June 1-2, First weekend in Cape Town

I began my weekend on my flight to Cape Town. Yesterday morning I was on the plane during sunrise. I was fortunate enough to see one of the most beautiful sunrises that I ever witnessed. As the sun was coming up over the continent of Africa the sky turned all shades of pink and orange. The sky looked like a fire underneath a bed of dark purplish clouds. I couldn't have asked for a more beautiful view.

The rest of the flight did not go too well. The food they provided was extremely weird looking and I hesitated to eat it. After taking a few bites I realized that I should have gone with my first judgement. As we were landing in Cape Town we hit a lot of turbulence. The plane dropped and it felt like my stomach was going to come out of my mouth. The turbulence, mixed with the few bites of food I had, left me feeling extremely queezy. After getting sick a few times I felt much better. I arrived at the airport and got to customs. The men checking passports were not friendly at all and quite honestly I was extremely afraid that I would be questioned deeper. Luckily, they just stamped my passport and I moved on to meet Jim, my director. As Jim drove me to the hotel, where two of my fellow travelers, Chris and Jenny, were waiting I saw some very interesting things. My first sights of Cape Town were actually very sad ones. The homes were built out of pieces of cardboard and metal sheeting. They were the size of a half bath and potentially housed families. Further down the road Jim explained to me that the houses coming up were part of government housing. I was expecting to see decent homes built for the average family. What I saw was quite different. The homes were not much larger than the small shacks I saw before them and each home was probably not even five feet from the next. They actually had small shacks attached to them. I was told they would live in the shacks and rent out the homes to bigger families. This made me feel very fortunate to have what I have. I have been blessed with a beautiful home with a large yard, never having to worry about needing space.

I arrived at the hotel to meet Jenny and Chris. Jenny was kind enough to let me use her shower for the first time in a few days. I felt miserable still at this point, still feeling queezy from the food/plane ride and extremely exhausted. Jim told me not to take a nap because it would mess with the jet lag. So Jim took Jenny, Chris, and I to the harbor to explore for a few hours. On our way I got to see the city, which is extremely big and somewhat modern and trendy. Obviously with every beautiful part you get dirty and run down parts as well. Parts of the city were filthy but for the most part it was absolutely amazing. We sadly couldn't see the mountains which surround the whole city because of the low clouds, but we could see the ocean!

We arrived at Waterfront which is an extremely swanky shopping plaza. Since we were all starving we went to a restaurant called Primi. They sat us at a table which overlooked the ocean (rarely could you find a cheap restaurant with that view in the U.S.). The food was amazing: I had pizza which tasted straight from Italy. We walked around Waterfront for awhile and right before leaving we went outside in the horrible weather and got to see the harbor.

Waterfront

After the harbor we came back to the house and relaxed. The three of us sat in the kitchen (our living room) for seven hours just talking and watching youtube videos. For dinner we used this thing called Mr. Delivery. You can order food from any restaurant on their website and they will pick it up and bring it to you. We were able to get two huge burgers with fries, a slab of ribs with fries, and the delivery charge all for only R300 or $30. It was an awesome experience and the food was delicious. Later that night Jasmine arrived and soon after arrived we all went to bed. Jenny slept with me last night because we were both kind of afraid and extremely cold. Oh yeah, by the way our house is sooooooo cold and they have no heating here.


My bedroom

We woke up around 10 this morning when Allison arrived. We sat around a little and talked than got ready for our day. We waited for Boyd to arrive which was around 3 and then got a taxi to do some shopping!!!! We decided to go to Canal Walk which is a less expensive version of Waterfront and ate at Mugg and Bean. Jenny and I shared a Cobb salad that was delicious!!!!!!! After we ate we walked around to shop. In case you wanted to know the size of this mall, when it was first built it was the largest mall in the Southern Hemisphere. We went to a lot of different stores and got our essentials. I also found a really pretty carved hair stick with a butterfly on it. While buying things we noticed that we were getting charged for the bags. Recycling is really popular in South Africa so most places don't use bags. When we went to a store to get drinks we found huge jugs of water for $1 and wine for $3 (good wine too). Jim told us that you can get a reallyyyyy good bottle of wine for $10, little did we know that alcohol isn't sold on Sundays. We left to go home and the final member of our group, Matt, showed up. We couldn't get dinner since everything is closed on Sundays and we have no food in the house so we ate cereal and bread with peanut butter on it.

food court in Canal Walk (reminds me of Tokyo)

By the way I forgot to mention that we have a cat at our house. The people who lived here before us found the cat and forgot about her. Jenny, Chris, and I decided to name her Delilah. She is super cute and cries when she wants to go outside to go to the bathroom. When Matt got here he went to his room which was the last one left and sure enough Delilah left a present on his pillow. She took a MASSIVE poop on his pillow. What a great welcome gift for Matt haha.

Now I'm just sitting in our kitchen and talking with some of my roommates. Tomorrow is our first day of class so we are all going to get some rest tonight. Goeie Nag, or good night in Afrikaans.

xoxo,

Alexandra

P.S. - If you all would like to see more pictures you can go to the gallery tab.