Oh Those Americans

I have much to tell but will keep it to important details in order to spare you an unnecessary 3-hour reading. Thursday continuedthe life of vacation. In our orientation meeting that morning, we learned that platonic relationships between men and women in South Africa is relatively rare and that being overly friendly is often misconstrued as being flirtatious. This topic was undoubtedly focused on the females of the group, or as Charles calls us, “Mah girls”. We, like countless other American women fall victim to the influences of American standards of style and romantic expectationsand its false sense of innocence. What our mentors had to explain was that we are sending a direct message in the way we act and how we hold ourselves; a very good thing to note. Interestingly enough, at University of Cape Town, most students dress up for class. It is considered a privilege to attend such an elite varsity (university), and under-dressing is insulting that privilege. Yet, even at a fine institution with good students, first second and third years are expected to take on the opinions of the text and lecturer and sit quietly through class with little input or interruption. The program advisors said that there were three things in particular that distinguished the American students at UCT from the locals: 1) our unfailing need to bring our water bottles to class, 2) our tendency to wear sweatpants to class, as though that were cool, and 3) our incessant hand-raising and questioning. Seeing as I fit all of those descriptions, this should be interesting.

After orientation,

Taylor, Ilana (aka Lans), Georgie (aka Geo), and I took the minibus to the waterfront, a breathtaking area of shops, boutiques, restaurants, and lots and lots of dock space.

There are also a few museums and an aquarium, but those we will visit another day. We spent the afternoon wandering around and, of course, treating ourselves to Marcel’s, the frozen yoghurt (with an h) in Cape Town.

At a certain point, we felt the wear and tear of a day of walking in the sun and found a couch in one of the malls.

We ended up lounging there for a good 45 minutes, sharing about

our families and trying to distract Lans from focusing on her ever-worsening sunburns. After som

e quick, cheap, and healthy (such a great combo) dinner wraps in front of the water, we

visited the bay and then took a cab home. It was too late to take the mini bus. We are

learning our dos and don’ts here.

Thursday night wasn’t complete without a night of dancing at the

bar/club called Springboks- this is the name of the rugby team, for those of you who have not seen Invictus. We literally danced the night away, quickly taking over both the dance floor and the tables by the bar and then eventually the small stage by some very-out-of-place fish tanks. Just as soon as our bodies would start to fatigue another song would start to play that we “had to dance to”. This went on for hours until finally it was time to call it quits and we all squished in cabs and went home.