Day 9: The True Tourist

This morning, we had another early morning and our final lecture on South African history. After that, another Community Group meeting, this time we had a little more complex assignment based off of Seth Godin’s book What Matters Now? The purpose of the book is to gather the greatest authors of this period and see what they think is important at this point, Our assignment- do the same thing, just speak to our generation. Mine word was “Difference” so it was a good time.

After class today, we decided to be the true tourist and go out and explore Cape Town. We visited the Slavery Museum, Castle Gardens, the National Library, and the District 6 museum. All very interesting places to see and learn a lot more about this area and more about why South Africa is the rainbow nation. After sight-seeing and seeing a butt-load of pigeons and squirrels all around the gardens (one of the pigeons actually pooped on Steph’s leg) we decided to head back to where we started.

We passed by Charley’s Bakery (Oprah’s favorite bakery in the WORRRLD) but it was 4 PM and it was closed. Balls. So we kept walking and passed through the Grand Central Terminal- and holy crap, was that an experience. Imagine hundreds of people waiting to get on a bus to go home after a day at work. These busses were packed so tight with people, I think even clowns would be impressed (that was my attempt to be politically correct and not call out ay specific ethic group). The rows with 2 seats had 3 people sitting in them, the rows were filled at least 3 people wide and the people filled the bus from the back all the was down the first 2 steps, Oh- and the driver was in a cage, it looked it. Real intense. I was so nervous walking through that area mainly because I didn’t know where I was, now granted it looked like New York during rush hour, but at least in New York, I’m in my own country and not so far out of my comfort zone and nervous that even the littlest thing made me worried/upset/borderline crazy. But I survived and lived through it.

We had another ethnic treat for dinner tonight- Mexicana Kitchen, a truly “authentic” ethnic treat, it was actually pretty good… But after a long day, I’m now sitting in the apartment getting to know my roommates. They’re really cool guys, I mean we watched Hotel for Dogs together (yes, that the pennacle of entertainment down here in Africa) and talked about life- good stuff. Now, it’s off to bed- we have an early morning tomorrow. A sunrise hike up Table Mountain for the “Power of WOW” lecture. So we’ll see how that goes…

Travel on,

Seth