Bonding, hiking, and the works

These past two days have kept all of us students extremely busy, exhausted, and yet filled with a feeling of home. As I sit in Coco Wah Wah, a local café in town, I realize I still haven’t gotten time to process all that I’ve seen and felt here, making everything here still feel like a dream that I still have to wake up from. Running from place to place seeing sight after sight, South Africa, I’ve realized, is most definitely the most diverse, and interesting place I have ever been to. Yesterday, all of the CIEE students got to move into our assigned houses.

I am living in a house called nursery and it is pretty close to campus. It’s 3 stories tall, red brick, with winding wooden staircases on the inside, a nice kitchen, and basically everything is overall really nice. We have a cement wall surrounding the property with an electric fence on top of the wall. We also have a gate to get in to the house that we have to either have a key to open or wait for our csa (security guard) to open it for us. Each house has their own security guard who works from 6 p.m to 6 a.m keeping an eye out on the property making sure no one who isn’t supposed to be in the house gets in. The CSA at our house is named Allister and he is very helpful, he will even offer to walk us to places if we feel uncomfortable or if it isn’t safe to go alone. Our first task as housemates was to throw a braii to get to know each other. We went to the grocery store and bought burgers and chicken, watermelon, and other supplies, we also bought toilet paper because there is none in the house. The boys grilled and the girls made the salads and side dishes, and what was really great was the teamwork that went into this meal.

We had bought a watermelon and two of the girls in our house carved it into a shark, it was pretty great. Our RA Jesse invited some of his friends over to hang out, and we also have a girl living in our house who is on the year long program and plays on the girls soccer team at UCT. She also brought a few friends over and at first it was quite intimidating to get to know a bunch more people, it’s funny how much I’ve realized my friendships at hope came naturally to me, but here, meeting South Africans, I have to make an effort. After the night wore on we all got pretty comfortable with each other and it ended up being a blast, and a pretty successful braii with some good food if I do say so myself. Almost everyone in my house went out last night to either Camps Bay or Long Street, but I stayed in to spend some time with God, which ended up being me uploading pictures on the Internet.

Today we woke up bright and early at 7:45 to tour the Cape with other international students. The first stop we made was to Clifton Beach; we climbed some of the boulders and got to see the saltwater swimming pools! Then we hopped back onto the bus for a long journey to the Ocean View Community, the area where we will eventually be partaking in a weekend long home stay. They were all very welcoming and it was a great opportunity to get to see the talent in all of the young people of the area as they put on a type of talent show for us.

You all know my love for dancing, particularly hip-hop. I absolutely loved it which is why I loved the crews that started break dancing, or telling a story with the music they were using and the moves they were doing, one of the crews was called BB FAB, and they were so funny. There was also an amazing singer who did an Adelle cover to Someone Like You, and also a guy who had an amazing voice but the sexual context to the song he was singing made everyone start to uncomfortably laugh. Then there was an amazing ballroom dancing couple, and overall it was a great experience. We boarded the buses again to head to Boulders Beach. This beach is known for the thousands of African penguins that wander around, swimming in the surf and lounging in the sand. My favorite part was when they walked, it was more of a waddle and it was so cute and funny at the same time. It was so interesting to me to see penguins on a hot beach surfing in the waves but hey…T.I.A.

Afterwards we went to our last stop, which was Cape Point and Cape of Good Hope. We hiked up a mini mountainside for about 30 minutes to get the most amazing view of the world that God so creatively and majestically created. It was so easy to recognize God’s presence because just looking around, the utter beauty is indescribably solely because no words can fully cover how beautiful it is when God’s hand touches a place, a person, anything.

After finally taking an exhausting hike to the look out point, we then made our way down only to make our way up and down a larger cliff side until we reached Cape of Good Hope. Cape of Good Hope is the southern most tip of the Western Cape and although we were being rushed and there were people all around me, just the word Hope transferred me to a different world, as I was reminded of Hope College, and also of Hope in general. I need to constantly remind myself of who brought me here and realize that the beauty here is striking and astounding, the places they’ve taken us to have been amazing and have kept us busy for every second, but if I am to be changed and transformed by God I need to constantly be seeking Him, especially in this place when it is so easy to get caught up in the ways of this world.

That is all for today my wonderful viewers, I am virtually sending my love and smiles to every single one of you. Oh and lastly I am trying to get pictures uploaded but the internet here is pretty dodgy and so sometimes it cuts out without informing me, but I am doing my best to show you all my world here. Love you all! I will leave you all with a small but meaningful verse that God has been teaching me through my time here…”The quiet words of the wise are more to be heeded than the shouts of the rulers of fools. Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good” –Ecclesiastes 9:17-18 I am realizing how many words I speak in the day, and how many are actually quite pointless. I’ve been pretty quiet on this trip soaking everything in, and currently my biggest prayer is that whenever I speak, I let God use me and speak through me, rather than wasting my words in an attempt to be wise.