Cape Town: Part Three

On Saturday, I went on another tour that maybe I could have skipped, but it was still a little different from what I had seen before. We went to the Castle of Good Hope again, but the guide we had this time was extremely knowledgeable and loved to explain things for us when we asked questions. After the Castle of Good Hope we went back to the District Six Museum. From there we did walk a bit in front of the building where Capetonians used to appeal their racial class assignment. Outside, two benches had been placed to commemorate that –one said “non-whites”and the other said “whites.”We walked through Company’s Gardens again. We passed St. George’s church, where Desmond Tutu was the archbishop. Then we passed through Green Market Square (which is also where all of the Cape Town newspapers have their offices! Eee! :o) ). And we finally stopped for sandwiches at this little restaurant (that was oddly themed with pictures of old American movie stars). Next we went to this really cool organization called Streetwires, where they make everything out of the characteristic wire-and-beaded crafts of South Africa. To describe it, it’s kind of like those bead and ribbon things that everybody used to do a few years ago, but with a much better quality –and they can make anything out of the wire. They explained that if you want something made you can let them know and they will design it for you. They even have other stores that continually stock their designs. The point of the project is to employ people from the community and give a structure to the traditional craftmaking. There were even two sculptures of Nelson Mandela made entirely out of beads and wire. It was impressive.

After we got back from the tour, I met up with two other girls who wanted to go out shopping, so I walked around with them for a while and then did some shopping of my own for the rest of the afternoon. Then, I met up with my friend Charlie for dinner at the same restaurant that had free wi-fi as the night before. I enjoyed dinner, but the manager said there was something wrong with the internet connection, so I went outside of the mall to get their wi-fi. I talked to Mom and Dad and Amy for a little bit. Then I talked to Tim for a bit until my computer died. I went back to the ship to recharge my battery and then came back to the mall in the middle of the night so that I could talk to Tim again. When I finished, I walked back to the ship and called it a night.

I got up the next day for my FDP, which is a field-directed practicum, which are supposed to be educational. Most classes require that you do three, but my professors have been pretty lenient. Anyway, this one went to the Afrikaans language monument and museum. The monument has kind of a strange art-deco-rocket-type shape with lots of symbolic meaning about every part of it, but it was in a really beautiful location –at the top of a mountain near the winelands. It was constructed in 1975 during the apartheid government and is more symbolic of the use of the languages and it’s formation than anything else. The monument is huge –it was big enough to walk into and was probably about 3 stories high. The buildings and set up of the place around it reminded me of a state park (like when we went to go see the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon) with a ten-minute explanation of the monument by a guide and not much else. I did learn that about 56 million people speak Afrikaans, a Dutch creole –which is to say, a mix of Dutch with some native African influence –it even has some similar words in French. Everyone learns both English and Afrikaans in school and some universities even continue to lecture in Afrikaans as its primary language. So, I learned a few things, got some nice mountain vista pictures and we were on our way.

We were actually supposed to also go to the Afrikaans language museum, but because it was a Sunday, the museum was closed. Our professor didn’t seem to broken up about it –he said the museum is basically a Dutch colonial house where a meeting was held by some of the Dutch farmers to recognize Afrikaans as a language. The countryside was beautiful! All green because of the grape vineyards stretching over these pretty rolling hills. Our next stop was the Boschendal winery, which was amazingly beautiful. We had lunch there, but we didn’t have enough time to do any wine tasting. It was really pretty and the weather was just right –sunny and breezy, but cool in the shade. Our next stop was in the little town of Stellenbosch. It was so cute and nice in the hilly wine country with a bunch of little shops and restaurants and hotels. There’s also a university there, which, as our professor told us, apparently grooms many rugby players and is one of the most rugby-oriented town in South Africa. It looked like a nice little town that you could probably spend some leisurely time walking around and enjoying the atmosphere. I knew I needed to do some wine-tasting there, so there were a few people who wanted to find a place and followed them. We ended up seeing our professor at a café that had tasting, so I sat with a kid named Smith next to the professor, Professor Thomas, my English As A Global Language prof. He was with his wife and had to explain how to taste the wine to us a little bit. I think I liked the white wines better, but I like the shiraz a lot too. We had a good time tasting, but we had to get back on the bus and get back to the ship. We returned at about 5-ish and got back to the ship before our required time at 6 p.m.

I filled out some postcards and some paperwork that allows you as a foreigner to get the tax back on most of the items you buy. But, it takes three months to process and they didn’t tell us the total, they just stapled the receipts to the form. Oh well, any money back is better than no money back, right?



Whew! Finally done with this Cape Town posting! I’ll tell you about Mauritius soon –since our time there was so short the post should be too, right? And all about the events today with the Sea Olympics!