Accomodations

Highstead is our home now, 

Welcome to Cape Town, 

We Family!  -TK

    
For those who are interested, here is what the inside of my house and room looks like. The lyrics above is a song written by one of our RA's. It has become quite catchy for the residents in the houses!

Living Area. Spacious, conventional, IKEA furniture. A student's dream.

Loading Dock/Stairway

Kitchen/Laundry Room/Dining Room

Extra Cabinets in the Kitchen

Our view

My Room (Perk: Personal Rooms - no sharing!)

My Room: Storage and Desk

I love my house, my room, and my roomates. I am housed with eight other lovely ladies and our wonderful RA named Ata.

-Lisa

Fast Forward: A week in review

Life Milestone: I am officially a world traveler...my airline ticket said so! I cannot believe how amazing the last ten days have been. I will try to get everyone up to speed. 

First of all, my name is Lisa. I attend Arizona State University. I have selected to spend my final semester studying abroad in Cape Town, South Africa. I am studying Social and Behavioral Sciences and Nonprofit Administration. I chose South Africa because of its rich history and social and cultural complexities, it doesn't hurt that the scenery is unbelievable. 

 In Cape Town, I will be attending the University of Cape Town while participating in service work with an NGO. In addition to my service hours, I will be taking five classes and completing a Capstone Research Project that enhances both the community's and the organization's potential. 

Jan 20-22: Flight to Cape Town
I flew from Phoenix to London and then from London to Cape Town. Fortunately, everything worked out and I made it to Cape Town around 7am on the 22nd. 

The first day I met up with my fellow Service Learners - 26 other girls. So far we are all getting along but will probably eventually strangle each other. There's a lot of estrogen in the house. We got set up in temporary dorms for a few days. We met the staff and RA's of our houses.

Jan 23: Orientation
 We had a lot of orientations today. Safety protocol, behavior, ect. I forgot to mention that there is another group of students studying abroad at UCT, they are in the Arts and Sciences program and total approximately 250. For valid reasons, they chose to separate us from that group aside from a few "fun activity" days. 

The first activity was a journey "in town" (what people from ZA call "downtown"). I made the mistake of forgetting my camera, but will upload pictures from that excursion soon. For lunch, we had a quick bite at a diner called WIMPY'S. It is South Africa's equivalent to America's Denny's, really nothing special. Afterwards, we took a sketchy train to the station, it was similar to riding a box car combined with the Phoenix Metro Light Rail. 

First we visited the Castle of Good Hope. It was beautiful, here is a link:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_of_Good_Hope

We visited a church and a few other buildings that had prominence, but with names that escape me now. One of my favorite activities was going to the flower market. Our group paid for a bouquet of roses totalling about 20 rand and each of us handed out a rose to strangers. It was amazing! I recommend that everyone do that at least once. 

 We visited a market with crafted goods, I will be going back there this weekend! A lot of the vendors overprice their items to Americans. 

 Later that night we got tickets for the "Sunrise Special" at Table Mountain. It was beyond words. We rode a cable car up to the top of the mountain and enjoyed the view. I have come to the conclusion that I want to set up camp on top of Table Mountain and live there. Again, I didn't have my camera with me, but here are a few borrowed photographs from friends.

Table Mountain (Photo Credits Kyla Rathjen)

(Photo credits Alyssa Taylor)

(Photo credits: Chelsea Goodly)

 
 Jan 24: RA's and UCT Campus Exploration Fail

In an effort to help students learn the the campus better, they set up a scavenger hunt modeled around "The Amazing Race" Show, in which students would recieve clues, one by one, all around campus. There were EIGHTEEN clues in total. First of all, the campus is massive. Second of all, the clues were pretty indecisive. Thirdly, my group was lazy, we didn't make it past 6 clues, but we did find sprinklers in an open field. That in itself was a personal success. I still have no idea where anything is on campus. Groups that won the event received a dinner, concert tickets, and something else that wasn't important enough for me to remember.
 

 Jan 25: Site Visits and Special Dinner
Today we moved out of the dorms and into our houses! Afterwards, we got to visit our first three site options for our service and capstone project. That was an exciting experience. Later that night we went to a special dinner at Moyo in Stellenbosch. Stellebosch is known for its vineyards. Many of the girls in my group are not 21 and were eager to try the wines, even if they didn't know what any of them were. The meal was served buffet style, but was still very good. A few servers walked around painting ceremonial symbols on guests faces.

Service Learning girls with their painted faces

 
 Jan 26: Day at the Beach

 Today we had a Brai, which is like a barbeque or cookout. The food is amazing. South African's like their meat. They eat sausage in almost every meal. The weather was perfect and the water was freezing. Almost everyone got sun-burnt. Regardless, it was a nice break from our busy activities. 

Seagulls! I am convinced they were the birds producing the sounds for the game AngryBirds.

 

Brai food, slow-cooked deliciousness.

 That was just week one. I will update everyone on the second week soon! 

 My apologies to my friends and family who have been patiently waiting for me to post my blog. Obtaining internet has been a long and grueling process. Cudos to those who read the whole post, I hoped you enjoyed reading! :)

-Lisa