Today was another fierce day! For starters we got to sleep in a little bit because we didn’t get picked up until 8:30am. For those who know me well, they know that nothing puts me in a better mood then getting sleep. We had lecture this morning and Alan continued to teach us about the history of South Africa. We talked a bit about the apartheid and all of the crazy laws that were put in place at that time. In South Africa you are either white, black or colored. Colored is anything that’s not black or white. This of course can get really tricky when trying to make segregating laws so they came up with crazy tests to determine race. One such crazy test was if they could stick a pencil in your hair and it didn’t fall out you were black. They also would just look at the color of your skin when you were born. Some children are fairer when they are born and it only mattered what you looked like. This means it was possible to have white and colored children in the same family with the same parents. There were other laws that were put in place at the time also, but that was the one I found to be the most outrageous. It was during this part of lecture that I was overcome with just a wave of realization or eye opening that this happened about 20 years ago. I knew some of this history and of course the dates of important events before this trip, but everything you learn in a history course just seems like it was really long ago, especially if you didn’t live through it, or did but were only about 1 or 2 years of age. Having this discussion seemed to make it more real to me that this was happening during part of my life. When we were going around the city the last few days every house is fenced in. To get into most of the shops near my Lodge you have to be buzzed in to get through the gate at the front door. There are also all the townships that we haven’t yet gone to, but this is all remnants of the apartheid. Alan was making it clear to us just how much of an impact is still seen today. Jane has a daughter that goes to one of the best schools in the country and it’s mostly because back during apartheid it was a white only school. This was also when many were forced into the townships, which is located in the eastern flats, about 30-45minutes away from this school in Cape Town. Today the school accepts all races but it is still predominately white students because all the others are predominately still located in the townships so far away. To most of my friends back in the US 30-45minutes isn’t horribly long, but these individuals don’t all have a car and the bus system is poor here. Although the apartheid is over the process of getting South Africa to where it wants to be has been going for 16 years and still continues to.
After Alan’s part of the lecture we had Siviwe come in and give us a brief language lesion in isiXosha. This is a language with a lot of clicks in it and one sound that comes out sort of like a cat hissing. In other words I’m not very good at the x click noise, which is one of the most common ones they use. I left my book bag upstairs and ventured down to the lounge (only room I’ve found where my two prong adapter works) and since I’m by myself charging many things I’m not going to go venture and find it. We learned basic phrases like where are you from, thank you, I love you, excuse me/I’m sorry and also how to address people in the language. By the end of the lesson I learned that in order for me to speak the language the best I cannot have a dry mouth.
Once lecture was done we went to the top of Table Mountain. At the top your over 3,000 feet in the air, and the pictures we took up there were amazing. We got really lucky in that today was a clear day because I can see where clouds would have ruined some of the breathtaking photos we took. To get to the top you have to take a gondola ride. You get into the gondola and the floor spins 360 degrees as you go up so you can see the city of Cape Town in every direction. My ears were popping like crazy on the decent, and I’m not sure I cared for the spinning floor, but I loved every minute of it. We couldn’t just let this amazing view go to waste so we retook our senior photos. Actually at pretty much every location we’ve gone to so far we have been retaking our senior photos. We took the gondola, but if we had more time (4-5 hours one way) we could have climbed the mountain.
We didn’t really have time to scale the mountain though because we went to Camps Bay right after. Little fun fact is that today I put my feet on the beach and in the ocean of one of the top ten beaches in the world! This place was amazing simply because of the view and makes sense that the homes located in this area sell for 8 million Rand. Shane and I took a cute photo of us walking down the beach with our footprints. We checked out some of the shops and then were just sitting out in the sun soaking up the rays and doing some people watching. We had pizza for dinner in Camps Bay and it was 45R or $6.50 for what was about a 16in pizza. I’m not sure if I was supposed to look but I saw that our total for all of Alan plus Jane, Godfrey and us was 1770R. Hershel drove us back to our lodge after dinner because we all wanted to go to bed early since we have to get up bright and early tomorrow because were going to the safari! I’ve been telling everyone today that if we see a rhino tomorrow (real of course) I’m going to be the happiest person in South Africa.
New word meanings:
Bottle Store = liquor store
