January 15, 2008

So today was amazing! I feel so much more comfortable here. It was really stressful but mostly because I was actually able to access the internet today from an internet café and contact everybody to let them know that I was okay. I think that was stressing me out the most, being so separated from the rest of the world. Also, I have a cell phone now although I doubt it will be used very often. People can contact me (please keep in mind that I am 7 hours ahead) by calling 0027714287372. It will cost you a lot of money though so I don’t suggest you do that unless you want to buy an international calling card and use a landline.
Anyways, so about today – we went to downtown Cape Town. We saw the places that we are not supposed to be at after 5, which is called the parade, because street kids will attack you for money. It is fine to walk around there in large groups or even by yourself during the day and large groups at night on Long Street. I hope to go there with Jeff (who also works at the Red Cross Hospital with me) after work because there were some exceptionally amazing flea markets selling awesome paintings that were on fabric, masks, carved wood and baskets. I wanted them soo bad! But apparently we should bargain for them so I am super nervous about that and I am bringing somebody with me who is good at bargaining, for sure. We ate at this amazing bakery called Charlys (Amanda I must take you there when I go). Their phrase was mucking afazing cakes, if you switch the letters around you will get it. So this bakery is amazing and eventually I will upload some pictures of the actual cupcakes we got. I had a lemon and chicken pie which tasted like a pot pie. It was to die for and was the best meal I have had by far. Apparently this place bakes cakes for Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Oprah and various other famous Africans and these cakes are gorgeous. They are absolutely amazing. We also saw an amazing building, built by the British under British rule which was the place of central government under apartheid, now turned into the library. The balcony of this building was where Nelson Mandela made his first speech after being released from prison. What was also neat was seeing the church where Desmond Tutu was Archbishop I think. He has since retired but the church was gorgeous.
We did not go to the jazz café tonight because apparently there is not a band playing but we will go tomorrow. After seeing Cape Town, we went to the American consulate so that we could be registered and got a huge talk on safety. Once again, it scared us to pieces. We also went to a store to buy transformers and adaptors since it has been incredibly hard to find them anywhere. There is this amazing tea store near where we shop for groceries that has red tea, which is made in South Africa and it is delicious. I have yet to find a place that will sell a comfortable pillow!!
Interesting events that happened today: we were bothered by a beggar who was trying to coerce our address out of us. We are not supposed to be giving that out since it is a common trick to get the address in order to break in since it is assumed that Americans have a ton of money. I pulled a Mom today and dropped a 2 Liter bottle of Coke on the ground which spurted everywhere and managed to hit my ankle and cut it. Also, I managed to accidentally hit the panic button on the house and the alarm system went off. The landlords did not tell us what the code was so we were expecting armed guards to show up. Eventually the alarm went off but it was a silent alarm from then on. We called the landlords, they gave us the alarm code but the disconcerting thing is that the guards never showed up. It could possibly just be a rumor and maybe they hope that the annoying noise of the alarm will scare the burglars away. So that was my exciting day! I have to wake up early tomorrow morning in order to get my student ID from University of Cape Town and then we are going to some museums. Should be another fun filled day! J