(A note to my faithful readers: First of all, thank you for looking at our blog! It takes quite a while to write, but I’m glad I can keep everyone back home updated with our travels. Since I bet you all want to know about life here in Stellenbosch, what I’m going to do is start to get you up-to-date with life here along with finish my entries on the Safari… so don’t forget to keep checking below for new updates.)
As our plane circled the Cape Town airport, I got a sinking feeling in my chest. “So this is home sweet home” I told myself. “I guess it’s too late to turn back now”. This whole living in South Africa thing always seemed like something that would never actually happen, just another one of my dad’s crazy ideas. Even throughout our safari it still never seemed real, more like a short vacation then a new way of life. “Why again did I decide to turn my life upside down on purpose?”
The sun was shining and the weather was nice and hot as we exited the plane (a good change from the bitter cold facing those back at home). Our plane had been slightly delayed in Jo-berg, so we hustled through the airport. Waiting for us at the arrivals gate was a guy, decked out in surfer shorts, holding a sign with our names on it. As we fallowed him to the jeep I tried to soak in the surroundings, though I was still having a little trouble believing the whole situation. It wad quite nice that the university sent someone to pick us up, as we all were a little shell-shocked.
As we drove from the Cape Town Airport to Stellenbosch, the student told us a little bit about life in Stellenbosch. It was on this trip, just outside the Airport, that I saw my first Informal Settlement. These Informal Settlements, which were the townships during the times of apartheid, where covered in thousands of tin shacks. Though I knew they existed many years ago, I honestly didn’t quite expect them to be so large and so populated (with so much poverty) soo many years after apartheid was abolished. I guess change really does take time. The student driver also kindly gave us a quick tour of our end of the city of Stellenbosch, showing us where to go to the bank and where to get groceries. Thank God he did that for us, as It saved us a lot of aimless wandering. He then dropped us off at our house, and bid us farewell.
All we had been told by the international office (the people from the university who arranged for us to have a place to stay) was that it was a garden cottage (what the heck is that??) and that it had 3 bedrooms and was close to campus. With such a vague description none of us knew what to expect, though I can say our imaginations were going wild (I think my mom sorta had the idea of a small villa on a wine estate). What our “garden cottage” turned out to be was a 3 bedroom apartment over a house. Consisting of 3 medium sized bedrooms, one bathroom, a VERY small balcony and a kitchen and living room combination, the entire flat was about 2/3 the size of the bottom floor of our house back home. The cherry on the top of the sundae was that the ENTIRE flat is covered, floor to ceiling, in knotty pine (the thing my mother has spend years, and muchos denaros, eradicating from our house). Let’s just say this wasn’t quite what we had been expecting.
As we started to settle in, my dad noticed a familiar face standing outside the house. Here to save us from the shell-shocked state we were in, was Corlia, Dave’s wife (Dave is my Dad’s friend and colleague, and the person who suggested we come to Stellenbosch). She and my parents chatted for a while, and she answered our enormous amount of questions (everything from safety issues to whether or not one can drink the tap water). She then took us on a more in depth tour of the city, which was quite nice and helpful. I’m so glad she was here to greet us, because we were all feeling pretty overwhelmed. She came to calm the storm. She showed us a good place to eat dinner, and left us with a promise to take us to her beach home the fallowing morning.
I went to bed that night with mixed feelings, glad to have finally arrived, excited to see what was still to come, but at the same time really nervous and apprehensive… “Why again did I decided to turn my life upside down on purpose?”.
~Danielle
