50 Rand...to post this blog!

I’M HERE and currently having a blog party!! We arrived in Cape Town at 9:30 PM (2:30 PM MN) after 23 hours of travel time! The first flight was 8 hours long followed by a 4 hour layover and our final flight was 11 hours. Even though 19 hours on a plane may sound dreadful, it was actually a lot of fun. The first flight took us to Amsterdam and this flight was the worse of the two. My body was in so much pain and my brain was becoming unbelievably bored! Our layover in Amsterdam (which Kendall that was in Germany) cost me ten dollars or about 18 euros for a delicious omelet at the Alice in Wonderland restaurant! This was also a time for our group of 15 people to joke and get to know each other. The second flight was my absolute favorite, except for the 2 year old screamer sitting directly behind me that pooped his pants TWICE! We were given food almost every hour, I was able to lay down due to the lack of people on the flight, and the movie selection was fantastic! P.S. I’m going to be constipated for the next three weeks because cheese has been shoved in my face non-stop for the last two days! But anyway…the flight attendants weren’t too friendly and Shane even had one flight attendant tell him to “Get organized”! None of our flights were delayed and no one lost their luggage! Overall, an amazing bonding experience for our group (which I think Aaron had intended) and a great start to our trip in Cape Town.

We had arrived at the end of a stormy day in Cape Town and since it was dark outside we weren’t able to see very much. I can tell you this much, I’m getting to experience the spring that Minnesota decided to skip this year! I can’t complain at all about the weather we had today. It was about 60 degrees with very light rain for a little bit of the day. The climate is very interesting here because there is a constant dampness about the air but the temperature is still refreshing. The scenery and foliage here is to die for. Everything is this beautiful green color and the vines on the buildings around campus were a deep gorgeous red. The fact that Table Mountain is also the backdrop of the city makes the view even more delightful! It was incredible to see the architecture of the University of Cape Town’s campus.  The old architecture of the campus complimented the modern buildings in downtown Cape Town. It was so interesting to see the contrasting old buildings throughout the city with the new, modern buildings.

Events of Day 1: Attending our first class on the University of Cape Town campus, going on a bus tour around Cape Town, eating an authentic South African dinner, and listening to South African music. First of all, my day started with an interesting shower. Do you like hot or cold showers? Well, my mom always yelled at me for using up all of the hot water and leaving her with cold water. Mom, you can’t yell at me anymore because I experienced a much colder shower than you’ve ever experienced! The funny thing is the water would be scolding hot for about 45 seconds and then it would become freezing (literally, FREEZING) cold. Our breakfast was cereal and toast but we weren’t sure if we were using milk or creamer for our cereal! The breakfast was very good and started our day out well. Next we went to campus and briefly introduced ourselves to Alan and Jane, our Arcadia University hosts in Cape Town. Alan and Jane are two great people that luckily have the same sense of humor that our group has! Alan also bought us some snacks during our city bus tour and they were absolutely delicious. One of them was kuch sister, with Alexis asking if there was a twin sister, and this was a cinnamon tasting pastry! Very good! I can’t remember the name of the other tasty snack but it was deep fried (YUM) with mincemeat and a cabbage type food mixed with it. It also had a hint of spice…..SO GOOD!

To sum it all up, today was the day that this all became reality. Alan had told us that the Western Cape province is the only province in which coloured people are the majority and more than 38% if households live in poverty but at the same time the Western Cape is the second most wealthy province in South Africa. My goal for the following weeks is to make sense of this but I know I may not be able to. How can a wealthy province still be experiencing such poverty? How is it that the part of Cape Town I was able to experience today accounts for only about 10% of the population here? Why does so much diversity exist in such a relatively some area of space and how can you unify the diversity? I hope I’ll find out more about these things by getting to know the people of Cape Town and Guguletu. I can’t wait for what the next couple weeks have to offer and I will be updating you all frequently on the activities we’ll be doing!

Thanks for blogging,

Brittany