Today I couldn’t believe some of the sights I’ve seen. There is no way I can describe in words what I have seen today and the pictures I took just all look fake to me. They don’t even come close to capturing the beauty of what I saw. All day I was just overcome with the sense of loss of breath or breathtaking experiences. Standing at the Point I had that overwhelming feeling that everyone usually gets when they leave home that they left home. I was just overcome with the fact that I was actually in South Africa and wasn’t just dreaming everything that was happening. This is my favorite feeling because it makes everything so real in my mind. Staring out at the oceans meeting in one place and the wind blowing through my hair, the sun shining down brightly. I was at a loss of words to accurately describe what I was feeling. I think I just kept saying over and over again this is so pretty or breathtaking or amazing.
On our drive to Hout Bay we saw what Alan referred to as “the tale of two cities.” Hout Bay has a large fishing community and the homes are in much poorer condition compared to the million rand ones just across the street. This got me thinking that next week is going to be a total shocker for me. We saw a little bit today of some of the poorer community’s and also some of the richer communities and I can only imagine that when we are in Gugulethu I’m going to see this part of Cape Town so differently. Aaron tonight asked us to talk a little bit about what were struggling with so far and my biggest struggle is standing out because I don’t know what to do. I stand out because of my American accent, but I don’t know what the typical customs or interactions are here so I feel like I stand out even more. The last thing I want to do is to upset or offend someone or to flirt with someone or attract someone unintentionally. The other day we went to an Internet café and I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I feel like I just glanced and realized it was someone standing up and got back to work. He came up to me and with a huge smile on his face told me that he was wondering if the look I gave him meant something. It’s things like this that actually make me somewhat uncomfortable because I don’t know what the normal interactions are supposed to be like.
So far in this trip the biggest thing that I’ve sort of realized is I can be more open with others and it’s fine. I know that this doesn’t really have too much to do with the things I’ve seen from this trip yet, but it did happen while I was in Cape Town. The other day when we were all together as a group doing hot seat I was nervous sharing some of my stories. I’ll be honest that back home I do have a wall up and I do not willingly share things from behind the wall with anyone. When we were all together as a group though I saw others putting themselves in a position that I would consider to be very vulnerable and nobody responded in a negative way. This actually was really powerful for me because I’ve always felt that I learn better from experience. When it was my turn to share things nobody reacted in negative way. I asked a question to the group that I have not felt comfortable asking my best friends and this was really powerful for me because I’ve only known most of these people for a few days or possibly a few months if you count the meetings we had about once a month before the trip. The even crazier part of this is that this is only like day 3 or 4 depending on if you count 23, which was when we landed late at night.
