First few weeks in Cape Town!

Lets start with my Garden Route field trip last week. If I could sum up that field trip in one word it would be rainy because it was raining the whole time.  Despite the constant rain it was really fun and a good chance for me to bond with my fellow IES peeps. On Thursday morning we left Cape Town at 5 in the morning to start our journey. Basically the Garden Route is a scenic drive that goes along the route 2 highway outside of Cape Town. The first place that we stopped was this Ostrich Farm outside of Cape Town. Apparently ostriches like semi-arid dry climates because they are from the dessert but it seemed to me like they had the wrong idea because it was raining the whole time. During the tour of the farm we got to meet some of the birds and also had a chance to ride them. Unfortunately it was two slippery for the birds so we could ride them but we go to sit on top of them.

DAY 2 of the Garden Route was also really cool because I got to ride an elephant!  But first the day started with a canoeing Safari through one of the country parks in the Garden Route. After that I got to ride the elephant/ learn a bunch about the elephants and get to see them do tricks. As soon as I get a picture of me riding the elephant I will post it on the blog no worries. Also along the Garden Route we visited the tallest bungee jumping spot in the world. However there was no space available for my group to be able to bungee (not like I would have done it anyway because it looks like one of the scariest things in the world).

DAY 3 I woke up to basically a downpour going on outside so needless to say our activities for that day were canceled and we headed back to Cape Town with a few stops along the way.

As soon as we got back to Cape Town, the next day was our International Student orientation at University of Cape Town. Yay for basically going through freshman orientation all over again. Sunday started with a tour of the Cape peninsula and I got to see the Cape of Good Hope.  I really enjoyed this part because I haven’t really gotten to explore the city that I have been living in at all because we have been so busy. On Monday the fun part started, just kidding. We had to sit through hours of lectures on stuff like culture shock and safety to this horrible process they call pre-registration. I will never complain about registering for classes in the states EVER again because it is 10 times worse in South Africa. They don’t register for classes online you have to physically wait in line to get the person to put your classes into the computer. For now I am signed up for 3 classes at UCT: South African Political Thought, African Dance (for international students), and Origins of the Contemporary World. I also have this IES seminar class called Social and Economic Development in South Africa.  I’m actually kinda excited for classes to start on Monday because hopefully I will get to meet some actual South African students in my classes.  I also have wifi on campus which hopefully will be more reliable then the wifi at my house (even though I only get up to 3g of internet a month on campus) so I can keep up better with my blog.