This is my first entry to my first blog ever. It is meant to be an ongoing catalogue of everything I have the time to write down while in Cape Town, South Africa. While I haven’t actually left yet, in fact I’m 23 days from departure, I figure that I should get the ball rolling in hopes that starting some kind of routine now will help me to keep it up while I’m there. Deep down I know that this is a pretty futile endeavor seeing as I have never been able to keep a running account of anything for more than a few days. But I am bored and needing some exciting new project to keep me going until I actually go somewhere.
The problem with starting the blog now, however, is that I really have nothing exciting to write about- hence the reason for the early start. What I have been spending this month and a half break between college and my semester abroad doing is little spurts of research in-between longer spurts of watching reruns of my favorite shows. I have been trying to prepare myself at least a little in a variety of different aspects. I have gone on countless shopping sprees for summer clothes. This has been one of the more difficult parts of my preparation since no stores are selling anything for summer right now. I have been trying to check put on the latest fashions since I have never had to dress for an international city. The only experiences I have as far as dressing for going out is at my very lax, hippie Quaker school Earlham College which really doesn’t demand much since a large portion of the population doesn’t wear shoes. I have also been reading up on as much information on South Africa that I can. I am in the middle of Nelson Mandela’s Autobiography and Steve Biko’s “What I Like” I am slowly beginning to become comfortable with the basics of South African history, but I am simultaneously realizing which a complex, multi-cultural history it is.
I think that’s a reasonably sized post for really having done no traveling whatsoever yet, so I will end it here. I promise that much more excitement will follow, though I really have no idea of what kind it will be.
