April showers bring...May showers

Today I went on a 5-6 hour hike up Table Mountain with the SIT Cape Town abroad program. A friend from Lafayette is on the program and currently living downtown, it has been fun getting to know all of her friends and having a new social network here. We left at 7:30am and hiked up a path called Skeleton Gorge to the top, stopping to take pictures and admire the view. From the top you can see all Cape Town and every coast, spinning around 360 degrees allows you to see all of the Western Cape and beyond. It was a clear day out as well, which was great. I took some panoramic style photos from bay to bay…I plan on printing them when I get home and recreating Cape Town in my room next year, albeit a birds eye view of it. I don’t think I mentioned it, but a few of us went sea kayaking one afternoon a few weeks ago and went all around a few of the beaches. It is cool seeing Cape Town from different perspectives. On Wednesday I think I am going skydiving! I am also trying to coordinate a trip to go sand boarding. Now that we are well past the halfway point we are beginning the scramble to fit everything in that we have been talking about all semester.

It has been a few weeks since semester break and the second term is underway. There have been several public holidays lately making for short school weeks, which has been nice. Unfortunately summer is basically over and our 3 month streak of warm, sunny days appears to have come to an end as well. It has been raining more often and getting cooler, but the rain generally passes in and out and there have been some nice days in between. Apparently winter here is just nonstop cold rain, luckily it is technically not winter until June so at least we leave towards the beginning of it. I am looking forward to getting summer all over again when I get home!

Speaking of home, most of my friends on study abroad programs are heading back to the States within the next few weeks. It is exciting and a little strange to think I still have around 2 months left. Time has flown by; 2 months seems so short, yet when I think of everyone else making it back in time to watch seniors graduate I feel like I am going to be gone forever. The weather also doesn’t help…I miss when everyday was a beach day! The good part is, classes end May 20^th and my first final isn’t until June 8^th. Most people are trying to get one last big trip in during the time period before finals, and I have a decent amount of time to work with. A few of my housemates have already planned a trip to the Wild Coast, backpacking and hiking along the coast of South Africa for a week or so. Personally, I would love to travel out of the country and see more of southern Africa. A lot of people used the time period after our group semester break trip to travel – friends of mine went to Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Swaziland. Traveling gets really expensive with flights, accommodations, activities, ground travel etc. and it makes planning big trips hard. I am going to try and plan a trip either to Victoria Falls and Zimbabwe or to Namibia/Botswana. It is so difficult to plan trips when most countries do not have the degree of infrastructure needed to organize long distance travel to multiple places. The countries in Africa are so large and yet it is challenging and dangerous to travel across them, which limits our ability to get from place to plan on a limited budget. On the other hand, there is so much untouched beautiful land in these countries that it is hard to complain. I don’t think I would trade it in. If anyone has any friends in any of the aforementioned places, let me know!

I’ve also heard that the US media is reporting on a lot of tensions in South Africa right now because of the elections that took place on April 22^nd. I mean, obviously there were and are tensions, but overall the day was a huge success. We all had school off, which was a plus, and there was a voting station at UCT. The Western Cape, where I live, is the only area where the ANC was seriously challenged – woo political activism! Here are two articles on the election that I found that may be of interests (much better than CNN):

• http://www.southafrica.info/about/democracy/election-winner.htm
• http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/25/south-africa-election-anc-result

It is really interesting to learn about proportional voting systems and the workings of a parliamentary government in a country that not only uses such a system, but also is in the midst of electing a new president. My friends and I went to a few educational voter workshops to better understand how elections in SA work and the different parties vying for power. Getting to hear Zuma and a leader of the PAC speak in Langa was exciting as well – political action is such a huge part of this country given the fact that democracy is so young and the country is so eager to break free of the legacy left by the National Party. The election was less about the main national issues and more about the different parties ability to convince the black majority that they will continue the fight for equality and nondiscrimination. Many feel that the ANC has dropped the ball, so to speak, on many of the promises they made upon gaining power in 1994. Here age is a huge dividing factor within the black population; the older generations that lived through apartheid have lost faith in the ANC and politicians in general after the lack of progress and unfulfilled promises. The younger generations, however, still see the ANC as the liberation party. It is very interesting to hear different South Africans speak of the political situation. All I know is that South Africa is a very complicated place.

