Muizenberg and Stellenbosch

Hey All-

Sorry it's been awhile since my last post, the last few days have been busy but before that, there was a lull in activity and thus, nothing to post. Rondebosch has now been dubbed by our friends as "Ronde-blah" because...well... it's sort of blah. So earlier this week we all got a little tired of our surrounding areas and decided to do some exploring. After pre-approval, pre-registration, and registration (which, by the way was insane! We waited on line for 3 hours...), I finally have my class list. I'm taking two English classes (Romance to Realism and African Literature), one film class (Film Genre), and one African language class (Growing up in Africa). It all seems promising. Before I talk about our adventure, here is a picture of some of my friends eating a home cooked meal. We all cook a lot here, and my friend Jane (the little blonde one) is a really good cook.

Our first adventure was a beach about 30 minutes away from Cape Town called Muizenberg. We took a train there (only 15 rand!) and it was really easy. The boys all went surfing but it was FREEZING cold and there was no way I was getting in the water. I nearly froze just sitting at the beach, with the wind blowing all over the place. But it was definitely beautiful and I'm glad I went. Here's a picture of the beach. You can't see in the picture, but it was really cool how there are beautiful mountains right next to the beach, which is something you don't see everyday.

Muizenberg was only a day trip, but Stellenbosch was an overnight trip. A bunch of my friends had been planning on going for awhile, but last minute some of my friends and I decided to join. And when I say last minute, I mean an hour before they left for the train. Once we decided, we packed everything up and took a cab to the train station. Here is a picture of all of us getting ready to leave, outside one of the other apartments in Rondebosch (ours is way nicer).

The train was about an hour or so and I slept most of the way, however when we were almost there we were able to see Zebras! They were just grazing around as if they were horses. It was pretty cool. We went too fast for me to take a picture though. Here is a view of one of the main streets in Stellenbosch. If I were to categorize Stellenbosch, I'd say it's the Hamptons of South Africa. It was sooooo nice and definitely more quiet than Cape Town, primarily white (although not all white), very beautiful, with lots of little shops around. The picture doesn't really do it justice.

We stayed at a hostel that our program director recommended to us. As my first experience in a hostel, I will just say that I hope it will be my last. It was gross. Here is a view from outside, which is not bad at all, and a picture of my friends playing pool which was cool. But inside was grosser. The beds were itchy, the pillows where flat, the sheets were stained and ripped, and there were only really thin blankets. Okay, sorry sorry, enough bratty complaining.

That night we all went out to a nice dinner. We had some fantastic food, but since this isn't a lame food blog, I will spare you pictures of our meal. I will, however, show you a picture of all of us cheers-ing with our first (of many) glasses of wine in Stellenbosch.

And here is a shot of the wine menu at the restaurant. It may be hard to see, but draw your attention to the "Little River Cabernet Sauvignon."

If you can't read it, here is what it says: "Full bodied, with pencil shavings following through from the nose. Hints of flint and Christmas pudding create a complex, but balanced palate." My friends and I all found this very hilarious. One of my guy friends even asked the waiter if it was a joke... but no... it was very serious. Apparently, Christmas pudding or Christmas cake is a word used quite often to describe wine...who knew? Dad? I would say that it tasted NOTHING like christmas cake.

Anyway, the next day (today) we went on a wine tasting tour. We had planned to take a biking tour but there were not enough bikes so we split up. Here is a picture of my friend Elias being ridiculous, about to embark on his bike tour.

Instead, I took the driving tour since we were on a stricter time frame. Here come a bunch of pictures of what Stellenbosch vineyards looks like.

Most of the tastings cost money (about 25 Rand), but one of them was free. We went to a total of 4 different vineyard, each one offering us about 6 tastes of different wines. Turns out, compared to my friends here, I can't hold my liquor very well. While my friends were totally fine, I ended up on the tipsy side and sleeping the whole train ride back to Cape Town. I also ended up buying a world cup shirt for 180 Rand (20 bucks!), which is really expensive compared to the other things we've bought. Ugh, I can't keep up!

Here are two pictures of actual people, not just scenery. The first is of some of us at one of the vineyards, and the last is of me and my friend Jane looking very sophisticated. More to come later!

-Julia

Tour of the Cape

Yesterday, all of the study abroad students (including those on other programs at UCT) went on a tour of the Cape. We had to wake up at 6:45am (yikes) and boarded buses to go all around Cape Town. I immediately fell asleep, so I didn't take too many pictures at the beginning sorry. But I did at the end, lucky for you guys. So this post will have a bunch of pictures of what we saw. But before I show you pictures, I want to update you on some basics.

