Orientation

This weekend was great! On Thursday I went to school and finally was able to meet up with Shannan, who is the other George Fox student, and her husband Caleb. We then went to Kalk Bay with two of the Cornerstone students, Joanita and Jill, to have lunch and then we walked to Fish Hoek, which is a beach down the road. It was a great afternoon of hanging around the beautiful beaches and spending time with Joanita and Jill, which have both become good friends. That night the 5 students from Bethel University in Minnesota arrived late and we stayed the night (and weekend) in the residence of a local Bible College, which is located in Kalk Bay.

Friday we had a relaxed day, spending time getting to know each other, learning some information about our time in SA, and then we walked Muzenburg, another beach. That night we also went out for coffee at a local restaurant, which was a fun experience.

Saturday we did a lot of traveling, we went out to Cape Point, which is the most south west point of the African continent. It was absolutely gorgeous and amazing to see how beautiful this country is. We saw a bit of wildlife as well, a couple that I don’t know their name but we did see some wild ostrich and baboons. I think the most eventful occurrence of the day was at lunch when we brought out the stuff to make sandwiches we had a bag of rolls. Well even though you make think baboons are nice but they really are dangerous animals. Out of nowhere this baboon ran at us and grabbed our bag of rolls, we saved a couple but the baboon ate about 10 decent sized sandwich rolls. Just stuffing his mouth about 20 ft away from us. So to say the least it was an experience, hilarious now but a little crazy when it happened.

I am now back at home with my host family and my new roommate Monique. We start our History of South Africa course tomorrow, which I am really looking forward to. Overall things have been amazing and even though I have only been here for a week, I already feel very much at home here in SA. The people that I have met here is SA are amazing people. You can very much tell that this is a country that is still racially divided and struggling to move forward from its past. Though integration has happened, the lines are still very apparent and SA has a long way to go. There are three main racial groups in SA: Black (dark skinned Africans), Colored (mixed race, middle tone skin) and White. Colored is not an offensive term like it is in the states but instead is what those who are colored refer to themselves as and is an accepted term. I am looking forward to learning more about SA’s history in my course but it has been interesting talking to my SA friends about what it is like to live here in SA depending on which racial group they are in.

I haven’t been too homesick and even though I was a little overwhelmed at first, I have settled into life here in Cape Town. It is a different way of life but I am enjoying my time here very much and feel very blessed to have this opportunity.