sunbathing and sightseeing

Hello hello hello. I'm not quite sure if I'm saying hello to myself or to my readers... do I have readers? Haha I'm guessing no. Welll, yesterday some of us bought a ticket to ride those cheesy doubledecker sightseeing busses to get the tourist perspective of Cape Town. And at each stop you can get off and do your thing and hop back on whenever you feel like it. So that was nice.

We got to visit St. George's Cathedral where Archbishop Desmond Tutu used to hold service. For those of you who are unenlightened (like I was about 24 hours ago), he was a famous civil rights activist and opponent of apartheid in the 80s and ended up winning a Nobel Prize. We talked to an old lady that works in the church, and she was telling us about him and his quirky sense of humor. Really cool. So as we're being all silent and peaceful in the church, we walk out in to the middle of a protest blocking the streets of downtown Cape Town. There were police cars everywhere and people singing and shouting and marching down the streets blocking all the traffic. It was crazy. Some were protesting the World Cup actually.. they were people from the townships, which are basically the really poor areas outside of Cape Town, their argument being that they don't have jobs or even the ability to feed their children, so why is the city spending/wasting so much money to impress the rest of the world. I don't know, it was really interesting though.

We also went to the South African Slavery Museum. The building that is the museum was called the Slave Lodge because it was where they kept thousands of slaves that were basically kidnapped by the Dutch East India Company from other countries in rural Africa and sold off to the Dutch settlers there. It was really eerie and emotional to walk through there. The last part of the museum was a Steven Biko memorial. Steve Biko was a major activist and contributor to the fight against apartheid. He died in prison. The white doctor that determined cause of death officially wrote in his report that Biko died from a hunger strike. It was later revealed that Biko died of massive head injuries from the beatings he undertook by the police in prison. Really really sad. It's kind of amazing to start to really learn what this country has been through by actually being here. I'm also in the process of reading Nelson Mandela's autobiography A Long Walk to Freedom, which is eye-opening in a lot of ways. I highly recommend it!

We also went to other places like the South African Jewish Museum, saw South African Parliament (Cape Town's the legislative capitol of South Africa), and drove around by District Six, which is an area that's symbolic concerning the apartheid era. Pretty much what happened was a bunch of racist white guys passed a law that people of separate races couldn't marry eachother or live near eachother... and District Six was basically an area that was like a melting pot of blacks, coloreds (mixed race, actually a PC term here so don't be mad), and Indians. So they basically bulldozed the entire neighborhood overnight and displaced over 60,000 people and made them homeless. And it's still mostly a grassy area of weeds and open field. It's really sad to see.

So after being good intellectuals all day, we decided we deserved some delicious Indian food and yet another night out. Apparently Tiger Tiger is the place to be on Tuesdays and Thursdays because they have free drinks (I'm not kidding) from 8-10. It's absolutely ridiculous. Cover charge is 30 rand, so like three dollars. And you get free drinks for two hours. Except you have to get there at like 7 because you wait in a huuuge line. Apparently celebrities have gone there, like Prince Harry? So it's a happening place I guess. Just another place that I wasn't really cool enough for. So we danced the night away (all American music of course)... American Boy by Kanye came on and I found it to be really ironic. I had to keep reminding myself I was in a club in South Africa. Really weird.

Today we hung out at Camps Bay, a big touristy beach on the Atlantic side. It was so beautiful I can't even describe it. I've never seen waves like that, they didn't look real. So we stayed there until the tide came to sweep us away. I bought some really weird expensive sunglasses off some creepy man at the beach because I already broke the pair I brought... awesome. Let's just say I need to work on my bargaining skills. I suck. Now I think some dinner and shower is in order before heading to Observatory tonight. Observatory is an area in the city where there's a few really cool more chill bars that a lot of college-age people go to. I like it there the most I think. Ho kay, long post... peace, love, and overpriced sunglasses.

Love,
Nicole