Cape Town!

Wow, it’s been a while since my last post. I’m so sorry I haven’t been able to keep you updated on everything I’ve been doing. I was extremely busy the last three weeks and I didn’t have internet connection most of the time. We’ve finally settled down in our new home in Cape Town, so I’m able to blog once again.

I’ll try to catch you up on the last 3 weeks as quickly as possible:

3 weeks ago…
We nursing students turned in our big senior papers and did presentations on them. It was such a huge relief to be done with it! We spent the entire next day playing cards for literally 6 hours straight as a form of stress relief!

Easter Sunday wasn’t quite the same as I’m used to, but it was still nice. Apparently Easter isn’t a very big deal in churches here in South Africa. My church didn’t really do anything different that Sunday except start an hour earlier. I was a little disappointed that Easter wasn’t really mentioned much in the service. But after church, the Activities Committee threw a big Easter celebration at AE. We had a delicious brunch with all the wonderful breakfast foods I’ve been missing, and then games afterward. It was very fun!

2 weeks ago…
The following morning we woke up at 4:30 am to leave for our safari and Zulu experience! We spent the entire week about 4 hours north of Pietermaritzburg on safari and living in mud huts! It was such an insane but amazing week!

My birthday was that Tuesday, and I was on safari the entire day! It was so wonderful! I couldn’t have asked for a better birthday. We went out in the safari jeeps 3 times during the day, so I was able to see elephants, hippos, giraffes, zebras, and impalas. Then we had a birthday party in the evening!

The next day, we went to a private game reserve and saw cheetahs! We were able to drive really close to them (they were about 15 feet away!) and we even saw one chase after an impala! It was so exciting!

In the afternoon, we traveled to the Zulu village to get a completely different experience. We stayed way up in the hills in an extremely isolated village. We slept on bunkbeds in round mud huts, used an outhouse, and had to carry our own water to the shower to fill the shower bucket. It was very different than anything I had ever done before.

The first night, a bunch of the neighbors came over in traditional Zulu outfits and danced for us. The next day, we went on a hike. The local medicine man showed us some of the plants he uses in his practice, and some neighboring ladies showed us their technique for making beaded jewelry. We also learned how to stick fight and use spears and slingshots! On our last day, we helped cover one of the huts with a final layer of mud. We had to mix the mud with our feet and use our hands to smear it onto the walls!

1 week ago…
The day after we got home from our safari and Zulu experiences, we had to pack up our rooms to move across the country to Cape Town. Unfortunately, many of us got sick that day from some sort of bug we caught at the Zulu village. I was one of the unlucky ones. I was so dehydrated from vomiting all day that I had to make a quick trip to the emergency room to get an IV. After 30 min of fluids, I was well enough to go back home. Another girl was nice enough to pack for me, so by the time we got on the buses the next morning, I was feeling much better.

We spent the week traveling across the country in a very nice charter bus. We slept in different hotels every night, and made a few stops during the day. 46 people went bungy jumping at the highest bungy jump off a bridge in the world! (I chose not to do that.) We also took a tour through the underground Cango Caves and visited an ostrich farm! I got to feed an ostrich and sit on one! I never in my life thought I would ever do that!

We arrived in Cape Town on Thursday, April 15. I love it already! It’s so beautiful with the ocean on one side and Table Mountain on the other! It’s strange to be in a big city after being isolated for so long at AE. But it’s very fun.

We’re actually not staying in the city, though. We’re staying at a tiny Christian college called the Bible Institute of South Africa in the small fishing town of Fish Hoek. It’s on the other side of the cape, about 30 minutes from downtown Cape Town. It’s right on False Bay though, so the water is literally across the street from us! It’s beautiful! There’s a train station (like the metro) 5 minutes’ walk down the street, and we’ve taken the train into downtown Cape Town every day so far.

Today we went to Hillsong for church! I didn’t even know there was one in South Africa, but apparently there’s a big one in Cape Town! It was pretty fun, but definitely not the type of church I’m used to.

Well that sums up pretty much everything I’ve been doing. I’m sorry I’m not able to put any pictures on here, but the internet is very limited and we’re not allowed to upload pictures. I’ll probably only do one or two more posts since I’ll be home in less than 3 weeks, but check back in a few days and I may have put up a couple pictures by then!

Word of the Day: I’m no longer in an area where people speak Zulu, so I’ll be learning Afrikaans from now on!! I’m really excited about it! So for the rest of my posts, I’ll teach you Afrikaans. Today’s phrase: “baie danki” (which literally sounds like “buy a donkey”) means “thank you very much.”