Julian on the best possible study abroad experience

I haven’t studied abroad anywhere else, so I guess I have no legitimacy when I say that this is the best program any person could possibly go on. I’ll leave that up to everyone else to decide after they read this.

You can never run out of things to do in South Africa. Surfing, hiking, the night life, Mzoli’s, Stoanes and other bars/clubs, the townships, concerts, museums that I actually enjoy, professional sports, Seal Island, bungy jumping, kloofing. I think you get the point. Out of my 97 days here so far, I have had 2 days where I stayed at the house and did nothing. This has been the most eventful 3 ½ months of my life, and it will probably remain that way. The city of Cape Town provides endless amounts of things to do and there is no way for us to see everything in a semester, but I can guarantee that our program allows us to see more than anyone else studying abroad can see. Between orientation week and our excursion where we went to Cape Point, Robben Island, Kruger Park and other must sees in South Africa we covered a lot of the country. We also are given more freedom than other groups which is essential to our experience. I’ve met other American students who have been told to never use the mini bus transport system. If I didn’t use these buses I would have run out of money half-way through my time here and would’ve missed a lot of great experiences. We are trusted and taught how to be smart in the city more than anyone else. Our RA Ben, who has lived here for years now, is probably the most helpful person when it comes to this. When we saw American students arrested at Mzoli’s for drinking in the street a couple weeks ago the first thing I thought was “it’s too bad they don’t have a Ben.”

The people I live with are amazing. We’ve all grown from our internships and other experiences together and we are as tight as family. I have no doubt that I have made some friends for life and will hang out with these people in the future. Everyone has their own distinct place in this family and the trip wouldn’t be the same without them. I’m normally the first to wake up in the pool house and I am shortly accompanied by my good friends. I’m going to miss this to no end. I live with 5 younger siblings, so I won’t be lonely at home, but it won’t be the same. I actually enjoy being woken up at 2 in the morning by my friends. I just go to hang out no matter what the time is. I never want to miss a moment with my friends.

The people in this country are equally amazing. Our friends from internships, human rights weekend and even the people we meet on the side are all willing to show and share their country with us. The same goes with their culture. They just want to make sure we’re having a good time. People become close friends faster here than they do back at home. This goes with my friends I’ve made at the house and outside the house.

I’m ready to see my family and friends at home, but I will miss my experience here forever. The people I’ve met and the things I’ve done have given me the most incredible experience and I cannot wait to come back.

Julian creating days to remember

As time here in Cape Town winds down, I’ve made sure that each day I have remaining will be one to remember. Time is the one thing in this world that has the ability to make me nervous, but I think it’s for the best.

Logan invited me to go to Koko’s Human Rights workshop in Nyanga with him on Friday. I feel that I haven’t seen enough of the townships here in Cape Town so I decided to go with him. We took a mini bus over to Nyanga and the minute we stepped out on the street we got about 12 variations of “do you need help” from people on the sidewalk. White people aren’t found in Nyanga too often, I think we may have stuck out a little.

Since people here run on Cape Town time everyone got to the workshop at 2:00. It was supposed to start at 12:30. Logan and I had a feeling that this would happen so we went to Linda’s take-out for lunch. This restaurant was just a makeshift kitchen with no running water in a trailer. We knew there was no running water because when Linda cleaned our spoons she filled a mug with water from a bucket, took it outside and poured the water over our spoons. I haven’t gotten sick yet so the delicious food was worth it. While we were waiting for our meal a little boy and girl came over and said “you are welcome in Nyanga east.” They even complimented Logan on his hair.

Julian getting a haircut in Nyanga

After getting my hair cut in a trailer, Koko showed us around Nyanga and brought us to his sister’s house. On our way through the township Logan and I were called colored by someone walking by. This made us super excited until some little boy said “look! Another whitey!” We went to a nearby bar for a little bit afterwards and took a mini cab home.

