Getting ready for Mid-term Papers!!

HI all :) hope everyone is doing fantastic back in the states (or where ever you are reading this) ;) This past week has just been full of school & LOTS of reading for my upcoming mid term papers!! EEEKkk a little nervous about those.. I have 3 due next week, one monday night, and two on thursday but then it's SPRING BREAK :) round one for me lol i get another when i get home!! But I'm getting so excited about it! We finalized our plans last night & just purchased the tickets for everything this morning!! Here is the plan:

Fly to Johannesburg: leaves at 6:25 am on Friday the 3rd
Then we would book the 7 day BAzbus pass (http://www.bazbus.com/) here is the website, check it out, Really cool :)
The Bazbus picks us up from Pretoria at 7:30 am on Saturday and we would arrive in Swaziland at 5:15pm. We will be in Swaziland Saturday until Tuesday am... We then hop back on the Bazbus on Tuesday at 7:30 am and go to St.Lucia/ Zululand and we would arrive there at 12:45pm. We found a really cool safari there where we can see the Big 5 and it is less expensive than Kruger. Then Thursday at 12:45 pm the BazBus will pick us up and take us to Durban. We will arrive there at 5:15 pm and stay there until Saturday. On Saturday, we will fly out of Durban back to Cape Town.

:) YAY so excited!! I never thought that i would be going to Swaziland!! I wanted to go to MOzambique so bad but we couldnt fit it into everyone's budget so this was our back up but it still is going to be amazing!! :) I can't wait to go on a safari!!! It is so hard to get motivated to do school work with this trip coming up in a week lol!! But ill make it work!! So far i have been doing really well in school!! I have gotten a 75 & 72 (which are A+ in this country lol, weird grading system) on my first Gender papers & i have gotten a high marks on my Game theory tuts (assignments) as well :) It so cool going to school here though, so different from home :) good different though!! We have been so lucky with weather as well, it's gorgeous and in the 70s most of the time... flip flops, jeans & tank tops! LOVE it :) I am so excited for the warm weather though!!

Okayy, until next time, LOVE & miss you all :)
xxxxKara

:) Just living life in Cape Town

August 22, 2010

Okay sorry everyone it has been so long since my last post!! It's hard to compete with elephants & bungy jumping lol but since then i have just been going to school and enjoying being a 21 year old in Cape Town :) Last thursday, the 12th, i started Shawco, which is a volunteering organization where we go to the Masizame orphanage and teach kids either math, english, or life skills. It was sooo cool to be able to be a teacher for those sweet girls, im working with the 7,8,9th graders so they were ages 11-15 .. their schools run a little different with ages i guess but i already love them to death! we had to help them make collages from magazines that described them & i was making one too & I wrote my name in bubble letters, and then they saw and got so excited and asked me to make them all ones with their names on it so they could hang it in their room :) it was so sweet how happy they all were! They are such bright girls.. over 3 of them were fluent in 3 languages! It so heart breaking that these beautiful little girls dont have parents though :/ but i will be with them until i leave in jan. so hopefully some how i can help make their lives a little better because they have already done so for me!!!
Friday, my roommate Kaitlyn, and friend Leya went out for Mexican food at this place called “The Mexican Kitchen” on Long Street, which was AMAZING, I love the food here lol and From Saturday morning until Sunday evening we had an Arcadia excursion to Langa, the oldest township in Cape Town. Saturday morning, we took a 3 hour tour of the township and saw places where people made this really cool pottery and jewelry and then saw the really poor side of the township which was unbelievably sad… I mean I can’t even imagine how people live like that, 3 families crammed into a room smaller than my bedroom.. it really made me think twice about a lot of things I take for granted in life. After seeing that I can’t even tell you how much I appreciate the things that have. The crazy thing is, these people seemed so happy and were excited to see us when we were touring through their homes. It’s kind of ironic the whole “township” tour… but it gives people the opportunity to see a different lifestyle. After the tour we were dropped off with our host families for the night! My friend Racy and I were paired off together with a house mom named Ester who was a 60 year old nurse and her 24 year old daughter Langisha who had the most adorable two year old son whose name was Iza. We had the most fun playing with little Iza, and Langisha took us for lunch and to her friends house and we walked around a bit, then they dropped us off at her cousins house where we sat and watched tv for like 3 hours with a few other of my Arcadia group members. The first night was a little weird because we all thought we were going to be getting family interaction, but it felt more like we were being baby-sat which kind of stunk. But Langisha fetched us eventually and took us back to her house where Ester cooked us a delicious dinner and briefly spoke with us while trying to get little Iza to bed. The next morning (Sunday) Langisha cooked us a great breakfast and then we walked around the township a little more and met a few more of her friends. Ester made us lunch and after eating we were on our way back home. It was really nice of them to have us stay in their home, just a little awkward at times because they didn’t speak English in front of us when they were having conversations around us and it just felt like we were kind of a burden all weekend. But the families were really kind and im sure it was just a culture difference. All in all it was nice to get back home to our Highstead flat!

