I have to actually take classes? - First week of school

I have been sitting in the living room of our flat for the last few hours, spending my Sunday evening catching up on calculus in order to bridge the gap between what I learned in my courses at home and what I am learning in my calc course currently. I wish I could spend the semester just hanging out here in Cape Town without having to go to school and do that whole learning thing. But that isn’t a possibility, sadly. Obviously I am over exaggerating the suffering I have gone through so far in school, but that is typical after one week of class. I am taking Calculus 4, Structural Engineering, Statistics and Ethics. Hopefully all of these classes will transfer back to the University of Minnesota to fulfill general requirements, or specific requirements for my major or minor.

In my school schedule I am beginning the first semester of my second year in college, but here in Cape Town it is the second semester, so that makes things a little bit interesting for my calculus and engineering class. Both of them are picking up where the first semester classes left off, but my courses didn’t teach things in the exact same order. Hopefully this won’t end up being a big deal, but this week has been full of trying to get caught up a little bit in calculus, as well as learning some engineering concepts I have never seen before.

Statistics on the other hand has been a breeze so far. We have been covering very basic mathematical concepts, so it has been nice to not use my brain for at least one class! Originally I was enrolled in Macro Economics instead of Ethics, but I filled out some paperwork to switch into the Ethics(Philosophy) class in order to *fingers crossed* fulfill my last general requirement at the UofM. I filled out this paperwork on Thursday, but lectures for Ethics are only Monday-Wednesday so I have yet to attend a lecture for that class. Hopefully all the paperwork on the University’s end gets all sorted out so that I officially have dropped econ and picked up ethics.

I have class at 8am four days a week which isn’t all that bad, but the fact that I have to plan for at least 30 minutes to get to class makes the mornings that much earlier.

I love the feel of the UCT (University of Cape Town) campus. Most of the buildings are really old and beautiful. I can’t wait until it gets to spring and summer here because there is ivy covering almost every building, which will be really cool to see. The feel of the campus feels a lot like home, lots of people, large campus, all sorts of stuff going on all the time, but one of the differences I have noticed (is kind of stupid, but whatever) is that instead of actual restaurants all over campus, here there are tons of food tents set up all over campus. There are a few actual café’s and restaurants in some of the buildings, but mostly there are just little food shops set up in the lounge areas in buildings, or outside in the food court area. Some of the tents seem real questionable, but I’ve heard the Chinese tent has some great food. This is a very weird difference I have noticed, but it was just something I have picked up on so far :)

After classes were over this week, the weekend was packed per usual. Friday night I went to another Western Province rugby match in which they destroyed the Barloworld Toyota Puma’s. The final score I think was 54-13, so as you can guess the game wasn’t much of a struggle, but it was sweet to watch so many try’s scored. The event was organized by a travel agency on campus which does all sorts of events for study abroad students. Before the match all the people going met at CocoWahWah, the local American hang out, for dinner. It is pretty funny actually because whenever you walk past that restaurant the majority of the patrons are American.

Saturday, I woke up and went to the Old Biscuit Mill farmer’s market for the second straight week. Sampling all the delicious homemade foods will be a regular Saturday morning event I’m sure. After we had had our fill we decided to head out in search of Green Street Market just like we had done last week. Instead of taking a taxi there like we had last week, we decided to take a minibus instead.

This ended up being quite the adventure. Minibuses are basically old VW van style van’s which people drive on various routes to and from the suburbs. The minibuses have a station they all stop at downtown, which sadly wasn’t at Green Street Market. We kind of got directions on how to go from the driver, but we basically just walked in the general direction through the downtown. Since it was Saturday it wasn’t all that busy down there, but still there was all sorts of hubbub going on, especially in the stretch of skyway that we walked through. There were at least 6 guys within 30 feet of each other, all of them trying to sell mini vuvuzela bubble blowers, pad locks and various random other things. It was funny to me that they would all be selling the same stuff in such a close vicinity of each other. Eventually we found the market and browsed around for a while. I didn’t purchase anything there, but it was still fun to see all the handmade goods people were selling. Paul, Grace, Judy and I left the market and walked to the waterfront area of downtown, and Paul and I climbed a giant Coke statue on the way.

Today some of the interstudy people decided to go surfing at the beach in Muizenberg, but nine of us went instead to a braai hangout spot in one of the townships. Mzoli’s was the name of the place, and it was different than any restaurant I’ve ever experienced. We got there at about noon and every single table was either full or reserved. I talked one of the employees into searching for a table for us and he ended up finding one in the back, “the last one we have” as he said. Everyone sat around tables under the tent canopy outside or danced to the music the DJ was playing. The way the food worked was that you went to the butcher across the street to buy meat to grill, and then the Mzoli’s people grilled it for you in the back of the restaurant. While you wait it’s just a big hang out dance party pretty much. It was really fun, and totally different than eating out in the states, so all in all it was a great experience.


1 week of school down, 11 to go! The school portion of my experience is necessary, but the extracurricular experiences are what I will remember for a lifetime!


Just a note on terms that are used quite often here:
Lekkar: awesome/really cool
Hectic: used ALL the time e.g. class is really hectic right now, that party was hectic last night, etc.
Keen: “are you keen to grab some lunch after class?”
Bru: bro/man e.g. what’s up bru?