The next morning six of us left the house at 6:30a.m. We didn’t exactly know what we were in for, but our plan was to hike the 12 Apostles on the Table Mountain Range. I packed four liters of water, three pb&j’s, and two bananas. After about eight or nine hours of incredible sights and occasionally intense hiking the group ran pretty low on water and out of food. I’ll have to admit that the lack of water had me a little concerned but I personally was feeling all right. We may or may not have had other people in the group worrying a bit more but I was fairly confident that we would end up home some way or another.

Emily & Logan hiking 12 Apostles Mountain

We found the path that I knew we had to take but we still had a few doubters in the group. We made our way down Myburgh’s Waterfall Ravine when we met our savior, Jim. Jim is an ex-park ranger who hiked this incredibly eroded, steep path once already, about 20 years ago. I really think that fate or karma or destiny or something supernatural led Jim to us because we hadn’t seen another person for about 4 hours until this 60 year old tour guide crossed our path on one of the least travelled paths on the range. I’m still in shock. Anyways, this wonderful man showed us down the ravine while giving us nature lessons and all of that cool stuff. We ended up in Hout Bay where Ben, our RA, picked us up in his car. We may or may not have thought that we needed to be airlifted earlier in the hike so we called Ben who offered to pick us up if we made it down. This was again a gift from god because we definitely would not have found our way back from Hout Bay. So in the end, after 11 hours of hiking Ben drove us to McDonalds and back home and we fell asleep before 10.

Now I’m late to get ready for Mzoli’s, a popular Braai restaurant in Gugulethu. It’s BYOB (bring your own bread) because they only serve meat. Anyways, I’m going to wrap this up because I need to make today count as well. It’s been a great weekend

Julian's trip to Langa

Xhanti is one of my matric grade students that I taught for about two weeks in the beginning of the semester. I saw him at Thandokhulu on a Saturday when I went to meet Mkhululi, another one of my students, there for a hike.

“Hey what are you doing here on a Saturday?”

We did the handshake that they do in the townships when you snap each other’s thumbs together.

“I’m going on a hike with Mkhululi; we’re going up Table Mountain.”

“Ah why would you go on a hike, you should see the townships man. Come to Langa and I’ll show you around.”

“Sounds good to me”

We exchanged phone numbers and made it a date. I was somewhat disappointed with my internship from the start because I was jealous of my friends who get to see the harsh realities of the townships pretty often. I teach learners from the townships but I work in Mowbray, one of the wealthier suburbs in Cape Town. I was afraid that I would walk away from Cape Town without walking around a township.

A couple weeks later we met at Thandokhulu. Taylor came along with me and we arrived on time, which is actually early when you factor in Cape Town time. Xhanti came half an hour late, or on time depending on whose culture you come from. We went to the Taxi Rank in Mowbray and took a mini cab to Langa. I originally said that we could take the mini cab ourselves but Xhanti advised against it.

When we arrived in Langa Xhanti showed us around like any tour guide would. He knew the history of his township better than I know the history of anything else. (That says something because I’m a history major) Every famous person who lived there, every street name’s meaning, when certain areas were established or demolished. It seemed like this was his job.

Langa

What struck me even more was the sense of community in the township. Xhanti knew half of the people that we passed by, and the people he didn’t know were still greeted kindly. When he brought us to see one of his friends houses unannounced he walked through the gate and straight into their house. I expected his friend’s mother to be shocked or at least unhappy with two strangers in her house but she greeted us with a warm welcome in her living room.

Sheep heads prepared for boiling (Smileys)

After seeing everything that Xhanti deemed important he brought us to my favorite part of our visit; lunch. We passed the smileys (sheep heads that are apparently pretty popular) and went to the store that sold hot chips and fat cakes (fries and fried dough balls). We ate our wonderful lunch at Xhanti’s house where we sat in his living room and watched MTV shows that had been cancelled for years back in the states.