Monday-Friday last week I was busy doing lots of school work, reading, and writing papers mostly. Thursday, Shawco was cancelled, so that was a bummer but it was my room mate’s 21st birthday so we had made reservations at the fabulous Mexican restaurant Panchos in observatory! We had an absolute blast there! After dinner we took a cab to this club called the Fez in Green point and had an eventfully fun night!! Love all the people here, everyone is so nice!! Friday was a beautiful day outside and we went over to the Mowbray house and had a braai with the whole Arcadia group. We met some really nice South African guys the night before and they met up with all of us at the braai and then all 15 of us went to their house and hung out and had a great time! Still celebrating Kaitlyn’s 21st of course!! Saturday morning, Gary’s nieces Nicole and Lauren (who both live in CT, 2 minutes from me) and some of their friends came to pick me up at 9:45 am to go to the biscuit mill market!! AHH LOVE that place! We all had the BEST food as usual! And did a little shopping around the adorable little shops! After the market, Nix, Lauren and I went to the Cavendish mall and bought movie tickets for later on that night because we wanted a quiet evening in ☺ And there is this amazing clothing store here called YDE.. oh my word I want to buy everything in that store but sadly their clothes are so much more expensive here than back home.. so ill just live with the terrible wardrobe I brought with me haha. Later that night Nix and Lauren’s cousin Kerry picked me up and we met Nix at the movie theatre and saw Step Up 3d haha so corny but great dance movie! It was fun hanging out with them, they are so sweet!! After that I came home and passed out so early.. such a long weekend but had so much fun!!

Sunday- Today we watched the two huge towers that are a big part of Cape Town’s city scape get blown up because they haven’t been used in forever. Not really sure why they blew them up, but we hiked up the mountain to the Rhodes memorial to watch along with hundreds of other Cape Town people. It started to rain on us but we toughed it out lol. Now time to bury myself in homework because mid terms are coming up and then the first of my spring breaks this year! We are hopefully going to Mozambique!! But I will let everyone know when we make final plans!!

GARDEN ROUTE ROAD TRIP!!!!

Friday August 6, 2010

Road trip down the Garden Route starts today J yay!! We planned on leaving Cape Town at 4pm because a few people from our group had class, but after many complications with the rays of sunshine a the Budget Car renal place we finally departed CT around 7:45! We packed our little blue 7 seater suv full of backpacks, loafs of bread & tons of pb & J haha! Thankfully one of the girls in our group knew how to drive a manual so the drive was smooth & we only turned on the wrong side of the road once, totally safe J No seriously, it was not scary at all and such a fun road trip! It took us about 7 & a half hours to get to Buffels Bay where we were staying at a Backpackers Hostel right on the beach!! The drive was dark the whole time there but the stars were unbelievably beautiful!! I saw a few shooting ones too! We finally got in at about 3:45am and went to bed in our room with 12 bunk beds because we had to be up bright & early the next morning!

