first post

ok! so i finally made a blog...and am also finally in africa!

I got here on july 9th and have been busy doing orientation for my study abroad group CIEE, and now orientation for UCT. On Monday we went on this awesome hike through Cape Hope, which is a whole path/park thing right on the water; it was amazing. I took a lot of photos that I'll put up once I figure out how. That was the first really awesome thing we did, just because everyone has been busy getting settled etc. We saw penguins, and some peeps saw a baboon mommy and baby but i missed it and am still disappointed about that...

Alright, essentially I'm living in the coolest place ever. My house is in Rondebosch, which is just a part of Cape Town, and my mansion of a house is only like a 15 minute walk from campus. It's entirely uphill which is good exercise , but we can also take the "JammieShuttle" if its raining or I'm feelin' lazy. I live with 16 other kids, one being a South African guy named Thapz, who works for CIEE. He's cool as hell, and it's cool to have someone living with you that knows everything about everything...it's like a built in tour guide. I live on the third floor of the house, in an awesome room with lotsa sunlight! There are two guys and one other girl on my floor, and one bathroom; it's perfect. We also have a gate outside of our house, and a huge wall surrounding the property with barbed wire at the top. We all have remotes to the gate, its pretty extreme; we also have a security guard that sits in a booth on our property from 6pm to 6am. That's kind of awkward and unnecessary I feel; nobody should have to sit in a booth to make sure that stupid american kids are safe and sound.

We've been doing stuff with classes for the past couple days, and tomorrow is official registration. I'm taking four classes: Religion in Africa, The Holocaust; Media, Power and Culture, and Ethics. It probably won't be so bad; one of them is a 1000 level and the rest are 2000. No classes before 10am either. Pretty sweet.

CIEE kids are scattered all around Rondebosch; all the houses are in walking distance from one another which is cool...People have been coming here to pregame before going out at night, it's fun and this place is like bar central. I've gone to long st a buncha times which is like the most well known street supposedly similar to the main street in New Orleans which I don't know the name of. There's lots of different types of clubs and bars and it's fun. There's also a bunch of local bars in walking distance that I've gone to a buncha nights too.

Overall I feel very safe here, I mean a lot of kids ask you for money and what not, but no one has ever approached me in any kind of way to make me feel uncomfortable. I've walked around at night, not alone tho. During the day it's completely fine to walk around Rondebosch alone...there's a grocery store, a market, some different stores and restaurants all real close to me which is cool. We went out to eat for every meal for the first week because we were living in a hotel right near the V&A Waterfront, which is like the most commercial area. It was kinda overwhelming tho because you're surrounded by all of these kids trying to make small talk with everyone, not remembering names, stuff like that. I can't wait to start classes only to be able to meet a lot of South Africans, I've met a lot of great people and have some awesome friends, but still, the reason I'm here is to hang with some native peeps. I like Rondebosch much better than the waterfront...and I've been making dinner and stuff every night so that's fun. Tons of wine everywhere too; everyone drinks wine with literally every meal. I try to tone it down at breakfast.

There's mini buses that you can take for 5 rand, and then cabs that aren't too expensive as long as you split em with a buncha peeps. The exchange rate is amazing, its like 1 to 8. I can go out to like a nice restaurant and get a nice meal and a couple of drinks, and including tip its like 100 rand...which is very ridiculous when you think about it.

Right now I'm sittin' outside baskin' in some sunlight on our front porch. It's beautiful; it's all really nice stone and our driveway is like a sweet cobblestone type of deal. We also get wireless in our whole house which is nice. I'll throw up some photos eventually, later friends