There and Back Again.

Memorable quotes from Spring Break

“I like this even better than my lunch wine!”

“Okay, I feel a little buzzed”
“Well I should hope so!”

More stories and pictures to come. :)

Hello!

Sorry for the lack of update but I did not know that this blog was in such high demand. :)

For the most part, I’ve just been going to classes and hanging out in Stellenbosch and just living a normal life in South Africa. The semester doesn’t excursions every 5 seconds like summer school did, which is actually kind of nice because I actually get to have some down time.

Last weekend I did go to the Stellenbosch Wine Festival with my roommate Lea. We got there at 11 when it started and were each given a wine glass and 20 tickets to use at the booths set up around the festival. It was awesome. Some booths only made us give one for the two of us and some of them didn’t even take the tickets so I definitely tried over 20 different kinds of wine. :) It was a really fun day. We ended up staying the entire time of the festival, which was from 11 to 5. It was absolutely gorgeous out that day! Here’s a picture of how awesome and pretty the wine festival was.

Then this past week I didn’t do anything terribly interesting, just attending class. Saturday I went into Cape Town with my roommate and a couple other study abroad students to stay over for the night. We went to a really cool African outdoor market when we got there and then just wandered around for a bit. It was like 70º and sunny all day so it was the perfect day to wander around the city. In the afternoon we went to the District 6 museum. For those of you that don’t know what District 6 is, it’s an area in Cape Town that was occupied by multiple races and during the ’60s in Apartheid it was declared a whites only area. This meant that families that had been living in the same house for generations were kicked out of their homes and most of them had to watch them be destroyed as well. The real travesty in all this is that the area, after being demolished, was never really occupied by whites so the land just remained empty and people lost their homes for no reason. I know, a lot the things I do here in SA involve seeing depressing things. After the museum, we went to see the castle and parliament building since they’re close to the museum and across the street from each other. We also walked down to the waterfront and went to the mall and hung out.

For dinner that night we went to this really neat restaurant called Mama Africa which has more traditional African food. I ate springbok for dinner which is kind of like a deer, tasted like beef, and is Africa’s national animal. They had other African meats such as ostrich, crocodile, and kudu as well. I had the most delicious traditional South African dessert ever. It’s called Mavla pudding and looks like bread pudding. I’m not even sure how to describe its taste other than completely delicious. The rest of the night was spent listening to the marimba bad at the restaurant and lounging around the hostel together. It was a good, relaxing weekend. :)

Next time interesting things in my life happen, I’ll let you guys all know!

Super Ridiculous Garden Route Update Post

Hey everyone (and by that I mostly mean Grammy and Pappy)! I’ve been back in Stellenbosch since Wednesday but South Africa life is crazy so now I’m finally updating about my 6 day long trip. Hokay, let’s start from the beginning.

Day 1
We left at 8:30 to start our bus tour along the Garden Route (which is mostly the N2) and the ocean. We spent about 2 hours driving along the coast and it was absolutely beautiful. I stared out the window most of the trip. We then stopped in Hermanus, a coastal town, for some lunch. During lunch, my crazy friends decided to try snails so we did. It was weird, but whatevs. They weren’t as terrible as I thought they would be. After lunch we played on these huge rocks that formed a cliff going into the ocean. It was gorgeous. We then piled into the bus and drove to Birkenhead Brewery for a beer tasting. A month in Africa and 6 wine tastings but this was my first beer tasting. It was pretty awesome. There were a lot of girls that didn’t want theirs either so a group of us go multiples, which was nice. After drinking delicious beer, we piled back on the bus and drove the Cape Agulhus, which is the southernmost tip of Africa and also where the Indian and Atlantic oceans meet. I got to stand in the Indian Ocean which was pretty awesome and freezing. That night we just ate dinner and hung out at the hostel. I’d like to tell you I went to bed early and didn’t drink at all but with this group, it just isn’t possible.

Me in the Indian Ocean. Freezing. :)

Day 2
I got up at 7AM and yes, that really happened, so I could go whale watching but then found out it was canceled due to rough seas. Bummer. But I was informed that I could go see the sunrise on the beach, so I did that instead. It was so beautiful; I’m glad I didn’t go back to bed. After breakfast, our whole group went and played on the beach briefly before packing ourselves onto the bus again. I spent a lot of time on that bus, let me just tell you. The bus took us to Warmwaterberg where we went swimming in some hot springs. It felt really good because it’s winter here and kinda cool out. After hot springs, it was more bus time which also included wine so it was all good. We then took a tour of the Cango Wildlife Ranch where I got to play with 10-month-old cheetahs. They were ADORABLE. All they wanted to do was play and love me. They purred the whole time and I talked to them like I would talk to my own cats, which they seemed to enjoy. After playing with some cheetahs, my friend Mike and I stumbled upon the wallaby exhibit where you get to walk through his environment and he just hops up to you and wants you to be his friend. It was wonderful. After we walked out of this exhibit, we realized that our group was gone and we had to wait for them to return. The staff thought it was hilarious and made us take pictures with their promotional poster in which their motto is “get lost.” For dinner that night, the hostel cooked us ostrich and let me just say, it’s probably the best meat I’ve ever had. It’s also really good for you too, which is a plus. Delish. That night, I did actually go to bed at a decent time. Go me!

