places because they aren’t grabby AT ALL, it is so reliving. The craft market was a little more expensive than other places, so I didn’t buy anything. I just got 2 braids in my hair, they braided colored hair into it, I have one maroon/pink one and another purple one. They are both on the left side of my head, they are cute, they have beads at the end of it too. Emily got 3 of them, Noel got just 1. After we got our braids we went to Long Street. We were starving so we got lunch at this place called the Clay Oven. Noel and I got nachos and then we split a pizza. After lunch we went to the green market, which was this outside market on the side of long street. They had really cool stuff here too. I really liked this market, it wasn’t overwhelmingly large either. After the market we went to the beach, it was like a 15 minute or so cab, everything in Cape Town is so close it’s awesome. The beach was absolutely GORGEOUS. The water was freeezzzzzzing though, we didn’t go in. There was a cute street next to the beach and there was a big cliff/mountain behind the beach, there were tons of little houses on it. The beach was called Camps Bay. Oh, I broke my camera here, such a buzzkill. I was handing it to Noel to take my picture and it someone dropped in the sand and then it wouldn’t work after that. Anyways, we ran into Jenny Finn here too, she’s this amazing LLC on the ship (Living learning coordinator), she teaches spiritual dance too, she’s so amazing. She was with her 2 kids and husband, Noel and I were playing with them and they buried me in the sand. The sand here was so sticky and it would not come off my body. I tried rinsing off the shower, and it would not really come off, the shower was SO freaking cold too, I was freaking out, noel thought it was so funny. We ran into Linds and Laurel at the beach too so we all took a cab back to the ship together. We passed the world cup stadium too on the way back to the ship, it was cool to see I guess. When we got back to the ship we all got ready for the night and stopped at the place next to Mitchell’s for a quick drink, and then headed to Long Street for dinner. Me, Laurel, Linds, and Noel went to eat at the place we got happy hour drinks from the night before. After dinner we met up with Emily at this bar. Emily and Laurel left to go to this Steve Aoki concert, he is this famous Japanese DJ. When they left, we headed to this other bar called Ivy, there were tons of SAS kids here. That was basically it, Emily and Laurel met up with us later after the concert.

The next morning I woke up early and walked to the mall right outside the ship to get a new camera. I bought a nicer digital camera from this cute older man. He asked me if I wanted a case and I said sure how much and he just said I’ll give it to you for free because I’d been so nice, he was so cute. On my way walking back to the ship I ran into Lindsay and Noel, and we walked to Mitchell’s for breakfast, we got breakfast pizza, it was really good. After breakfast we walked back to the ship to get Emily, but we couldn’t find her, so we just left her a note and left to go to table mountain, it’s this flat top mountain in Cape Town. We had the cutest cab driver, it is how I picture white south Africans. He was so friendly and really tan, he loved us, he talked to us about everything, he was such a nice man. He talked about the war he fought in, I don’t really know what one it was. I took a picture with him, he was unforgettable. We got to table mountain and we were being touristy and looked in the shops right there, I just bought a sticker. Lindsay was being so funny, she bought Cape Town shirts and she regretted it after she bought it, it was so funny, we were all in a really weird mood and we were laughing at everything and just being so weird. Anyways, we got tickets for the cable car, we didn’t want to hike it, the cable car looked like more fun. There were two giant cable cars that went up to the top of table mountain that fit a huge group of people in one at a time. We waited for a little while for our turn. We got in the cable car and it was so funny, the floor spinned so we got a view from every angle; I don’t think this is normal, but some how our group in the cable car started screaming so loud, everyone was yelling, it was so funny, I think we started it, it was absolutely hilarious. We could see the entire view of cape town and the ocean, it was so pretty. When we got on top of the mountain it was really foggy when we were up there so we couldn’t see anything, it was seriously really cold too. We just walked around for a little while and then got in line to take it back down. While we were near the line to go back down, Noel heard these men speaking Arabic, and Noel’s parents are from Sierra so she speaks fluent Arabic so she just said something to them in Arabic, and they started talking to us, they were from Egypt and they were professional chess players from Egypt and they had a match or something in Cape Town, haha. We talked to them for a little bit, they loved us, they wanted pictures with us. Anyways, we took the cable care back down and got in this random shuttle to take us to long street. We walked around long street and went in some of the shops; we stopped and got nachos and a drink at the Clay Oven again because it was almost dinner and we were starving. After we ate we took a cab back to the ship. Before we got back to the ship we walked around the giant mall right next to the ship for a while. After the mall we all got ready and met up with Emily and we went to dinner at this really cute restaurant in the waterfront, it was really nice. I got a salad because I wasn’t very hungry, the food was so good though. WE got two bottles of white wine with dinner, the wine was SO good. We stayed at the restaurant for SO long, we closed it down, when we left there was no one there. After dinner we went to meet Emily’s friend Ari that is studying abroad in Cape Town, we hung out with him and his friend all night, they were cool, the went to Wisconsin and Michigan. We went to two places called the waiting room and Joburg’s. The next morning we woke up and we went to lunchish at this restaurant in the mall, we brought our computers with us to try and get internet somewhere, but we didn’t really find anything. We walked around the mall for a while after lunch at random stores, the mall was seriously huge, it was so overwhelming. By the time we were done it was around five, and we had to be back on the ship by six so we went back to the ship. WE were supposed to leave that night, but the winds were too strong so they closed the port, we ended up leaving later the next day, it was so weird sitting in class in Cape Town, everyone just wanted to get off the ship. Ah cape town was awesome, were acuatlly sitting in Ghana right now, waiting to get off the ship, I’ll write more later!