Saturday August 7, 2010

8:30am came extremely fast this morning!! Sadly all the hot water was gone so I took a freezing cold 2 second shower haha and we loaded our backpacks up and headed to the Wild Oats Market which was 20 minutes from Buffels Bay. It was so cool, lots of different stands selling all sorts of African art, carvings, jewlrey, clothes, etc.. the best part was the side with all the different foods J mmm just infinite stands of any kind of home made delishious food you can think of!! I had strawberry and banana creeps that were made right in front of me.. and they were DELISH!! We stayed at the market for about an hour and a half then headed off to “The Big Tree” which was like a 30 minute drive. We all wanted to go hiking there, but sadly when we got there it was only a 2 minute walk from the car haha so we saw the tree, which was massive but the whole think was over in like 5 minutes. Our car of people decided to drive to the next town Knysna and check out the elephant park J We figured we could maybe go feed the elephants and eat lunch or something! SO much better, we got there and saw they offered a sunset Elephant ride, so the seven of us were not passing that up!! We ate at the restaurant there which over looked the reserve the elephants lived on & we saw them while we ate!! It was so beautiful and peaceful there! At about 4:30 we watched the safety video and then hopped on the bus where they drove us to meet our elephants!! There were 3 of them, Harry, Namib and Tosha!! They are seriously the most beautiful creatures & they have the most innocent eyes! I LOVE elephants now!! They split us up, 3 people on Harry, and 2 each on Tosha and Namib. I was on Harry, the 22 year old leader of there pack!! He was MASSIVE but so adorable! We had to walk up steps on the deck and ho on the ellies which was too fun! Their skin is so tough that they don’t even notice you stepping on them! The ride was about 45 minutes and so amazing! The elephants walked us to their watering hole, and got a few drinks and then walked us back! The view from the reserve was amazing too! It was one of the coolest experiences of my life. I never in my wildest dreams thought I would ride an elephant!!!! Once they elephants brought us back we were given buckets of elephant food, some kind of grain pellots, to feed them!! This was so fun because you just put handfuls of the stuff in their trunks and they toss it in their mouths lol Harry was so greedy, we would feed him one by one and he just kept going in a circle to get more food from us haha. After we fed them the manager asked us if we wanted to walk with the trainers and elephants back to their stalls because it was their bed time! Seriously, is that even a question? Haha it was so cool getting to walk and pet the elephants on their way to their beds!! Its funny because they look like they walk so slow but you forget how huge they are so we were having to jog to keep up with them!! After the trainers put them in their stalls we got to watch Tato the baby elephant eat!! Aw he was the cutes thing ever!! While I was standing by his stall he wrapped his little trunk around my leg, So precious, then his buddy put his trunk on my purse and left a little surprise booger for later hahaha gross but hey never though an elephant would use my bag as a tissue!! Haha. Sadly the experience had to come to an end, but when we left we were given photos and a dvd of our adventure!! The Dvd is SOO cool, I cant wait to show everyone at home! Its too long to upload on the internet so you guys just have to wait till January!

When we got back to the Hostel, there was a huge party going on because there had been a surf competition earlier that day, so there were tons of people there! We put our stuff up and joined the festivities lol They even did an auction for the surf benefit so that was cool to watch! One of the boys in our group turned 21 at midnight so everyone was having tons of fun partying with him! Hahah we were supposed to set alarms for 7am the next morning too… that happened .. not lol

