one day as a tourist and another attempt at blending in...

Howzit?

(That means what’s up here…)

Today was the first day of real class!!! But I actually only had one class and it only lasted 30 minutes so that was kind of disappointing, and tomorrow I only have one class again too! Next week we’ll start tutorials (classes taught by Teacher’s assistant’s) as well as having regular class so I should get a little busier.

So during the first week my roommate met some guys from Zimbabwe and her and some other girls started hanging out with them at bars and going back to chill at their house. I was reluctant at first to tag along because I was hesitant about trusting locals, let alone guys (who are all a year older) but after talking to a few of them, and running into them multiple times around Rondebosch and on campus I started to change my mind. Yesterday, a few of them took us to this place called Mzoli’s, they told us this was a place we had to go to while we were here so we all decided to take a chance and just let them take us and it was awesome! Mzoli’s is this restaurant, if you will, in Gugulethu (one of the townships in Cape Town) and it’s absolutely crazy. We took a taxi van there, which was an experience in itself, and when we got to Mzoli’s it was kind of unreal. It’s this kitchen (or butchery?) with an outdoor seating area that’s filled with picnic tables and it’s set on a corner so people tend to flood the street and dance and basically go crazy. We got there too late to eat at the restaurant so we ordered our food then waited at our friends car, which was parked on the street with everyone elses. It reminded me of tale-gating a football game, except there was no game to get excited for (maybe the Superbowl but not here? Haha). We basically just stood at the car all day, chatting and meeting other people, and eventually our meat platter was ready (no vegetarian options here) and everyone just kind of tore into it. I even had a few bites of the different meat because apparently it’s the best meat in the world, and I’ll admit it was pretty good, and I won’t be temped to eat again for awhile. After eating we all piled into one of his friends car (our taxi never came back, go figure) and drove back to campus.

I hate to be the typical American, or tourist, but there was something so special about Gogulethu that I have to comment on it. There was such a strong sense of community there, it was unreal. During the day, the townships are a great place, or at least they seem that way. Each township is a completely different world compared to the actual city of Cape Town, but because people are isolated from the rest of the city there is such strong community ties. On Sunday’s most families, if they can afford it, will go to places like Mzoli’s and sit around all day, waiting for their meat, and catching up with neighbors and friends. Of course there were some depressing images that reminded us of the povery in the area, i.e. the two little kids that came around collecting our bottles so they could make a small about of money for recycling them, or the random stray dogs that waited around our car hoping for scaps. Sadly, we coulnd’t play with them but I did name them, and we made friends with the kids too. This was also an area where none of us could exactly wander off, we went together to get drinks down the street from the restaurant and went in pairs to the very distinctly third-world bathroom (sorry I had to say it)! Overall, it was really fun and I’m pretty sure we’ll be going back to Mzoli’s again this semester.

I also had the chance to talk to some of the Zim guys, and they were really honest about why they wanted to befriend us. The conversations made me feel so much better about being in Cape Town; I wanted to meet some locals and now I’ve actually made some friends who I know I can trust…and have already promised to help us out with any trouble we might run into while we’re here.

It was an excellent day even though I didn’t stay up to watch the Superbowl, I’m sorry but by 1:30 AM I was way too tired to watch football!

I’m about to go to a UTC rugby game, one of our Zim friends is on the team and we promised we’d go, and I’m pretty excited, I’ve never watched rugby before so it should be fairly entertaining.

Cheers!

oooh and saturday i went to the aquarium (hence the title) it was cool we got there in time to see the preditors be fed, and the rest of the aquarium was really neat! I'm still debating shark-cage diving while I'm here, I feel like it's something I have to do but i also heard that they smear blood on the cage so that the Great Whites actually attack the cage, soooo scary. We'll see I've got plenty of time to decide!

And Saturday night i went to this bar/club called Tin Roof and it was sooo much fun. It reminded me of high school; everyone was dancing and none of us went to the bar it was just awesome, innocent fun...and the music the DJ played was so random but a lot of American 90's stuff and then recent hip hop and pop, it was really great. Definitely one of my favorite nights here so far was Saturday.