adventures 301.

In the weeks since I've been done with school, I've become certain of something I've suspected all along: a semester abroad is just as about the little things as the big. Yes, we took some awesome trips and had some great wine and saw scary sharks, but you just can't do those things every single day. For one, you'd be exhausted, and two, you'd be living out of trash cans because the big things suck money up like a vacuum. So lately, the adventures have been little ones, and I'm pretty okay with that.

Lion's Head

The mountain ranges here define everything. If you're on one side of the main mountain, you're in the city. The other side is the suburbs. The closer you are to the mountain, the better off you are. The further you go into the valley, the further you go into the devastating poverty. So climbing the mountains is like a right of passage. You're just supposed to. So, while I haven't made it up the famous Table Mountain just yet, we did take a little hike up a smaller one called Lion's Head. Lion's Head is right in the city, with the oceans crashing on one side and the cars rushing by on the other. We took a small group one late afternoon and hustled on up, playing 20 Questions and "I'm going on a camping trip" on the hike. Once we got to the top, we just sat and watched the sun peak out of the clouds just long enough to dive into the Atlantic. We headed down in the twilight, and by the time we reached level ground, our only means of seeing was the glow of the city, which was tough to hike in, but cool nonetheless.

The Slave Lodge

This is exactly what it sounds like. When slaves came to Cape Town in the 1800's, they didn't actually come from Africa, but from Indonesia, Asia, and occasionally Madagascar. They were brought by overcrowded ships to the Cape's gorgeous shores and kept in a very large lodge, where they lived while they weren't building what is now the city of Cape Town. The lodge saw thousands of slaves, thousands of deaths before it was transformed into the State House, the post office, etc. It's now been restored as a testiment to the men and women who came to the Cape in bondage and whose sweat and blood created the foundation for the world we get to live in.

Kalk Bay + Camps Bay

Who doesn't love the beach in November?
Kalk is down into the peninsula, a little hillside town built around the railroad track that runs by the shore. We went for an evening, which turned a little chilly as the sun hid behind the mountain. We walked and shopped and ate at the famous Brass Bell.

Camps is the tiny beach village on the other side of Lion's Head with one of the coolest vibes ever. And one of the hottest suns and subsequently reddest sunburns.

Cricket

It's a gentleman's sport.
They wear sweater vests; they stop at noon for lunch.
Now, do I know anything else about it? No. Well, except "wickets" have something to do with...something. But it doesn't matter. It was super cool, and while I'm missing football in the States, this is South Africa's version of spring baseball, which was good enough for me.

Holocaust Museum

There are no words. There aren't pictures either, actually.
It was just, well, artfully tragic. There was a peaceful terror about it, as anything to do with WWII should have.
It made me grateful. Grateful for my grandfathers who fought that fight. Grateful for my country that has measures in place so that party movements like the Nazis can't ever gain as much power and control as they did in Germany in the 1930's. Grateful that there is goodness left, that there are survivors left to tell us the stories. Grateful to have the freedom to spend a hot morning inside a public museum to learn and to remember.