We made our way back to Rondebosch, the predominantly white suburb that we live in. We walked back from the Red Cross Hospital where the mini bus dropped us off. I said howzit (the South African version of “how’s it going) to someone we walked by and got no welcome back. I already missed Langa.

Julian confronts the harsh realities that are also South Africa

I’ve recently realized that my blog posts have really just included the exciting things that there are to do in South Africa. Between safaris, endless hiking trails and a great nightlife I’ve found it easy to be having the time of my life here. But the fact remains that my experience here has been pretty bipolar. Along with this country’s beautiful sights, people and culture comes immense poverty. Aids plagues 5.6 million people here and millions live in townships, many where informal settlements is the normal type of housing.  The South African government may have legally ended discrimination towards non-whites after the apartheid, but not much has been done to give people who suffered from past oppression economic equal opportunities.

It’s hard to make money when you have none. Maybe I’m qualified for several jobs after high school, but how can I get to the jobs I’m qualified for without a car or money for public transport? Maybe I’m constitutionally given the right to an equal education, but how can I get one if my school can’t afford books or computers? The poor can’t move up when they have nothing to start with.

I’ve talked to friends about horror stories that they’ve heard or seen at their internships. Starving babies, parents who have access to ARV’s (HIV medicine) but don’t bother to give them to their children who need them, high incidents of rape and beatings; they’re everyday realities in this country’s townships. The only difference between the people involved in these stories and you and I is the disparity in our wealth. During my time here in South Africa I’ve come to realize how poverty is a crime. I never really knew how important the basic needs of adequate shelter, food and water are. It’s easy to say “yea, you can’t live without it,” like I did before, but I’ve found that it’ll make you a different person if you don’t have the basics covered. My mom would go to the end of the world for my siblings, but how could she if she was starving to death? It’s not a question of her love or how much she cares; it’s about what she can do. I don’t know exactly what it is that makes parents stop caring for their children, but I can clearly see that poverty is closely correlated with it.

Julian on eventful weekends

Sizwe, Julian, friend, Logan

Two weekends ago we had a human rights training program that lasted from Friday to Sunday. I didn’t learn too many new things about human rights, but I did learn a lot more about things I do know; perspective being the main point. Vincent, the facilitator of the program, had a quick point to make about perspective from the start. He had one person face a poster board and one person with their back to the board. When he asked them where the board was one person said in front of them and the other said behind. I liked the example because it shows how people can see the same thing in different ways. Later that night I experienced a true difference in perspective that put this example into practice. I stayed up until about two in the morning talking to South Africans about gender roles and homosexuality and how equality doesn’t mean the same thing for everyone. I was baffled at how we were at this human rights conference and how equality in their minds wasn’t actually equal. I was forced to step back and think about Vincent’s example and wondered if I would think the same way if I was born in their shoes (I still don’t condone their views on the topics). I hope to say that I would think the way I do now, but how could I if I was taught something else from the time I was born.

This last weekend was definitely one of my favorite because of how culturally rich I felt afterwards. I started off strong with a pina colada crepe at the Old Biscuit Mill market. This place is basically an enormous food fair with tons of free samples and too much good food to try it all (my kind of place). From there we hopped into a couple of mini taxis that eventually brought us to the world cup stadium where a gay pride parade was going down. This wasn’t anything too new for me because my family visits Provincetown pretty often, but this parade was still pretty off the hook. The group got tired after marching in the parade for an hour and decided that we needed to experience a little more culture. Naturally, we ran to the nearest McDonalds and refueled with Fanta and fries. I forced myself to refrain from a Big Mac because I had eaten three of them in the two days before that. We decided to extend that meal over at the Italian restaurant Giovanni’s across the street where I had some pesto pasta salad. Another quick mini taxi ride brought us over to the company gardens where we strolled through the park and topped that off with a little bit of sushi (I just realized how much I ate that day). And to top it all off, I had the time of my life at a dance show where we saw krumping, break dancing, hip hop and everything else of the sort. And we went to open mic night at a bar on Long Street (very scary place). That was Saturday; I had plenty of culture for one day.

