Waterfront

February 5, 2009

The past few days have mostly just been orientation stuff so we have had to get up early every morning which can make nights a little less exciting or mornings a little more painful. Last night we went out to the Waterfront and got dinner at this really nice Italian place. It was probably one of the nicest restaurants I have ever been to. The woman actually put my napkin on my lap for me. I ordered a bottle of wine from Durban and I had to do the wine tasting to "make sure I liked it" (when really I was just ordering the cheapest Chardonnay on the menu) and it was kind of awkward haha. I just don't really know how to act when I'm being waited on I guess haha.
Afterwards we went to the bar called Mitchell's. They have karaoke every Tuesday and let me tell you, these people are serious about their karaoke. Every singer that went up was actually really really good... except for us. They had these beers called Old Wobbly's that are 11% alcohol so I think our group may have been slightly over the top. Needless to say I was glad we were at the Waterfront, which is kind of a more touristy area, and that we were in a large group because otherwise we may have been asking for trouble.
Recently we have all been going out in huge droves and it kind of makes me uncomfortable. I feel like we are more obvious in general because we are white Americans and then when we travel in a pack of 20 or 30 of us it causes even more attention to be brought to us. Not that I dislike anyone in my program, but I am hoping things will start to calm down a bit and we will all find our individual places so as to not call so much attention to ourselves and our foreignness.
I am getting antsy to get started with everything. I have spent the past few days moreso getting to know the Americans in my program. I like all of them and we get along really well, but I also want to make friends with more South Africans as soon as possible. I have been able to make friends with a few through orientation and of course there is our RAs, but I am looking forward to meeting more and I hope this weekend that will happen. We are going to Long St (the biggest bar/club scene) on Friday with the RAs and on Saturday there is a house party that we are going to so hopefully I will have the opportunity to make friends with more South Africans there.
A lot of the speakers that we have heard at orientation have spoken about the importance of the international student population at UCT and their reasoning is very interesting, not something I suppose that I had directly thought about up until now. While in the US, we internationalize ourselves by studying abroad for a semester, this is not generally the case in South Africa because of the relative weakness of the rand (their currency) in comparison to the dollar/euro/pound, etc. and because a lot of the students simply don't have the means to travel either way. So their internationalization comes from the international students who come here. It makes me happy to be able to be a part of that, even though ideally it would be great if more South Africans would be able to travel outside of this area of the world.
We still have over a week until classes start but tomorrow is registration. Next week I will finally be able to sign up for some volunteer opportunities. I really want to do some work in a township at least once a week so I'm excited for that to get started. I am taking Afrikaans and most likely this class called Religion, Gender and Sexuality. It should be good.
So far the things that have been the most different for me in terms of comparison to how I normally function in the U.S. is always traveling in large groups (so far just because we have all had the same schedule with orientation, but in general because you really can't go out alone, specifically at night) and not taking things out with me like my credit card or all of the cash I have. I keep small amounts of money scattered in different pockets so that its not all condensed in the same place and I don't bring my camera out with me at night. Its also not good to talk on your cell phone on the streets.
I am continually amazed by the social development that is going on in South Africa. It is something that really makes me think that I am meant to be here again because of my interest in that field. This country has a really battered past of segregation with apartheid but they are making open and honest efforts to equalize their society. They openly recognize what they did and as a result racism is less prevalent than I thought it would be (although it is definitely still present) and this country has the most progressive, liberal constitution of any country in the world. Its really cool to be able to see this firsthand.