First Impressions

This post will be mostly about my trip over, my flat and first impressions once I landed.  It will be mostly boring relative to what I will post later, just stuff that I know mom will want to know.  So feel free skip this and check the post “First Day.”  It will be a much better, albeit sobering, read.  But if you are in college, tired of looking at Facebook, and are looking for an excuse to not do homework then this will suffice for a short while. 

As I write this, I’m sitting in my rather chilly flat, not that I have internet but I just want to write this now so I can copy and paste when I go somewhere with Wi-Fi so I don’t have to pay much – call me cheap I guess.  I’m sure that I’m a comical sight to behold, I’m on a pretty busy street (Union right off Kloof; not much privacy here either, the blinds won’t shut) buried under a heavy blanket listening to some good ol’ Alabama, it’s the most American music I could think of (plus it starts with A so I didn’t have to scroll down far!).  Oh and my first meal I fixed myself was some boiled hotdogs and frozen mac & cheese.  I cut up one hotdog and mixed it with the mac and then added some salt and.. wait for it…. curry!  I know that thousands of miles away that Kasuma will be smiling at that one.  Now it was not a lot but there was some in a cupboard so I figured it would have to do since I couldn’t find any pepper.

So I landed at about 9:15 pm on 1/9 (that’s 2:15 pm for you folks back home in the Midwest) after waking at 4:30 am central time 31/8 to leave for KCI.  Unfortunately my first impression of Cape Town was somewhat dreary, directly correlated to the weather outside.  Turbulence on the way in was pretty rough and I didn’t realize until I landed and met Kevin that he had almost gone back home because he thought the storm was so bad that the plane would turn back to Jo’burg.  I’m sure glad it didn’t, 30 hours of flying + layovers = no fun/sleep.  Oh and like the rookie traveler I am, I didn’t clear my checked bag through customs in Jo’burg when I landed so it is not with me at the moment.  It had all my warm clothes.  Fail.

I knew this was going to be an awesome trip because before I arrived I had already exchanged email addresses with three most friendly, interesting and yet different people.  It definitely made the trip easier and more bearable!  I met Sarah from Eastern Mennonite University (no Kit she did not have facial hair, at least that I could tell), Amy from all over and, last but most certainly not least, Pritzman Mabundu from Jo’burg, RSA.  Each one had a unique story and I built solid relationships with each of them, all too long to put in this post so I will only reference them until I decide whether or not to write about them separately. 

Leaving the airport, Kevin gave me the super quick run through of what I would be doing for three months but I’ll get to that later.  I am staying in a suburb in the middle of the city called Gardens.  It’s a nice place and the flat is located in Strathmore Court No. 12 of the Union Street Gardens remember.  I’ll put it in my address when I list my contact info.  Anyway, we got here and he gave me a quick run-down of the flat; one bedroom, a kitchen, bathroom, living room and balcony turned room (where I sleep).  It is fairly modest but I am more than thrilled to be here!  A retired schoolteacher from Holland is supposed to arrive 3/9 at 9:30 pm who will get the bedroom.  She’ll probably be here by the time I post this.  So, other pretty much waking up to gale force winds and rain howling through the wall sized windows right by my bed, literally chattering teeth and taking way too long to figure out how the electricity works (it runs on a prepaid meter in a cupboard which Kevin pays monthly) it was a pretty good first morning.  Better than 99% of the people I would encounter my first day anyway. 

By 10 Kevin and I were traveling in his diesel powered Nissan pickup, or bakkie as the South Africans call them (for those who care, it is 9.81 R for a litre of diesel.  7R = $1).  Before I knew it we had made it out of town and on a winding coastal highway heading for Hout Bay.  Until then, I had never seen the ocean in person.  It was too dark and stormy the night I arrived, and my family didn’t ever go to vacation there.  I couldn’t have picked a better time in my life to experience it for the first time.  Driving along Hout Bay you drive around a sharp curve and there it is – huge waves smashing against gigantic rocks, all set below the most beautiful landscape I had ever seen.  Even in the fog and somewhat hidden in the clouds, Table Mountain is still something amazing to behold.  Words cannot explain how beautiful it is; I won’t even try, just trust me and come here for yourself!  We took the road into the township, all the while Kevin attempting to explain to me the things I was about to experience.  As for as much info as books or the internet can tell you, I liked to think pre-arrival that I was exceptional compared to the average (including political science) student when it came to knowing South Africa.  I found a way to integrate it into any paper or experience I had to write about in class and made it a point for any research paper.  I had read numerous books and been reading two South African newspapers weekly starting back in January 2011.  And like any young, overly ambitious and cocky college student living abroad I thought I had mentally prepared myself for anything I could see and figured that by being more educated than most of the country that I would be able to understand and rationalize the situation better than the locals, hey I admitted it was cocky.  But just as it is always too often the case, boy was I wrong.


PS- This is the most beautiful city in the world.  Look for that later.