Welcome to UCT

I cannot believe how I continue to get so hooked up for housing. I’m living in the dorms in a 4 person flat, along with one other CIEE student and two South African students. Most people are living in CIEE houses and will only get to interact with other Americans; meanwhile I’m going to be getting a full on cultural experience. My room is probably almost 200 square feet and has a balcony (unfortunately with no view of Table Mountain, but I can’t complain about a balcony). I’m not really going to decorate it, so it’s going to feel really empty, but I will never complain about having a gigantic room.

The last few days of orientation have been surprisingly good. We had 5 different organizations come talk to us about volunteer opportunities, and yesterday had the chance to visit three of the volunteer sites. I think I’m going to be volunteering at the LEAP school, a kind of charter school for solely black Africans (that’s not racist). There are three main races in South Africa: white, black, and coloured (mixed race). Schooling for blacks is amongst the worst in any country in the world with an incredibly low literacy rate. LEAP takes exclusively black students and focuses on teaching them math and science, the two most under-taught subjects in public schools. I’ll likely be tutoring several kids, but my real role will be to interact with the students and serve almost as a mentor. I never thought I’d say this, but I’m really excited to volunteer here and hopefully make a difference in these kids’ lives. I’m choosing LEAP over several other worthy organizations, most notably a children’s TB hospital. I thought I wanted to volunteer there, but after visiting I realized it’s too sad to watch these kids so young suffer from TB; I wouldn’t be able to take it.

I’ve been loving the nightlife in Cape Town and have been down to Long Street three nights in a row with huge groups of CIEE students. With such a large group of people, any bar we enter is always a blast. On Thursday night, we met two cracked-out Namibian guys who I could barely understand, but they told us they love Americans because of American Pie. Funny how we loathe Americans for the same reason. I’m far more comfortable being in a group of Americans in a foreign country than I was a few days ago, but I must say I still prefer meeting locals and talking with them at bars. I can drink with Americans all I want in America; I’m going to make the most of my time here by trying to meet as many locals as possible.