Tomorrow morning I am waking up super early and taking a practice LSAT, my first one. I realize I should probably take the test this fall, and should probably start studying this summer…taking a diagnostic before I start studying will help me figure out what I need to spend time on. I’m hoping I do okay and can relax a little, as doing horribly would definitely make me wish I waited until I was home to even touch a LSAT book. Especially since job prospects for this summer are looking slim. Getting back to the States late June definitely limits options; all of us here realized we are essentially screwed and a lot of people are just staying in Africa doing various things. At least I will have lots of time to study, and keep your eyes open for catering jobs in the Boston area!

a lot of things

I have always been criticized for being unable to summarize, most of you that know me have most likely discovered any story I tell is going to be a long one. I have struggled to keep these blog posts as short as I can, but so much of what I experience is new - the recent history of this country has impacted every aspect of current society and it is hard to understand to what extent this is true unless you live here. I have been trying to give a bit of a context to bridge this gap, and hopefully I have succeeded to some extent. Over the past few weeks I have been traveling all over South Africa, and despite the risk of failing miserably, I am going to try and summarize the different stops along the way with just the right amount of context:
(1) Durban- My friend Kate and I took an extended weekend trip to Durban, a city about a 2 hour flight down the east coast from Cape Town. Unlike Cape Town, the black population is Zulu and not Xhosa and the majority of the population is actually Indian. Durban has a warmer, more humid climate and we were excited for the warm waters of the Indian Ocean. We stayed with Kate's friends that had an apartment on the beach, it was a perfect location. Durban is much more industrial than Cape Town, and the city life is much more bustling. We had a beach day, and aquarium day, a perusing day and got a decent taste of the night life. I even managed to learn how to stand up on a surf board! Overall, we both decided that Cape Town was a much more beautiful city and we were happy to return home.
(2) Spring Break- After returning from Durban I had less than a week to finish an overwhelming amount of work before spring break. I got it done, and on Saturday morning at 6am all 30 IES Abroad students headed for the Cape Town airport. We spent one night at a backpackers lodge about an hour away from the park and then had a 2 day long Safari spending 2 nights in little huts at a camp on the grounds. We then traveled to Soweto, the largest black township in all of South Africa and the home to the famous 1976 Soweto Uprising. We stayed 2 nights in a backpackers in the township, taking a 4 hour biking tour one day and having time to explore nearby Johannesburg the next. The trip was absolutely amazing. Waking up to begin our Safari at 5am each day and spending all day searching the bush for animals was awesome; I saw cheetahs, a leopard, elephants, giraffes, rhinos, zebras, hippos, lions, impalas, monkeys, mongooses, crocodiles etc. etc. As soon as I get pictures online I will make sure to post a link to the album - I got some great shots that I can't wait to decorate my room with next year. The animals were beautiful, the weather was great and it was a blast. On the way to Soweto we stopped at several different points in the Drakensburg Mountain range and saw grand waterfalls, mountains and the largest growing canyon. Staying in Soweto was quite the moving experience and we learned a lot to add to our growing understanding of South African history. Everything from our accommodations, the bike riding, playing soccer with children all afternoon, venturing to Jo-burg...everything was perfect.
Check out the story behind Lebo's Backpackers here: http://www.sowetobackpackers.com/

Now I am back home and ready to slow down my pace a little. Since IES planned the entire spring break trip, we had very limited responsibility the whole time but we were definitely kept busy. Spring break does not end for another 4 days, however, and we plan on making the most of it. Tomorrow I am going to an amusement park about 25 minutes away for the day, and this weekend a few of us are road-tripping to a music festival! I am still loving it here, spring break was a much needed break from school work and I feel like I will go into second term with a much lighter mind than how I ended the first. We have all also discussed how happy we are to be living in Cape Town of all cities, nothing compares to the diverse array of awesomeness that is Cape Town.

Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes, I had an amazing 21st in Kruger Park with all my friends; we had an extremely lucky animal siting day, had a fun lunch and celebrated that night as well. I got to see a cheetah sprint across a road, jump in a tree, snatch a monkey, and run off! Much better than a night on the town in Easton, PA.
Pictures soon, miss you all.