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