But not enough for the weekend. Sunday we woke up and hurried to get ready for Mzoli’s where we met up with our friends from the human rights weekend. Mzoli’s is a cross between a club, a restaurant and a market. It was BYOB (bring your own bread; and booze for those who drank). We ate unhealthy amounts of meat and danced until we couldn’t dance no more. Then we went to Kirstenbosch for a Goldfish concert and danced even more! The weekend wore me out but I’ve never experienced anything like it. I can only hope for the rest of our time here to be as eventful.

Julian work in the classroom & fun in the sun

Julian & Nicole on Devil's Peak

Taylor and I have officially taken over Ms. Mtiya’s 10^th grade classes. Quizzes, homework, lesson plans; they’re all up to us. We’ve also managed to make the classes somewhat interesting. In one of our lessons we made a game that involved copies of South African money. Whenever a group of learners got a question right they would take money from the other groups. This was the first class that we taught where 100% of the learners stayed awake. Kids were making it rain left and right and they actually retained some of the information that we taught them the next day.

Yesterday we experienced some serious language barrier problems at the job. We were having the kids make political cartoons on slavery and asked them to put captions at the bottom. They didn’t know what captions are though. We explained it as a short line that fits the topic of their cartoon. They interpreted that as writing a paragraph on why slavery is bad. It wasn’t what we wanted but we’ve learned to be patient.

Last weekend was a crazy one. It started Wednesday with Stoanes, as usual. Thursday was class and then a sunset and full moon hike on Lions Head Mountain. On Friday Logan and I whipped out our new dance move at the Assembly in town. Saturday was an early morning hike that started at Rhodes Memorial which is located at the top of the UCT campus. The trail that Logan, Nicole and I took brought us around Devil’s Peak, up Newlands Ravine, down some random slope and finally up Devils Peak. To get back down we went down Devil’s peak, across half of Table Mountain and down to Tafelberg Road. It was definitely the longest hike I’ve done since I’ve been here. In fact, the longest hike I’ve ever done considering I don’t even hike back at home.

So I had a great weekend at that point and figured I’d use Sunday as a day to do all of my homework. I woke up, got my computer out, and was all ready to do work when I heard Kayla talking about Chrystal Pools. She met some friends at Stoanes who are locals and they offered to bring some people to this place about an hour away that has cliff jumping and swimming. Naturally, I decided to let my homework wait and went to have a little fun in the sun.

My activist project is finally underway too! I think. Right now I am torn between working at Thandokhulu High School where I would be doing a technology program with the kids. I’m not too keen with technology but these kids don’t even know how to use Word or make an e-mail. These basic things are necessary for those of who go to college. I’m also considering doing something that is sports oriented with our RA’s other job. I don’t really know the details of it though. Maybe I’ll just do both.

Julian: another eventful week

It isn’t really a problem to find something to write about. The problem is trying to pick what to write about. It was yet another eventful week here in Cape Town. I think I’ll start with last weekend.

So, most of us were at Table Mountain. We arrived at the trailhead about two hours after we had planned. On top of that, we realized that we didn’t really know where we were going considering there is somewhere around 300 trails on the Table Mountain Range. After talking to a few people we found a route that took us up across and down the mountain. Logan and I pulled ahead of the group and soon realized that our PB&J’s weren’t enough food to last us, but we made it through nonetheless.

Things are continuing to pick up at the internship. Taylor and I finally had the opportunity to create a lesson plan before being thrown into a classroom alone.  This time it was on the French Revolution, but my knowledge on the subject was pretty limited. I say “was” because I’ve practically memorized the entire Wikipedia article on the revolution since then.

