I have arrived!

Howzit! Today we learned this is kind of like the South African equivalent of “what’s up.”  It’s so good to be back in touch with the world.  We only get wifi at one building on campus for the time being, until we get our student cards tomorrow.  It’s been very difficult for me to get in touch with my family and let them know I made it and am surviving.  One of my fabulous roommates, Alide, has a personal hotspot so she let me connect to it in our apartment so that I could get on the internet.  Thanks Alide!

South Africa is so cool and so different, I love it already.  There’s a lot to catch up on, and so many pictures that I have already! I’m going to create a different entry about my London day trip a little later.

As the plane was descending into Cape Town, I was able to look out the window and see Table Mountain!  Something else that I noticed was how colorful everything was down below.  After we arrived at the airport in Cape Town (we meaning Cooper, Sam and Amanda- some people from my program that I flew over with), we found a representative from the university and headed out towards Stellenbosch, which was about a 30 minute drive.  Immediately after taking one exit off the airport, I saw slums (for lack of a better word).  They ran on one side of the road for miles and miles (or km and km).  It was honestly really depressing and I didn’t expect to see something like that so soon after I arrived in the country.  From what I could tell, they were made up of big sheets of metal and were only about the size of my room.

Soon we hit the wine country and this became our view.

Fun fact- there are over 130 vineyards in Stellenbosch!

We finally get checked in and made it to our rooms, but I didn’t meet my roommates until later that evening.  There are four of us- one still isn’t here- and we each have our own bedrooms and bathrooms and share a kitchen/common area.  The only thing I don’t like about my place is that there is no air conditioning (which I feel really silly saying).  In all honesty it’s not that bad because we can open the windows, but I’m going tomorrow to get a fan.

This is the view from outside our apartment building.

Our apartment building is in the far corner of campus, which sucks because we have to walk a pretty good distance to get to the mall, restaurants and bars.  During the day the temperatures have been getting above ninety, but the evenings are really nice once the sun starts to go down.  It’s a huge change from the cold Maryland days when the sun would set at 5:30. I feel sweaty and gross all the time, no matter how often I shower.  Hopefully I’ll get use to the weather soon.

Today orientation started, and we got to meet our Matie buddy (mah-tee, which is I guess like the school mascot.  Years ago the students use to have to wear red vests, so they called them tomatoes, which then became maties for short), who is currently a student at the university.  I also got to meet a few other students at lunch who are from Kenya, Norway, Sweden and South Africa.  There are tons of U.S. students here, most of them outside of my program.

Afterwards, I went to the mall with some friends to get more stuff for my apartment and to try to work out my phone situation.

Something else that I didn’t know before arriving in the country is that South Africa (or at least this region) is currently in a drought.  Because of that, there have been a lot of fires… and today I got to witness one! One of the nearby mountains has been on fire all day, but on the side opposite to us, so I haven’t been able to see much.  Don’t worry though, we’re safe here.  The fire got worse and worse throughout the day, but it was pretty cool to watch it develop.

The cloudiness you see above the pictures is actually smoke.  By the evening, the mountain wasn’t even visible.  Some of the nighttime photos make it looks a lot scarier and worse than it actually is, but they’re pretty cool.

I have to go to bed soon to get up early for orientation, but one more big thing that I forgot to mention is how cheap everything is over here.  Right now the U.S. dollar equals about 16 South African Rands.  This might give you a better idea: last night I paid ~$6.32USD for chicken tenders, fries and a strawberry daiquiri.  And today for lunch I paid ~$7USD for a huge burger, potato wedges and a hard cider.  It’s not just food either- it’s everything.  Pretty nice for me, but pretty bad for the economy.

Sorry if this post was all over the place, I feel like so much has happened since the last time I was able to get on here and I want to make sure that I share it all! Hopefully I’ll be back on soon!

xo

Kim

“A traveler without observation is like a bird without wings.” -Moslih Eddin Saadi