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| Ryan, Nellie, Brandi, MK, Amariliz, Sam, & Dan on Table Mountain |
Cape Town continues to amaze me every day that I am here. Everything from the beautiful sites to see, all the learning that I have already been doing and the amazing people I have been spending my time with. I think all the people both that I came with from UConn and the people I have met so far here have made the experience even more amazing.
Over the past week I’ve met a lot of new people at Christel House who have made my internship. Everyone there is so friendly and willing to help me figure out where to go and the teachers have helped to learn the ways of the school a little. They’ve also been really nice about letting all of us bounce around the different classrooms so we can each experience different grade levels. I have been enjoying my time there and really appreciate the teacher’s help. However I think that the students there have been just as if not more important because they have taught me about their own lives in the townships, and they have been slowly teaching me a little Xhosa and Afrikaans. Most of them have a long commute to school but they put in full effort and seem to enjoy being there. I love them all so much already!
I have also met random people at other places who are so willing to share their stories and help out any way they can. I love when we are all sitting on the beach or walking around and the people who are selling anything they can come over and talk to us. Even though I don’t end up buying anything most of the time, but I like asking where they are from and why they’re in Cape Town and I have had some great conversations with these people. Some of them are only here for a few months, some came to get out a bad situation back home and are now trying to make money in order to better their lives. Everyone has their own story and I love hearing about them.
Lastly, there are also the 20 other UConn students that I am sharing this adventure with. I truly think that everyone here is an amazing person in their own ways. We get to share all of this with each other and I couldn’t imagine being here with anyone else. Today we hiked up Table Mountain, along with our new friend MK who was also close with last year’s group. I am definitely not the strongest hiker or as experienced with it as some of the others in the group, but everyone was very conscious of each other and kept a pace that everyone could handle. At the really tough parts that I was struggling with, everyone was so encouraging and it really helped me to make it to the top. There was also one point where we had to go down a really steep rock which really freaked me out and I had so much help and no one got angry when I needed a little extra time. The same went for breaks. Whenever someone needed a break everyone would stop to wait and not be pushing us all to continue on before every person was ready. I think that hiking was definitely a bonding experience for a lot of us and I am so happy we got to do that together. We also stopped at a reservoir with beachy white sand and red water. It was one of the coolest sights I’ve seen. And then the views from the top were so incredible and it made me even happier that I made it all the way up. Nellie and I took the cable car down together which I also loved because the hike down is always the worst part!
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| Alex, Rebecca, Sam, Brittany, Nicole, Nellie, Theresa, Brandi, and Kimmi at the beach |
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