UCT and a few Jam Jars -- Tuesday

Today was fun! Last night Aaron told us to go outside when we woke up.. so we did and you will not believe the view we have from our place! You turn around and there's Devil's Peak and Table Mountain! Right there! Pretty sure we woke up the neighbors we were so excited!
We walked to campus at UCT and got a tour.. amazingly beautiful campus. We like buildings at the U that are 'old' and pretty.. but these are old. Like colonial style old. Campus is huge too... they have lower, middle, and upper campuses. To get to the upper campus you have to walk up hill a lot! I ate a ton on the planes and I feel like I burned it all off.

We had sort of our first class where we got a lecture on safety followed by the best clubs and bars to go to... that sort of stuff. Don't worry, the clubs generally are closed Monday nights, so we'll at least get a night off. We walked by the rugby fields! But there was no one playing because I guess it's exam time for them. We walked down this big hill to get down to the main street and the houses here are so cool. They sort of remind me of houses in Florida because most of them are short but interesting-looking. ALL of the houses are surrounded by gates and a lot of them either have some sort of spikes or barbed wire running across the tops of the gates. Some houses even have guards standing by the entrances.

Diane and Ajith showed us the main street and the most important place on it-Nandos. According to them Nandos is a healthy delicious version of KFC. Ajith even said that South African KFCs are better than the ones in the US! We'll see about that, I'm pretty skeptical.
Eventually we went to the harbor and ate at this awesome restaurant called Primi Wharf. Interstudy paid for our food and drinks (thanks!) so I got some sort of ravioli stuff and a Sex on the Beach. They had these drinks there called Jam Jars that are made up of a few different liquors and come in different flavors.. the best is strawberry. They come in big jam jars. They are delicious. And they have Tea Pot drinks that come in teapots!

After we were done eating, we went to the waterfront, took a group photo and walked for a while. The harbor is so pretty. You can look across and see Robin Island and faroff mountains and then you turn around and see Table Mountain. Everywhere you look is gorgeous! There are a ton of stray cats too...didn't expect that. They look a bit crazy too, like they might bite. I saw at least 8 of them walking around today. They were in the weirdest places, too.. like on the huge concrete wave breakers and hanging around in the hotel parking lot next to a Porsche. As we were in the mall looking for hair dryers and adapters, we spotted Lisa and Bianca from America's Next Top Model... long story short, Nate and Cole managed to get their numbers and an invite to Lisa's 21st birthday party tomorrow night. Haha they were so giddy about it, they went and bought new shirts to wear out. So we'll see how that one goes!

I guess I don't have a lot else to say besides the basics because we havn't had that much of a culture shock yet.. Cape Town is so westernized that there hasn't been anything that is completely different than what I am used to. It will be interesting to experience the huge contrast between Cape Town and the townships, especially when it comes to the disparities in wealth.

That's all I got for now..I'm thinking upcoming posts should be better once we start getting into less touristy activities and my brain starts to turn back on. Until then, sorry for the scrambled mess of thoughts.