Me and Mike, “lost” at Cango Ranch.

Day 3
We started off our day with a tour of the Cango Caves, which basically looked like something you’d see in an Indiana Jones movie and is all I could think about while in it. It was really awesome though and they used to hold concerts in one of the big chambers back in the day. I died at the possibility of being able to run a show underground. Freaking sweet. Then I spent some quality time with the bus driving through crazy mountains. We stopped at one of the overlooks for lunch and I just stared out the whole time. I’ve been here for over a month and the beauty of this country is still unreal to me. After lunch, we went to an elephant sanctuary where they rehabilitate elephants so they can live together as a family. Elephants are the cutest animals you will ever see, I swear. We got to walk with them and “hold hands” with them. I just stared at my elephant the whole time; she was so pretty and when you look into an elephant’s eyes it’s like they’re looking into your soul. It was definitely one of the best things I’ve experienced on this trip. After elephants we went to the hostel where I spent the night in front of the fire at the coolest fire pit I’ve ever seen.

This is where I ate lunch. Be jealous.

Day 4
This was a busy day. In the morning, we ziplined over Tsitsikamma Falls. I’m completely terrified of ziplines but talked myself into doing it and it was a wonderful decision. We did 8 zips total cris-crossing over the river. I have no pictures from this because I couldn’t take my camera and the pictures were expensive to buy. After ziplining, we went to Bloukrans Bridge so my insane friends could do the highest bungee jump, of 213 m, in the world. I sat in the bar and watched them all on television. Some of them had to be pushed off and some of them went off flying. One of my friends even jumped in just his boxers. Insane. Afterwards, we went back to the elephant sanctuary so that some of us could ride the elephants. It was such a cool experience and my friend literally took 90 pictures of me during it, so there is no shortage of evidence that it happened. We then went to Monkeyland, which is a free range monkey reserve. Essentially, you just walk through a forest of monkeys for an hour. This probably would have been more exciting had my group not been exhausted and had attention spans higher than 5-year-olds. It was still neat though to have monkeys randomly running past you while on the tour.

Me on an elephant, just loving life.

Day 5
This is the last day that we actually had activities, since the last day consisted of 5 hours or so on the bus. Our big activity for the day was to go on a safari at a game reserve. We had the choice of taking a jeep or going on horseback, so obviously I went on horseback. It was probably my favorite thing I’ve done on this trip. We spent 2.5 hours wandering the reserve and we got to get really close to the animals. None of them really seemed to care we were there. I think the best part about the ride was getting to see giraffes from like 10 feet away. It was unreal how close all the animals let us get to them. Although after the ride I really couldn’t move, it was awesome. That night at the hostel we spent having a good time since it was our last night all together. :( It was a really cool hostel though because it was one big house whereas all the others were multiple buildings.

You can see Biscuit’s ears in this photo. That’s actually how close I was to the rhinos.

The last day I just spent sleeping on and off the whole time. We left at 7 so I didn’t really want to be awake the whole trip home. We got back here around 12:30 and I was moved in to my new flat about 3 hours later. Sometimes things happen fast here. Nothing terribly interesting has happened since I’ve been back because class hasn’t started yet and I now know like 3 people. Tomorrow I’m going out to play bar bingo and have a drink at midnight for my birthday. :) Actually, last night when I was at Brazen Head I looked up and saw myself. There’s a picture hanging up above the bar of my team from the first week of pub quiz. I’m South Africa famous!

Reason 394 why South Africa kicks ass

I JUST SAW HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2. BEFORE AMERICA. IT WAS WONDERFUL.

I cried. Lots.

More Grand Adventures

Well, my stay with summer school is officially over after tonight. We’re having a closing banquet with everyone and then tomorrow the option 1 students are leaving for the Garden Route tour. I’m so pumped for it! We get to go whale watching, swimming, exploring, and even more fun things that I can’t think of right now. I’ll be gone Friday to Wednesday on the tour and then it’s on to my next big adventure.

For those of you who don’t know, I’m not actually coming home next Thursday as previously planned. I’m staying here for the semester, so I’ll see you all in November when I finally come back home. :)