I'm here!

Well, actually I've been here for almost two weeks, but we just got internet today! I didn't really mind not having it, but now I have so much to talk I'll probably forget stuff. So I am living in a building called Concordia, which is a building of flats for international students. There are students studying here from all over the world, but the majority of them are Americans. I live with three other Americans, two girls and a boy. Ilana goes to URI and Micho goes to SMC, but we actually didn't know eachother before we got here. Frances goes to school in CA and he was here last semester too, so he's been really helpful. Our campus is gorgeous, we're surrounded by mountains and vineyards, and I think it's been cloudy one day since I got here. Even if I wasn't in another country, just the size of the school is different enough from St. Mike's--there are something like 23,000 undergrads here, and 2,000 at SMC. We definitely got lost ALOT the first few days, but now we're getting used to it. It's about a 15-20 minute walk to my classes, the gym, and a little more to get into town.


The first week and a half has been alot of meetings, orientation, and finding out about classes and the International Students program here. We have tons of opportunities for excursions around South Africa, and we're planning on traveling to Victoria Falls and seeing some other countries at the end of the semester. We also have lots of opportunity to volunteer in Kayamandi, the township outside of Stellenbosch. People who are volunteering went on a walkthrough of the community today; it's a poor, black township that is such a huge contrast from Stellenbosch, which is a wealthy, mostly white town. Parts of Kayamandi are what you expect when you think of "Africa"; shacks, unemployment, kids running around barefoot, but parts also aren't what you expect; there's a really nice community center, it's way cleaner than what I saw in the poorer parts of Lima, and despite issues from the poverty and HIV prevelence, the people we met were proud of where they lived and the efforst to better the community. Most of South Africa is like this because of apartheid--there are underdeveloped, poor, predominately black townships outside of the more affluent cities and towns. It's really hard knowing that the huge gap exists, especially because our accomodations in Stellenbosch are so nice.


That is one thing that has been hard to get used to; Stellenbosch is more diverse than St. Mike's (not much competition there) but it's still not as diverse as I expected. Lots of the students are very priviledged white South Africans, and this area was basically the birthplace of apartheid. And since it didn't really end all that long ago, some people still say and act in ways that are really surprising to college kids from the Northeast.


So along with figuring out how to live and get around here, some of my friends and I have gone hiking, and we did a group day trip to Cape Town. It was gorgeous, and I can't wait to go back. There's a train that runs from Stellenbosch to Cape Town that's safe for us to use before dark, so we might head out early Sunday morning to go to the beach and explore the city some more. I'm starting to get a little sick of not having a schedule, so I'm looking forward to classes starting next week. I'm taking mostly classes for international students that are taught in English--Intro to the South African Wine Industry, South African History, Xhosa (the language spoken in Kayamandi), an art class, and I'm taking one mainstream politics class with regular South African students. It will be taught in half English and half Afrikaans, so we'll see how that goes.

Okay well this is getting to be quite lengthy so I'm cutting myself off for now. My internet is a little bit shaky, and I accidentally deleted my sound driver (long story) so once I get everything figured out and my sound reinstalled (somehow), Skype me, my name is michelle.chapdelaine. Or send me emails!