table mountain hike...aka hardest event of my life

it's saturday morning, and i'm sitting in my bed listening to music and the noise from the apartment building next door. i just skyped with emma for a little bit; it still blows my mind that i can see her and we can basically talk as if we were right there with each other. i realized that skype is really expensive, though, because it uses a lot of credits - the internet here is pay as you go, and you pay for how many megabytes you upload and download.. so a two way video chat uses up a lot. this is something that i think i'm just going to deal with, though, because i don't want to fall off the face of the earth and i want to keep up with what everyone's doing. i'm just going to have to budget my internet time.

yesterday we hiked up and down table mountain. the view was absolutely gorgeous - i took a million pictures, and once we finally got to the top you could see everything - ocean on either side, downtown, robben island, mountains and water as far as the eye could see. we were standing on the highest point in cape town. the hike itself, though, was extremely intense. i don't think any of us were ready for it, and there were some extremely steep parts on the way up that were rocky and we were basically pulling ourselves up with our hands. unbeknownst to us, though, the way down was the hardest - there were "steps" of rock that were extremely steep and completely uneven and dangerous. we descended that way for at least an hour, and my legs were shaking like crazy because we had been hiking for seven hours. it was worth it, and i'm glad i did it, but we were all exhausted afterwards. and fairly sunburnt as well.

after we came back and laid down and then showered, four other girls and some of the boys and i went out to dinner at a place in rondebosch, a few blocks from where we live, called cocoa wah-wah. it was surprisingly really good; it was small and modern and we had a really nice waiter. despite the stereotypes and the crime that is apparent, most south africans are really nice and friendly. it's also interesting because the restaurant served breakfast, lunch, and coffee drinks, as well as a complete drink menu... a very south african thing.

after that, the mentors threw a party at the apartment next to mine for all of us, which was fun. everyone was too tired to go out, so we just hung out around here which was really nice, and i got to talk to several more people that i really hadn't talked to before. everyone is generally pretty nice and just wants to have a good time and enjoy their stay here, and it's interesting getting to know people. it's going to take a while to establish firmer friendships, that's natural - this entire experience reminds me of freshman year. everybody is just happy and crazy now, because we have so much time before school starts, so everyone wants to go out and drink a lot and everyone is trying to meet as many people as they can. but i feel like as time goes on and we develop a more set routine in our lives, things will change... both situations are good. i'm just enjoying it all right now.

today we're going to the beach, so it'll be nice to have a relaxing, horizontal day after our experience yesterday. i think i'm going to go look through some of my guide books now, because i'm trying to get a better handle on where we are and plot out a map of cape town in my head. i'm so bad with directions.