Has It Only Been A Week?

I cannot believe that it has only been a week since landing in Cape Town. So much has happened and I am already used to life here. I do not yet have any sort of routine, but walking around the neighborhood I see familiar places. I can describe how I am feeling as survival limbo mode. I am not especially happy, but I am not particularly sad either. I am just surviving in my new environment as I adapt to new people and new places.
The woman who founded this program came to have lunch with us on Friday. She told us her intentions were that we have a well rounded experience of service, academics, and fun. Her life itself is quite incredible. After we visited with her a large part of the group went to Musenburge beach. It was very beautiful and I loved swimming in the ocean. I felt such joy in the water.
Saturday the whole group toured Robben Island which is where Nelson Mandela was kept as a political prisoner for many years. We took a boat to the island and started with a bus tour to see the general sites around the island. Then a former political prisoner gave us a tour of the maximum security prison where we saw Mandela’s cell. It was very cool to be there walking in history. They talked about how it was the unjust system of apartheid that discriminated against a certain people and held prisoners indefinitely. I could not help but to think about our own unjust prison system and how it discriminates against certain people. Shout out to Social Justice Living Learning Community where I learned about the racist institutions of the United States.
Sunday we got up very early to climb Table Mountain. The hike was brutal. It was like climbing a stair master to two and a half consecutive hours. My body was not prepared for that kind of physical exertion, but I made it to the top despite! That afternoon, after a nice nap, we had a briie at the house (that’s a South Africa barbeque). A few of us then tried to go to mass in the evening, but since neither we nor the taxi driver knew where we were going, we ended up accidentally at an Anglican service. We politely sat through and participated. God is everywhere in every form, so it was nice to be in a faith filled community.
Monday was a bit of a disaster. Being now a few days removed, it was not all that bad, but long story short my class schedule at University of the Western Cape is going to have to be entirely rearranged. It was a frustrating day, but everything in perspective, I am quite lucky to be here taking classes at all.
Tuesday was very low key. A few of us went downtown to the Aquarium, which I did not think was anything special, but the jelly fish are always mesmerizing and we stayed to see the penguins be fed which was quite fun. Peace