I Survived the First Week

BOO! Didn’t expect that did you? After me being away for so long. You’re probably wondering why I haven’t written about my amazing week, but don’t worry, “Working WiFi” is here to save the day! The internet has been very dodgy lately, so as true adventurer; I seized the moment. Don’t worry, it’s not that South Africa is technically underdeveloped, it’s my exchange host, Dani’s house that is underdeveloped.

Moaning about the WiFi, is not exactly what you want to hear, is it? If you must know, life here is incredible, you have no idea how much we’ve already done during the past week. Sleeping is starting to turn into privilege.

I was welcomed warmly by my host family and immediately felt at home in their house. I’ll give you a quick summary of what we’ve done so far:

Tuesday was our first “real day” here in Cape Town and our hosts decided to show all the exchanges the Waterfront.  This is a harbour turned tourist attraction. This is where we saw our first shark and South African penguin at its aquarium. We later rediscovered our youth at a place called the ‘Scratch Patch’, where you fill a bag with all the pretty stones you’ve found. Highly recommended for those fifteen to sixteen year olds looking to bring back their inner toddler self.

Wednesday was our first day at school and talk about information overload! So. Many. Names. One week later and I’m still having trouble trying to remember half of them. It especially gets really awkward when you add them on Facebook after meeting them, then you meet them the next day again and they all expect you to still remember their names... My brain does not work that way.  A group of us spent some time after school at a mall around the corner called Cavendish. This is where I tried my first ‘Chocolate Frio’, it is the item to be seen with in your hand. It’s basically just blended ice + Lindt chocolate + Milk, but it is delicious. Afterwards we hung out with a couple of new friends in order to get to know each other better.

After school on Thursday we visited Groot Constantia, one of the six must-see places in Cape Town (The Waterfront was one of them too by the way). GC was and still is a wine vineyard with a big history in slavery.  This was followed by dinner at a typical South African fast food restaurant called ‘Spur”.

On Friday Dani took me to a shopping mall called ‘Blue Route’.  Some must-see shops would have to be: Cotton On, Lovita, Jay-Jays, Typo, YDE and oh so many more. The day was ended with a little pizza  get together at Emma’s (Another SA host) house with all the exchanges  from Chilli, Colombia, Holland and their hosts.

The past weekend was insanely busy! Hard to imagine, right?  We took the Hop-on-Hop-off bus around Cape Town on Saturday and during this we visited an African  market area and took a trip with a cable-car up Table mountain. AMAZING VIEW. The sparking blue sea, the bunched up houses and the green edges of the mountains in the distance was truly breathtaking. A load of photos were taken of course. After the bus, Dani’s parents took us to a restaurant on Hout Bay, where I tried my first horribly slimy oyster, never again.

I see this post is starting to get ridiculously long, but just bare with me, we’re almost done... Why don’t we take a five minute break and regroup ASAP.

we back? Good.  I’ll try to shorten the rest so you can all go back to your... uhm... *Insert interesting hobby/pastime here*.

Sunday was supposed to be spent flying over Cape Town in a four-seated plane. Sadly, the clouds were not being sympathetic to us exchange students. So surprisingly enough the rest of the day was spent shopping, in what is possibly the biggest shopping mall I have ever seen, called Canal Walk. I had my very first ‘braai’ that night! Ostrich didn’t taste at all what I expected. It actually tested a bit like liver.

On Monday we had the inauguration of Herschel’s (my school) new headmaster Mr. West. It was so long and with some of the songs that we had to sing, me and a couple of girls behind me had a bit  tone-deaf trouble with the high notes. Let’s just say that paracetamol didn’t really help the headaches.  Audrey, my host mom took me to Kirstenbosch, a beautiful botanical garden, for lunch. Then she and Don, my host dad, took Dani and I to Kalk Bay harbour to see the boats, sea and seals. They then took us out to fish n chips that night for dinner, in a restaurant where you can see the waves crashing a few metres from your window.

Tuesday was a lazy day, because we spent most of it going from shop to shop, trying on hipster clothes, smelling perfumes and swimming.

My hands are sore, your eyes are probably tired and you now know more than enough in order to stalk me and where I’ve been.

In my next post, I’ll tell you guys a bit about what school is like, the uniforms and the subjects that I take. Don’t we all love something to look forward to?