Sunday August 8, 2010

Some how we all managed to sleep through alarms but thankfully people from the other group found our hostel room and woke us up because we had to make it to Tsitsikamma in Plattenburg Bay which was about an hour and 45 minutes away to get the hike done before bungy jumping! It was sososo beautiful!! The hike was up a HUGE mountain right on the ocean and half way through we had to walk over a 75 foot suspension bridge over hammer head shark nests!!!! The hike took about 2 hours total, but it was breathtaking when we got to the top! There was this cool porch thing at the very top that let you overlook the whole path and the cars down below as well as the gorgeous ocean!! It was a perfect day out as well because the sun was shining and a nice breeze! Luckily it didn’t start raining until 5 minutes after we finished the hike! I was freeking out because I was scared to bungy in the rain but the place says they bungy in any weather! It took us like 15 minutes to get to Bloukrans River Bridge, where we were about to jump the highest commercial bungy jump in the world, 216m high!!!! I have never been more nervous in my entire life! After we paid they put our harnesses on and we met the guide to walk us under the bridge on this tiny cat walk hundreds of feet in the air on top of what looked like chicken wire!! Haha that was almost more scary than jumping off the bridge!! They gave us instructions and then we waited for our turns to go once we made it to the middle of the huge bridge!! I had no clue that when we paid they put us in order by the numbers on our hand so luck me I had to go second!! Haha I saw the first guy in our group get pulled over to get the straps and bungy put on his ankles and I was freaking out and I figured I would go in the middle, but then the bungy man came over an looked at our hands and did the finger motion “you’re next”… I about fainted haha! But I didn’t wan tot chicken out because I knew I would regret it! It took about 2 minutes to get all straped up and ready to go! Once they had your feet all wrapped up you had to put your arms around the two guys and they hoped you over to the edge of the bridge. Genius me, I looked over and saw the hundreds of feet of rocks, trees, and ocean/river below me and I almost lost my pb&J from earlier haha. I got a few tears and told the guys I couldn’t do it, and they said just look up, you can do this and then they told me to realease them from the choke hold I had them in and get ready to go! Haha it was so crazy I put my arms in a T and took a deep breath and they counted down 3, 2, 1 … and then they said Bungy and I dove off the bridge and free fell for 45seconds!!!!!!! IT WAS THE CRAZIEST FEELING IN THE WORLD!! It is so hard to explain, but I closed my eyes when I first jumped and everything just seems still, and when I opened them I was soaring through the sky like buzz lightyear after 50 redbulls!!!! The craziest part was that it was raining and I was flying faster than the rain drops so they looked like they were standing still!! SO CRAZY!! Haha they whole time I was screaming & after the terror let out I was having a blast!! I hope that everyone bungy jumps once in their life so they can know what it feels like because it seriously is indescribeable.. haha the only thing I can really say is that I felt like a complete bada$$ because I felt like I was kicking gravity’s butt haha!! After the first plunge the bungy pulled me back up and I shot down again just screaming OMG, MOM, HOLY MOLEY… $@*% hahah once the bungy stopped they started to pull the cord back up and a little dude on a different cable came down and hooked my harness up so I wasn’t hanging upside down any more and pulled me up with him back to the bridge… he scared me when he first got there though because I didn’t see him and the whole time I was talking to myself saying OMG that was SOO awesome & Dear God please don’t let my feet fall out of this thing hahahah. He just laughed because as soon as he got there I latched onto him like a spider monkey till we got back to the bridge. After that I watched all of my friends go and had the best time dancing to the music they had blaring!! Once we all finished we headed back across the scary cat walk down to the picture place where they gave us DVDs of our jumps and pictures!! Haha I re watched the DVD and it is So funny! I can’t wait to show you guys when I get home!!! I feel so cool now baha.

We headed back to a different Hostel in Plattenberg where we all got to stay in the same room this time with 12 bunk beds, 1 shower, and a kitchen! WE threw all our stuff in the rooms and walked to a near by restaurant for dinner and to celebrate Reza’s 21^st bday. This place was delish, I had a yummy steak and split a few bottles of champagne with the table and had a great time! After dinner we were all so tired so we stayed in and played drinking games with everyone for a while and then passed out!

Monday August 9, 2010

Happy Women’s Day! I love South African Holidays that give us days off of school! Lol We left Plattenberg and headed to the Canga Caves which were about 2 hours away. We took a 90 minute tour of the +800,000 year old caves which were so HUGE and awesome! I have never been in a cave before, but it all seems so surreal! It was pretty warm down there too, which was weird because I figured it would be cold. Either way the tour was really cool and we had a neat tour guide pointing out all the different stagtellites and structures that were over 800,000 years old! So insane, it’s actually where some of the San Bushmen lived apparently! After the caves we jumped back in the car and headed home! We got a tad bit lost and took the wrong highway for about an hour, but it was the best wrong turn ever because we drove through the most amazing scenery, the pictures don’t do it any justice! Mountains, and beautiful pastures, rivers, rocks, adorable little towns, amazing rainbows, and the most beautiful sunset ever. The Garden route was seriously breath taking and I can not believe I got to experience it! After about 30 pb&J’s our Road trip came to an end around 8pm. It felt good to get out of the car, but it was one heck of a trip! I had the best time of my life J I absolutely LOVE South Africa!!

