Acclimatization

It definitely takes a couple days to be sure you are looking the right way before you cross the street down here (they drive on the left side of the road), but Cape Town has an unbelievable amount of cool attributes and amazing people. Public transportation is extremely unreliable and pretty much useless other than the few regular trains that take you to neighboring cities. So instead these http://cdn.radionetherlands.nl/data/files/imagecache/must_carry/images/lead/Cape%20Town%20taxi.jpg) buses drive from neighborhood to neighborhood with guys hanging out the front left seat whistling and yelling the destination of the bus. Pretty hectic and intimidating at first, but once you are taken by someone from Cape Town on one you realize how perfect they are at only about $1 per ride. After about 8pm they get kind of dicey for Americans to ride and are especially unsafe if there are no other passengers in the van. So taxis are the go to late night transport. Stoplights here are called “robots,” people often say “are you keen to….” As in “would you want to..” There is also a ton of other slang that I haven’t even figured out. The government, schools, and businesses are all run in English so although there are 11 different languages being spoken, almost everyone is conversational in English.

Going out at night could mean a bar close to campus, one in the next neighborhood over, or a trip to Long Street in downtown Cape town (Google it). Long street is an unbelievable mix of people from all over the world (predominantly Europe/Africa), with probably 50+ bars/pubs/clubs/pool houses/swanky piano clubs etc. I can’t even begin to describe how far a conversation can go after asking someone “how’s it going?” in a bar on long street. Last night I met and talked with probably 10 different people for 10-30 min each. People from Luxemburg, England, Holland, Zimbabwe, Ireland, South Africa, USA and who knows where. To put it shortly, Cape Town is amazing. I am 5 days in and I am already sure of the fact that I will be living here at some point in the future.

I just recently moved into the residence halls and will be doing orientation at UCT next week. The first week has been very busy and I haven’t really been able to bring my camera with me everywhere. I promise more photos to come.