Town. I had heard about how beautiful Cape Town is, but the descriptions
really can't do it justice. It was already hard to think that this place
is in the same category of countries as Ghana. Cape Town looked like
home...just with a huge mountain that looks like a table in the skyline.
The buildings are tall, the roads are cleaned and the temperature isn't
too extreme.
This first day I had an FDP for one of my classes at 1:00 so I didn't
have much time to plan anything, but thankfully my roommate Robin had an
FDP at the same time so we decided to walk around Cape Town for a few
hours first. So after breakfast, Robin, Kathryn and I walked into Cape
Town and first found a bank. 1 US dollar is equivalent to 7RAN, but
because of inflation the prices are pretty similar. What I mean by that
is that a magnet costs about 40R and a tee might cost 250R. When
translated into American dollars that's $6 for a magnet and about 35 for
a shirt. So when we went to the bank we ended having to take a good
amount out since the price were so high, but the machine we went to paid
in all 10s! It was ridiculous to have to fit 180 bills somewhere without
it being completely obvious. And I'm still probably going to find some
in random places over the next few months.
Anyway, after the bank we did a little bit of shopping and went to a
grocery store to get nutella before heading back to the ship. My FDP was
for History of Modern China and although I had little clue as to why a
class on China has required trips in Singapore and South Africa I can
safety say that after the FDP I have even less of an idea. We walked
around Cape Town and heard 5 hours worth of stories about the British.
In a far-far stretch, I guess the British were a main imperialist force
against China, but turning this FDP into something relevant is quite a
challenge. And, the FDP ran an hour and a half late because when we
stopped for a refreshment at a little place 5 people decided to order
food and held us all up, grrrrr.
So we got back to the ship around 6:30 instead of the intended 5, and
after dinner Dain, Becca, Michael, Jacob, Kevin and I went to the V+A
Waterfront. The V+A waterfront is the major port that is about 10
minutes walking distance from where we were docked. The area is
astoundingly beautiful. Though a lot of SAS kids were going to a
district called Long Street to go out and party, we decided we REALLY
wanted to see Star Wars Episode 1 in 3D and that was clearly more
important than being drunk. Unfortunately, star wars was only playing
during the day and nothing else seemed appealing. So we hung around the
area and still had a blast. There were live musicians and other
performance acts, we went on the ferris wheel, walked around the mall
and got gelato.
Dain and I came back to the ship around 11 because I was going cage
diving the next morning!
So far, South Africa seemed beautiful and I could not believe it was
really part of Africa. However, I knew that outside of Cape Town all the
dilemmas of Apartheid could not have been changed yet, and I was curious
to see what was outside all of this wealth.
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