SHARKS :)

August 2, 2010

Sorry it has been so long since my last post, I have been so busy lately & its so hard to find free time! Hopefully I will be a little more frequent with updates! But last week was great, just went to classes, worked out a little and went to a few different bars on Long Street! Nothing super special, but I definitely enjoyed my first week of school at UCT! Still trying to find my way around the huge campus and getting used to the different ways they do things! Mostly all good experiences with school except for today when I got so lost trying to find the building to turn in my first Game Theory assignment… After the 30 mins of running around cluelessly, I finally found the correct building, but I missed class L Thankfully my prof posts his videoed lectures online so def not a big deal J

I had the best weekend though!!! Friday we had amazing weather & I actually got to wear shorts & my fab steve madden gladiator sandals to class J we all took it pretty easy Friday night and just hung out at our mentor Emma’s house in Mowbray for the night! She made us the delishous little desert things called “Fondents” I think… it was like a little caucer of a warm chocolate brownie with gooey chocolate in the middle J haha it was SO GOOD!! & Saturday we were picked up at 8am to go to Robben Island! We rode on a huge boat over to the island which I was so surprised was so big! For some reason I thought that the prison was the only thing on the island.. but I was def wrong.. there are a lot of different places there… Some people even live there & there is an elementary school on it! We saw a few penguins too… but obviously the best part was seeing the cell Nelson Mandela spent almost 30 years in… it was such a cool/sad thing to see… It’s crazy imagining spending that many years in a room that is nearly the size of a closet… Our tour guide was an ex prisoner who actually was in prison with Mandela or as they call him Madiba! The whole experience was really cool & im glad I got to see the island! After we got back we spent the day at the V&A waterfront which is a big marina with lots of ships and restaurants and shops and the Huge V&A mall! We ate at a delish place overlooking the ocean and we had fish & chips!! So good! After lunch, we shopped a little and went to the movie Inception.. which was SO Amazing!! It was funny though because the way they do the movies here is so different from home.. when you buy a ticket, they give you an assigned seat.. so the 3 of us that went didn’t even sit together because we bought our tickets right before the show… woops.. & when we walked into the theatre, there was no one in there which was weird because the show started in like 2 minutes.. but I guess that’s the luxury of buying your tickets early… you have a guaranteed seat! At least we know for next time!! J

Bright & early at 5:30 am Sunday morning the shark van came to pick us up and drove us 2hours to Gaansbaai where we went CAGE GREAT WHITE SHARK DIVING!!! J What a start to shark week!!! It was sooooooo AMAZING!! We went on this huge beautiful yacht that actually holds the record for the fastest time traveling around the world! So cool! On the way out to Shark alley where we did the cage dive, we saw 2 whales and a few penguins!!! When we got to shark alley they gave us the safety instructions & told us to get in groups of 6 and grab wet suits to start the diving J of course our group booked it down stairs & we were the first ones!! Haha the water was pretty cold, but thankfully the wetsuits helped out & once we saw Jaws it didn’t even matter!! Seriously though it was amazing, when we were in the cage a 10ft great white was chasing the chum right in front of us!! & he even rammed our cage!! It was Awesome!!! We were in the cage for about 10 minutes I think… but it was cool because we kind of just bobbed in the cage till the Dive master yelled down when the shark came and then we would grab a huge breath & go under the water and grab the handle bars to look at the huge shark!! After our turn was us we were given towels & a minute of hot shower time! Then we changed, grabbed snacks & water and headed up stairs to watch the sharks from the deck, which was still awesome!! They were humongous!! I think we ended up seeing about 7 different great whites while we were there!! On the way back we saw a huge whale just hanging out blowing water out his blow hole lol I got a really nice video of him too!! I wish that internet didn’t charge by the mb though because im probably going to have to wait until I get home to the US to upload it… but it was so cool to watch!! They fed us lunch/dinner when we got back and then after we were taken back to Cape Town! The driver had a downloaded copy of Toy Story 3 though so that made the ride home nice… I kept falling asleep thought because the whole day was so exhausting, but so worth it!! We finally got back to our flats at about 8pm!! Such a fantastic weekend!!! South Africa never ceases to amaze me J