Jen's first impressions

CAPE TOWN where to begin? I’m originally from Colombia. I was born there and was privileged enough to be able to live there for 9 years of my childhood. I feel like living in Colombia and moving to the U.S has made see the best of both worlds, as I like to call it.  When thinking about South Africa, I imagined it to be similar to Colombia.

           

When we arrived I was able to find a lot of similarities between the two nations, so many of the things that we were experiencing as a whole were not shocking to me. Like for example having to pay to use a public restroom in some locations or Internet café’s. But though  there are a lot of similarities there are many things that they both differ in and I know I will enjoy figuring out the diversity of Cape Town.

     

      

Orientation week, was a lot of fun, I would dare to say that the beauty of the city mesmerized us all. We passed by table mountain everyday and more than once a day but yet, like typical tourist we could not stop taking pictures of it. I probably have 100 pictures just of the mountains. I can’t wait to be able to hike it and see the city from above, I’m sure the view must be phenomenal. Though orientation week was tons of fun, I can say that it was very tiring, especially since most of us were still jetlagged. We tried different cuisines ranging from African food to Thai to your casual pizza or burger. 

We got to sit in on wonderful musicians as they played their beautiful tunes making the audience fall more and more in love with Cape Town. One of the days we were able to go to the American Consulate and experience one of their safety talks. That was a very interesting experience, due to everyone’s background some people took the information more seriously than others, by any means I am not trying to disregard the importance of being safe in South Africa but to me it seems like the U.S Consulate was the rich stuck up kid on the playground bashing all the other kids that are different than it. I can honestly say I got a kick out it. 

Further that week we got to observe some one of the world’s most beautiful places, like cape point. Being able to see something as magnificent as that made me realize how unappreciative we can be and how beautiful our planet is. I am extremely excited what the rest of the time here might bring us and what adventures we might encounter in our journey though Cape Town. I consider myself very fortunate to be able to have been granted the opportunity to come here and potentially make a difference in someone’s life. I cant wait for the next 13 weeks.