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