Sunday - Thursday of Week 1

Instead of doing an outdated blog for each of the days I missed before starting this blog I'm just going to pack them all into this one then start back on a daily or every other day one that is up to date, sound good?

Sunday our new friend Ish took us on a tour of the city. We went past beaches, shops, got lunch at the V&A Waterfront, and ended our journey atop Signal Hill.

Jake Taylor, Jack Konas, and myself at Camps Bay

Signal Hill seemed like it overlooked the entire city, but we would soon come to find out that it is nothing more than a mole hill.  We spent about half an hour on top before heading home.

A view of Devil's Peak, Table Mountain, and the city from Signal Hill

Our night ended with salsa dancing and dinner at Buena Vista, while Group 2 arrived on their flight from Atlanta.

Our Monday was mostly a free day, since Group 2 went on their city tour, but we had a brief meeting in the morning, met some more new people, then spent the day exploring Center Pointe and the area around our apartments.

Tuesday a professor from University of Western Cape came and spoke to us about the history of apartheid in South Africa, and how the government attempted to reconcile the wrong done. It was interesting learning about District Six and the forced removal of blacks from their homes, but what I thought was most interesting was how the government under Nelson Mandella and other Presidents tried to recover from apartheid. The entire story of apartheid in Cape Town is amazing and certainly worth learning about, but I won't bore you with the details today.

We began Wednesday with our first classroom type session, although it was far from an actual classroom. We had taken a strengths finder online before coming on the trip and spent our time learning more about ourselves and others. My greatest strength is Adaptability, which typically is described as someone who can "go with the flow" and discover the future one day at a time. Discussing these strengths further made me feel connected to others on the trip and learn a lot about myself.

Thursday had to be the most interesting day of the week by far. Kevin from the Amy Biehl Foundation (www.amybiehl.co.za) came and spoke to us about her story and the foundation her parents set up. Amy was an American that came to South Africa to help people affected by apartheid with the voting process in 1994. She was murdered on the eve of the election by four men who saw her as another white person trying to keep them down, sadly she had been helping at the forefront of the fight against apartheid. Her parents set up a foundation that today has over ten separate facilities that sponsor an after-school program with kids in the townships around Cape Town. They teach music, dance, acting, and give the kids a hot meal five days a week.

We were lucky enough to visit two of the schools and see some of the classes that the kids participate in. Courtney challenged us not to take our cameras so that we could truly connect with the children, but we got to see their homes and had between thirty and forty kids perform several dances for us before we went home.

Courtney told us to be well hydrated on Friday and meet the following morning in workout clothes in the Lagoon View room.