last night our mentors rounded us up and sent us out in taxis to the bars. we went to observatory street, which seems to be where the college campus-type bars are. we had a really good time, went to a few different places and ended up at an awesome bar with a room that had sand as its floor and also a room with some crazy techno music playing.
this morning was rough, however, as we all did not get enough sleep and were woken up to go to another orientation session. it was fairly brief; a professor from uct gave us a brief overview of south african political history, which was interesting. after that, we went to set up our bank accounts, which is a relief because i feel better having some rand in my wallet. then i went to a grocery store nearby, which was a lot larger than i expected, and i was able to get a lot of things that we needed around here, like dish towels and a wine opener... necessities. the prices are really low for most things.
later this afternoon, a few others and i decided to go into cape town, since we hadn't actually been downtown yet and i hadn't even seen the ocean. a very interesting form of transportation that they have here are the taxis, which are actually vans. there's a driver, obviously, and then another guy hangs half his body out the window and yells and whistles at people on the sidewalks in order to try to attract them so they take a ride in his van. the taxis seem kind of intimidating at first, but it's actually a really great deal, because you pay a flat rate depending upon where you're going - today, going into cape town, we actually took two vans, one cost five rand and the other cost six fifty... which, in total, is roughly $1.10. also, they're so eager to take you that you can find them anywhere. we were just told to not take these at night, but during the day with others, it's totally fine. except that there are no speed limits here, and they are insane drivers.
anyway, we took one of these taxis into cape town and actually ended up going to the victoria and alfred waterfront. v&a waterfront is basically a huge tourist attraction, with tons of shops and restaurants, but it's completely beautiful - on the water, with the city behind it and table mountain behind that. we walked around for a while, and then went to a restaurant outdoors and ate dinner. it was really gorgeous, and it was good to see the city - i still need to take a trip into the actual heart of downtown, but it's so sprawling that it was hard for us to figure out where we needed to go to get there. it was a nice relaxing end to the day. cape town is so incredibly gorgeous. i can't believe i'm actually here.
now i'm finally taking some time to relax. i've had a lot of fun these past few days, but we're all kind of burnt out tonight. plus we were advised not to go out tonight since we have a big hike tomorrow. despite that, though, one of the mentors just came to our apartment because he was trying to recruit people to go out tonight... the mentors are all uct grad students who basically are here to show us around and help us when we need it. but they differ from what you'd expect, as they're always trying to get us to drink. hmm.
i'm really looking forward to our hike up table mountain tomorrow. for now, i think i'm going to read and then go to bed early; i'm exhausted.
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