I'm still loving my apartment, and still pretty sleep deprived. Last night was the first night I've gotten more than 5 hours of consecutive sleep. And so far, I've gone out every night except for one (I know, I'm a party animal). Of course, the one night I didn't go out our neighbors behind us decided to have a huge raging party. Because the walls are so thin, it honestly felt like there was an effing party in my room all night long. I barely slept. I'm thinking tonight we'll either go see a movie or just relax in the apartment. Our last roomate moved in today, she has been here for 3 semesters and plans to move here after her graduation back home! Hope I'm not making you nervous mom and dad.... Last night we went to a Mexican restaurant for our friend Teddy's 21st birthday (kind of anticlimactic over here...) and it was pretty delish, although it was more or a Mexican/African fusion restaurant. And because we had such a big group, it took literally 2 hours for our food to come. Oh and last night my room key fell of the stupid key chain they gave us here and I had to pay 200 rand to get a new one (by the way it's about 7 rand to 1 US dollar). Everything here is SO cheap! It's awesome.

Okay, so here goes with some pictures. I'm gonna start off with another pic of Table mountain because I'm sort of obsessed with it. This pic is pretty amazing (if I do say so myself), it was right as the sun was coming up so it looks like there's a spotlight. They also have these HUGE spotlights that illuminate the mountain at night which is gorgeous. We all can't wait to climb it, which is about a 2 hour hike.

Okay this is a pic of Lion's Head, which is the mountain right next to Table Mountain. Still pretty beautiful, not as pretty as Table though.

Our first sight was at some cool beach that I forgot the name of. It was FREEZING and as you can see, I did not dress well at all. Here's a pic of me and my friend Brekke (yes, I do indeed have friends!) She's from NY, goes to Tulane, and lives on the other side of our little town house.

The next stop is one that I think Cal, Charlie, and Geoffrey (if you are reading!) will like the most. And I know you boys are animal fanatics so you probably already know this, but for those of you who don't... they have penguins in South Africa! So we went to go see them, they all live on this beach and are totally adorable. I took the liberty to take a video of them waddling around cause I figured you would all like that, but the internet is too slow/is eating up all of my credits on the internet I buy, so I can't share that with you. Instead, here are some pictures. They all walk around together in groups of 2 or 3 and it was pretty cute watching them walk to the water and back to their little nests again.

After seeing the penguins, we went to another township. While there, they served us some delicious African food (which, by the way, is totally amazing... I take back what I said before). The high schoolers/middle schoolers then did a long performance... and I mean long. A lot of dancing, singing, rapping, and acapella. Some of it was amazing, while some of it was sort of bizarre. The whole time, a woman was announcing who was doing what. But as it went along, my friends and I realized that the woman who was speaking was actually a man. Here's a pic of the cross dressing man:

The last stop on our tour was Cape Point, which is on the southeast corner of Cape Peninsula. Contrary to popular belief, it actually isn't the southernmost point in Africa, but that isn't to say it isn't still beautiful. When we got off the buses we did a hike/walk all the way up to one of the oldest lighthouses on top. The view was STUNNING. Here's a pic from the top!

I wanted to leave you guys with this video, but I can't so here's a picture (which won't do it justice). At the township, the last performance was done by these two little boys about 10 years old. They did a Michael Jackson tribute dance and WOW, they were so amazing and adorable! Definitely the most talented out of all the performances. Miss and love you all. If you want to skype anytime, just throw me a text first and we can do it pretty easily.

Apartments, finally!

We moved into our apartments today, woooo! And let me tell you, they're so nice. I think ours is the best by FAR. There are 8 singles, 3 floors, and a bathroom on each floor plus akitchen. It's pretty sweet. Here's a pic of the outside of the apartment, which (by the way) has a gate topped offwith barbedwire and electrical fencing PLUS a guard on duty from 6pm - 6am. I hope that soothes those of you who were worried (mom, dad, ahem ahem).

Here's a pic of my room, sorry about the funky lighting. It's pretty nice. I have one big window, and then a smaller window so there's a lot of natural sunlight. There's a big closet too, and a weirdly tiny desk with no drawers. The bedding here was DISGUSTING...I'm talking blood stains, brown stains, and unidentifiable black hairs. So some of my friends and I decided to take the liberty to buy new bedding (thanks mom and dad!).

Last night we went to a place called Marco's African Place. It was.... foul. They served us oxtail as if that is some sort of edible food. I wouldn't touch it. They also had chicken but literally they serve you basically bones with about a dime amount of chicken. Plus the waiter was a real idiot, when we asked him for more bread because there wasn't enough for all of us he said "I don't want you to spoil your supper. I know all the tricks in the book, you can't fool me." So that was weird. I basically left dinner starving. But today we had a BBQ, called a Spit Braai, and the food was AMAZING! They have the most incredible meat here (sorry Ray) with some intense marinades. So good.UCT's campus is in a town called Rondebosch, which is fine but it's really just like any grossish town in Boston or something. Thankfully, we went out to Long Street the last two nights which has been much nicer and more South African. Here's a picture of Long Street. There are millions of cool bars and clubs and it's always fun to walk around and go bar hopping. They have this thing here called Cider which is sort of like "girlier" beer. It's SOOOO good! It tastes like Martinelli's Sparkling Apple Juice so I've been enjoying that a lot because I think beer is foul.

