Almost Time To Go!

12 hours from now, I'll be up taking a shower and getting all my stuff together to go to the airport. AAHH! As you probably know (since I havent shut up about it for the last couple months), I'm going to Cape Town, South Africa with 16 other students and our teacher, Aaron.

I get asked a million times what we'll be doing there. Well, here it is: Our class is called 'Cross-Cultural Leadership Contexts of the AIDS Pandemic.' In the mornings we'll be hearing from a ton of guest lectures to learn about the history and current situation of South Africa, especially surrounding the issue of AIDS. They'll also talk to us about the work they do within the township communities. We'll spend most of the afternoons in Gugulethu (a township just outside of Cape Town) working with the Rainbow after-school program helping out with an orphanage and disabled children.

But it's definately not all work! We'll have time for some entertainment, too:

• Check out the Waterfront (Cape Town's harbor area)


• Go on a safari


• Get a tour of the coast (we get to go on a glass-bottom boat and see seals and penguins!)


• Head out to the Winelands for some taste-testing


• Aaand, weather permitting, we'll get a tour of Robbin Island (where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned), go sandboarding (like snowboarding but with sand), shark diving, and hike around Table Mountain (that's where the baboons are..aah!)

One of the weekends we'll also be partnering up and going to Gugulethu for homestays. We get to sort of live like a township resident for a couple days, which should be pretty interesting. Oh man, I'm getting excited just thinking about all this stuff! So there's the basics of what's going on.

I obviously super excited to go but I'm also pretty nervous. Never in my life have I seen someone struggling to survive or stood within 1000 feet of a house made of scraps. I've never had to face a truth like that. There will be a lot of difficult things that we're going to come across while we're there and this blog is meant for me to tell you about those experiences-both good and bad. So enjoy your reading, leave me some comments and I'll see you in 3 weeks!

**I want to thank everyone that donated money.. here's a list of everything that you helped to purchase for the JL Zwane Community center:

• 21 rain jackets


• 15 shirts


• 27 pants/shorts


• 1 jacket


• 200 condoms


• 114 pairs of socks


• 8 bras


• 192 pairs of underwear

This is the pile of donations.. I couldn't get it all in one suitcase (George, you were right), let alone keep it under 50 lbs, so it isn't all coming with me (most of it is, though). The rest will eventually make it there either through Open Arms of Minnesota/Kevin Winge (who does work in the townships) or other groups traveling down there. No worries!