Cape Town - Week 1

We got an early start on the morning of the 8th so that we could make it over to our new digs at the Cross Cultural Solutions Volunteer House.  We are living with 30 volunteers from the UK, Canada and the United States.  Morgan has somehow lucked out and is the only male living with 25 girls in the house.  Let me tell you - he loves sharing a bathroom with all of us!  The other five guys have taken over the frat house next to the main house which any sane person refuses to enter.  Everyone is great and is here for a different reason - always an interesting story to hear.  The first day we all headed to the Waterfront for drinks and some sightseeing.  Everyone that arrived from their respective home countries was pretty tired that evening; therefore, we had a pretty chill night and just drank some wine and talked at the house.  The house is located in a great little neighborhood close to a few good restaurants and parks.

The week started off with endless orientation events - information on living in the house, making it around Cape Town, history of South Africa, etc.  By Monday afternoon we were thrilled to get out of the house and go on a Township tour.  There are 4 million people that live in the Cape Town area and 3 million of them reside in the Townships.  It is an incredible site to see.  We visited a very small house where up to 16 families find a way to live in only a few rooms with one bathroom.  One of the highlights was stopping at a day care center - the 15 of us touring around entered the center and immediately the kids ran up to us and we become human jungle gyms.  The kids are starving for attention and it was an incredible experience to be able to give that to them if only for a brief 30 minutes.  The majority of our volunteer placements are within these Townships.

Tuesday was our first day at our volunteer placement.  Morgan, myself and a girl named Melissa are all working at a school called Hazendal Primary which is actually much more sophisticated than we all imagined.  We are the first people from CCS to volunteer at the school; therefore, they were a little lost as to what to do with us the first day.  One of the teachers took us around to each classroom and introduced us as the new Americans that would be spending the next few weeks helping out with their physical education and literacy programs.  The children greeted us in unison every time we walked into a classroom and had loads of questions about what America is like, what it is like to fly on a plane, how many hours it took us to get to Cape Town and why we decided to do this. They are incredibly curious!

Wednesday, Thursday and Friday we spent the mornings at Hazendal and then put in some time sightseeing and enjoying the beach in the afternoons.  Thursday was a particularly beautiful day here - we spent the afternoon at Camps Bay Beach with a few other volunteers from the house watching the sunset and enjoying sushi and a few glasses of wine.  It is remarkable how beautiful this city is.

In true form, Morgan organized a group of 12 of us to head out on a sightseeing tour on Saturday.  A man named Anwa was our driver and he was very knowledgeable about the history of Cape Town and all of the different sights we were seeing.  We headed out to Cape Point and Cape of Good Hope which are some of the most picturesque points in Cape Town.  Cape of Good Hope is the most southwestern tip of Africa which was pretty amazing to see.  Our afternoon of sightseeing ended at Simonstown with a nice dinner on the water.

We all did our own thing on Sunday - a few to the beach, a few out on a day safari, and a few just bumming around town.  Onto week two!

Oh and one last note - the biggest highlight of the week would have to be a 6th grader slapping Morgan's butt, winking at him and and then telling me how great his big muscles were!