Yesterday we went on a tour of the Townships where we will be volunteering. At this point, there are two programs I want to work with. One is a program for teens in jail in Africa, that helps them do positive activities while in jail. Basically, they are given opportunities to draw, write poetry, short stories, etc and then all of their work is published into a magazine. It's pretty cool and sounds a bit familiar...eh? The other one is called Leap, which is a school for the poorer kids and I will be tutoring there. I'm REALLY excited to start with both, but won't be able to until I get my schedule. On the tour it was amazing to see all of Cape Town which I still haven't seen much of. And what became very clear was the wide gap between the classes. We went from UCT's campus and Long Street to the Townships and on the way saw even worse. There were these huge expansive areas filled with these tiny shacks made out of metal and trashbags... huge communities filled with hundreds of them. I've never seen anything like it. I wasn't able to take a pic cause we were driving by, so instead I'll leave you with two beautiful pics. One, from one of the child centers we visited, is of a supremely creepy doll and the other, of the gorgeous Table Top Mountain (which, by the way, I have an excellent view of in my room).

Love you all,

Julia

First few days...

Hey guys!!!

I'm writing from a computer lab right now because we're currently living in the residence halls for our orientation, and for whatever reason there is no internet available. So sorrrryy, that means no pictures now.

The flight here wasn't bad at all. I mean, we left the house in the Hamptons around 6:30am on Monday and I didn't get into the residence halls here in Cape Town until after midnight on Tuesday night (technically Wednesday). But it definitely wasn't as bad as it sounds. Here's a little summary of the trip...

Movies watched: 6 (including some really awful movies like 2012)
Books read: 1
Magazines read: 5
Hours slept: 6
Dramamine's taken: 3
Glasses of champagne drank: 2
Ambien taken: none (!!)

Anyway, I arrived in Cape Town airport at around 8:30pm but somehow no one was there to greet me which was awkward so I aimlessly wandered around the airport looking like an idiot for awhile. I guess my confusion made me stand out like a sore thumb because finally some of the CIEE people recognized me. We then waited at the airport for a solid 3 hours which really sucked because all I wanted to do was sleep. It was about a half an hour drive to campus and my room here at the residence hall is actually really nice. It's a single with nice modern furniture that's WAYYYY better than any Kenyon dorm that exists. I'll post a picture later on.

So far, we've been doing basically really boring and tedious orientation bull. I guess it's important, but honestly if I was running this joint we'd be doing it in half the time. On Saturday we'll be moving in to our apartments off campus. I went with the other 7 people living with me (who are really cool actually!) to go see the place and it's really amazing. It's a duplex town house with a huge courtyard in front, all single rooms, a kitchen, a daily maid service, and an INCREDIBLE view of Table Top Mountain. I'll post pictures when we move in, where I'll also finally have wi-fi (which we have to pay for....duh).

We just finished this scavenger hunt around the UCT campus which was the first time we really got to see the campus. It is BEAUTIFUL. Sorry, I didn't bring my camera to take pictures...my bad. Maybe I'll take some later. Anyway, because my roomates are so cool we actually won the competition, but not fairly... We saw into this room where all the clues where typed up that had a gate blocking the entrance. So we craftily got a long stick and managed to get all the clues through the gate and didn't have to do any of the frantic running around, woohoooooo! And we won a free nice dinner downtown for next week. So yeah, cheaters sometimes prosper. We had a fun time cheating and devising a way to not get caught, and we also walked around the campus and saw some cool stuff.

Last night we went out in the UCT town area, which doesn't really look or feel like Cape Town but we had fun anyway. It was like freshman year all over again and kinda embarrassing. We rolled to the bar with like 50 people... it was really ridiculous. And the bar was basically full of the people from CIEE which was also really lame. Tonight we're going to Long Street (which I have no idea where that is) which should be more South African and less CIEE. The food so far is sub-par: we went to this gross fast food place yesterday, and the dining hall serves the weirdest stuff. They served french toast and baked beans for breakfast today and some sort of foul mystery meat last night. Disgusting. Okay, I think I have all the bases covered so far, when I move into the apartment on Saturday I'll be able to update some photos (which I actually don't have much of...I'll try to take some move).

Miss you all!!!

-Julia

P.S. I'm keeping my iPhone off while here, but in case you want to contact me I have a South African phone. I can text and call and whatever. It's 6 ours ahead of East Coast time here, 9 hours ahead of LA time. The number is (including the country code): 01127823107996. I think. If that doesn't work, let me know.

Night before...

I'm with the family now in Bridgehampton, pretty much all ready to leave tomorrow. My flight is at 6am, but I can't help but stay up with the cousins and fam to watch Invictus...it seems appropriate. It's been a great 2 weeks out here, as it always is. Here's a pic of Cal and me watching the movie. And one of Charlie and me goofing around. He's helping me figure out how to use this dumb blog thing.

I'm hoping to post as often as I can, but no promises... so check in periodically, but you don't really need to be vigilant about it. I'm doing it mostly so I don't have to send a million of the same emails to a million different people. And that's that for the first post. Wooooop woooppppp.

-Julia

P.S. Here's a pic of the cake that Cal and Charlie and I made tonight just for kicks. We chose stunningly brilliant colors, as you can see.