1st entry

For those of you who don't know, I made it here safely. I am currently in Cape Town, South Africa! The most BEAUTIFUL place in the world. I live right off of table mountain. Right out my back door is gorgeous mountains and open land spread with beautiful trees and other plants. The sky is bluer and clearer than you can ever imaine. I live near like 20 million thousand beaches. The water is perfectly clear blue. Its whale season. I've seen two!! Its winter here which means around the 50s at night and 60s during the day. There really is just no way I can explain how amazing this place is. I thought I'd be living in dorms, but I dont. I live in a suburb called Mowbray. I live in a nice little house with 6 other people. There are six girls and only one boy lol. We each get our own room which is sweeeeet! I cool cus its like a little sorority house. Our kitchen has two fridges and two stoves. We have two bathrooms..... so its a very comfortable living, and all my roomates are really cool.

The first day I got here we went on a bus tour of Cape Town. I got to see it in all its splendour for the first time. Its ssssssssooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo different from the last time I was here. The world cup is here in 2010, so they are really building the place up and making it look nice. It's very urbanized. However, there is still a very disinct difference between the city and its suburbs and the townships. Of course they aren't doing anything to help build up the townships :/ but the tourism industry has grown immensly.



After the bus tour we went to "Africa Cafe" Its a really nice traditional African restaurant. We ate food from all over Africa: the Congo, Mozambique, South Africa, Egypt, Zimbabwe, allllll over. It was soooo good! Then after that we went to a bar in this little area called "O bz" that all the students hang in. It was fun. There were too many Americans there for me, but of course I just went to the front and mingled with the locals. Crime is such a huge problem here. it really sucks. You have to be on guard at all times. You cant go anywhere alone. You cant carry anything with value and no matter how careful you are you will definately at one point or another be mugged. Of course the guys are also very aggresive when they are drunk. They love Black American women and they are very persistant. You have to be very firm in telling them no.

The next day was Arcadia's orientation, so we sat around a table and listened to people talk for forvever. That was sooo boring. But while we were there we got to eat lunch at this really nice restaurant. The mountains and beautiful landscape surrounded us as we ate. We ate outside because the weather was nice. They specialized in calamari so I ordered calamari and rice. It was BANGIN!!! The calamari are huge! They are like four times the size here that they are in the states and absolutely delicious. They arent chewy or wierd texured. They are just... ugh! indescribable!

After orientation we went to the couple thats kinda watchin over us's house for what they call a "brie". Its sorta like a bbq. People have them a lot here. There is no bbq sauce involved, but they make food outside on the grill and some inside on the stove then everyone enjoys it together inside. Its a good time. We just came home after that . Drank some wine and hung out for a while, then went to bed.

Sorry guys this is long, but i havent gotten to write so im catching y'all up lol.
Long story short..... the next day went to the waterfront for breakfast. I got reallu upset there because of some political stuff.... its a long story, but basically governmental apartheid is over, BUT ECONOMIC APARTHEID IS ALIVE AND THRIVING!!! Tourists and a lot of white south africans still treat black south africans like dirt. They treat them as though either they dont see them or they are very inferior. It makes me so angry. I hate putting my money into these touristy places that employ black south africans to do labor for no money. Enough of that cus i could go on forever....
I met a lot of cool locals that day, so that was good.

Now for the important part: I hiked down a HUGE mountain today!!!!!!!!!! It was soo scary, but I faced my fear and I did it! It felt so good! ill post pictures! God, it was so beautiful. We were at the cape of good hope. Then we visited a secondary school in oceanview that i MUST go back to. The kids performed for us and I loved it. Now im home. SICK :(
i have a cold, so am stuck in the house. It kinda sucks.
Im also sick of writing now, so thanks for reading and I'll write more soon :)