I’ve also realized that I’m probably having too much fun. I figured this out today when I realized that I’m still in school and I actually have work to do. Between starting an eight page research paper, doing seven online postings and writing this blog today was an uneventful day. But I’m also getting ready to leave to climb Lion’s Head for a sunset hike and go out to long street tonight… so life could be worse.

Julian's challenging first days in the classroom

Now it’s getting real. We finished up orientation with a scenic trip to Cape Point. Taylor, Tom, Logan and I found a trail that happened to lead to the end of the continent. It was kind of cool. The same day we went to Boulder Beach and watched the penguins. As if that day wasn’t cool enough we went to an annual Minstrel Carnival where we mingled with the locals and learned that Capetonians were born with the ability to dance. There were three year olds next to us who had more flow than I will ever have.

After our two week vacation we finally began internships. Yesterday was my first day at Thondokhulu High School. It was relatively easy in the sense that Taylor and I shadowed Ms. Mtiya for the first day. But things picked up quickly today. For the first two periods we helped the 12^th grade learners with a Cold War exercise. Then the third period alarm (I say alarm because the bell sounds like an air raid warning) rang and nobody left. For some reason the other teacher never came to take the class over and Ms. Mtiya left so Taylor and I sort of sat there with nothing to do for the kids. After a few more classes Taylor and I went to McDonalds where I got my Big Mac for the second day in a row. I needed that burger badly.

This is where it gets heavy. We got back to the school and Ms. Mtiya was casually talking to us about how much she hated the last period of the day because the kids don’t concentrate. She then informed us that she would be leaving for a meeting during the last two periods of the day and that Taylor and I would be in charge of the class. We had exactly eight minutes to read up on Tsar Nicholas II and the Russian Revolution and find the answers to the questions she was going to give the students. This wasn’t looking good, but it got worse. When we got to the classroom Taylor and I were given the worksheets to give to the 45 students. The worksheets contained two irrelevant paragraphs, a political cartoon and 9 questions. Unfortunately the questions required information from the book that none of the students had and so we were forced to make a lesson plan up on the spot… on a topic we just read about in a textbook that is awfully vague. We decided to teach one question at a time and teach the content the best we could. Nothing was really working in our favor but we made it through and it seemed like the kids understood as much as we did about Tsar Nicholas II. Which isn’t much.

Julian: already one of best life experiences

Tom, Emily, Teddy, Kayla, Terri, Julian

Right now I am sitting next to the pool in my swim suit and oversized sunglasses. And it’s January. I don’t have to really think hard to realize that my time here in Cape Town has already been one of my best life experiences. It would be easy for me to go on about how much fun this group of people is but for the sake of the blog I will just say that I came here with great people. As a history major one would expect me to talk about how great the apartheid museums are. While they were fascinating and touching my best experiences so far were getting a feel for how South Africa is today. You may get the occasional person who comes up to you to tell you how much they hate America, but the people here are generally more than willing to help. The culture here is certainly different from our culture but I haven’t had the chance to engage with a lot of South Africans because it is still orientation week. But I like what I see so far. We’ve gone to a couple jazz clubs already and I had the chance to find out how the Capetonians break it down. I danced the night away and went to bed with sore knees from all of that moving around. And then there’s the view of Table Mountain wherever you go. I won’t even try to explain how awesome that is because it is truly something that you have to see for yourself. 

Julian: preparing for an unforgettable experience

Knowing that I got into this program was INCREDIBLE! I still had to tell my dad and make sure that I would be able to graduate somewhat on time but I knew that I'd find a way to make it work. I've always been a believer in willpower. I don't know what to expect exactly but I do know that I'm in for an unforgettable experience. 

I felt a little bad for my room mate who has been my best friend since eighth grade. This is my first semester at UCONN with him and this trip was a last minute decision for me. He's definitely excited for me but it kind of stinks that he's not coming too. Either way I'm excited for all the new experiences that are coming my way.

 I know I'll feel homesick at times but at the end I'll feel as though I didn't have enough time there. Funny how it works like that.