Much Awaited Update!

Per usual, I'm horrible at keeping up with my blog... But tonight I'm staying in to "read and catch up on school work"--aka blog. Basically I'm going to break up our adventures by theme if you will.

Back to Day 3- Wednesday May 16, 2012:
Wednesday night our trip planners/directors decided to have us meet the Stellenbosch students we'd been Skyping with before we came to study. Nobody realized it was going to be a "serious" discussion about racial issues and society, but it turned out to be pretty fun! We even got some of the locals to go have a drink with us and then go clubbing.
--Needless to say the first night out in South Africa was a little wild. We went to a few clubs and one even had sand on the floor of the entrance and really awesome lights upstairs around the bar.


The next day we had our first encounter with Kayamandi, the township located next to Stellenbosch.

Kayamandi is a predominantly black township (I use their terminology, not my own) that is filled with shacks, government housing, and a few 'normal' houses. It's crazy to see the difference between the white buildings of Stellenbosch University and then the next minute to be looking over an entire town of shacks with barefoot children running around.

Kayamandi

Shacks that people live in

The kids loved having their picture taken

Friendly woman who wanted her picture taken

It's crazy how the views from Kayamandi are so beautiful-- the people living in Kayamandi might have the best views in the Stellenbosch area. While in Kayamandi we got to see Prochorus, the non-profit we'll be working with during our first week of Service-Learning. We also got to meet Bonez, our tour guide per-say and the coordinator/head teacher of the computer class at the library. Our group will be working with Bonez to help him teach the upcoming computer class covering Microsoft Word and Excel.

After our walking tour of Kayamandi we went to watch Academia (our student residence) play another residence in a game of rugby. What an intense game! I felt like I was at a lacrosse tournament with fields being right next to each other. It feels like everyone in this school plays rugby!

Tackle

Hookers in the air

The Scrum

Hooker in the air again

Hello tree-thighs

That night we just hung out and watched movies-- After a crazy Wednesday night, we needed a day/night (or 2) off.

More to come in the next post about our first weekend adventures!!