Impressions and Interpretations

As you may be able to tell from my previous posts -- they have been very descriptive and have had very little interpretive quality. This has been mostly on purpose because as I have mentioned before, I do not want to make hasty generalizations or interpretations about my experiences here. I have also not posted for a while. Partly because i'm busy with schoolwork, partly because my life is becoming more routine and less post-worthy, and party because I am taking time to really interpret all that I am experiencing here so that I can share it in a much more meaningful way than I have been able to thus far. I have grown so much in the past three months (yes, I have already been here that long, more than three months actually! :). When reading an email from my granny, she said that most everything at home had stayed about the same. I should have expected this, but when I thought about it and contrasted the "sameness" of home with the change that I have experienced and growth that I am still going through -- I am so glad that I am here and have had the opportunity to be here. I don't think I could have ever achieved this level of growth at home. More on all that later! In any case, thanks for bearing with me as I synthesize all that I am experiencing and allow myself time to interpret and share it!

Knysna

As I may have mentioned before, one of the women who interviewed me for the scholarship, Anne Matthews also knows some lovely Rotarians in Cape Town. Even before I got here, she emailed some people and got me well connected with Rotarians in Cape Town – in fact, the way that I got connected with the club that’s hosting me (Sea Point) is because of a contact she has down here – Rodney Mazinter and his lovely wife Mavis. They invited me for a long weekend in Knysna (you should google it – this place is beautiful). I thought I would be unable to go because of class commitments, but I was able to book a bus back to Cape Town and will only miss one class. Anyway, Rodney and Mavis were coming here as part of a tour of the UCT Dance Team (Mavis teaches Spanish dance at UCT). Two of the nights here we went to see them perform, they were quite good. We also explored Knysna and saw the beautiful coastline, the Knysna forest, the lagoon, and an elephant park.

We also went to an amazing Saturday morning market in the town next to Knysna. I found it strangely reminiscent of home. Browsing through the stalls of vendors selling everything from cheese to meat to vegetables and everything in between, I was serenaded by none other than Alan Jackson whose music was broadcast throughout the market.

Taste of Cape Town

I was invited by a friend (Kerri) to attend the annual Taste of Cape Town. For those of you at home who have been to Taste of the Town in Myrtle Beach – it was a bit like that, but fancier. The restaurants in attendance were all very nice, upscale restaurants (no Johnny Rockets, or Pizza Hut, haha). There were 19 restaurants in all and several local vendors and plenty of wine estates. I had a great time and got to try some really interesting food (traditional African, Indian, Thai, seafood, pasta, etc, etc, etc!) It was a fun event and I'm glad I went!

Langebaan

Thinking that we may not have a chance to get out of town during break, a friend of mine (Claire) and I decided to take a drive outside of Cape Town. We weren’t really sure where we were headed when we left. She asked where I would like to go and, not knowing any of the places she mentioned, I told her to surprise me because I would be happy going anywhere. We headed off going North, I think and passed some areas that I’ve been to before – Milnerton, etc. We went through Blaauberg (sp?) and through a pretty drive up the coast. Eventually (about an hour/hour and a half later) we ended up in a nice coastal area called Langebaan. We took a nice walk up the beach and landed up in a cute restaurant for lunch. I had fish and chips – for the first time since I arrived in Cape Town and she had breakfast. The fish and chips was made with a local favorite fish called Hake. I quite enjoyed it and we relaxed for a bit before heading back to Cape Town. My friend had to be back on campus for a meeting with her research adviser and I had a professor who scheduled class during the break, so we had to get back. Our venture out of Cape Town was quite nice and I’m sure not the last of our fun road trips. She and I are also considering going to Namibia during our break from classes in June.

Hillsong Church Cape Town

The whole post about Cape Town for Jesus and other amazing things going on here leads me to write about something that I’ve been meaning to really talk about on here for a while. I have become involved in an amazing church here – Hillsong Church Cape Town. As many of you know one of the things that I was most worried about in coming here was finding a church and a community of Christians to connect with while here. Well, literally less than a week in, I had found this wonderful community. Hillsong is a branch of a church started in Sydney, Australia with other branches in London, Paris, and Kiev (maybe others, I’m not sure). They’re also starting a church in New York this year – should be good stuff! Anyway, the pastors are awesome, worship is like summersalt camp (for those of you who know it) every week or kind of like an awesome rock concert that you can really get into, and the community here is quite unlike anything I’ve experienced before. I really am adjusting well and so glad to be involved with this church.

Kaapstad vir Jesus -- Cape Town for Jesus

This was definitely the largest Christian event I have ever been to. Absolutely amazing! One of the last tests of the new Green Point (World Cup) Stadium was the Cape Town for Jesus event. This event was expected to have between 50,000 and 60,000 people – I imagine somewhere in that number actually showed up because there were people everywhere. Our seats were great, too – right in the middle of the field facing the stage. It was a hot day in Cape Town and the sun was baking us by mid-way through the event. I went with my flat mate and a few friends from church. The event opened with prayers and praise songs in a variety of languages – from Afrikaans to Xhosa to English. It was a multicultural and multilingual event. They also presented some videos and information about specific issues and organizations within the country – not the least of which was human trafficking and several campaigns working to stop human trafficking in South Africa! It was pretty awesome and also amazing knowing that so many thousands of people were together praying specifically about this issue. Amazing things are going on in this country! There was also a presentation featuring the flags of each country playing in the World Cup – it was nice (except for the fact that I saw the American flag touch the ground a few times…). This was paired with a responsive reading and prayer about specific areas in the world. All in all, this was an amazing event and one that I wish other cities would aspire to. Hey Myrtle Beach and Charleston – why not take the lead from Cape Town and hold an event like this – amazing things happen when an entire city gets together to pray for its people, its youth, its leaders, and the nation as a whole.

Updates!!!

So I’m sorry for the super-update there – there has been so much going on in my life that I really haven’t had too much time to type it out and blog about it. Of course I want everyone at home to know what I’m up to and to realize how amazing Cape Town is, so I’m sorry that I have been a bit awol lately. Also, as I have mentioned in previous posts, internet is a funny thing around here and I tend to only have access on campus or via internet cafes, neither of which is as frequent as I’m used to or as frequent as I would like. In any case, I’ve posted several new updates about various events/happenings that I wanted to share. I would also love to know any questions that you (whoever you are, haha) have about South Africa, Cape Town, me, my experiences, Rotary, whatever…. so that I can make sure that I include answers to those (as best I can, anyway).