Stellenbosch market |
Now for the actual blog post. This last weekend Sara and her family took me to Stellenbosch. Stellenbosch is about 50 km east of Cape Town. It is a beautiful place surrounded by beautiful vineyards and huge mountains. It is mostly famous for the university there. In Stellenbosch, which I would describe as a mixture of the French countryside and the California mountains, we visited a little market At the market they sold everything from clothes to garden ornaments. A part of the market was completely dedicated to food. They sold Chinese food, American food, Italian food, Indian food and even Dutch food, including "kroketten" and "oliebollen". We walked around the market for some time and then went to another part of Stellenbosch to have lunch at an Italian restaurant. Then around three o'clock, while we were driving home we decided that we wanted to go the Waterfront for the rest of the day. We first went home to freshen up a little as we were all quite sweaty from walking around in the heat. Oh yeah, I think I forgot to say that it was 33 degrees celsius that day. However it seemed to me that the native South-Africans I was with were complaining more about the heat than I was, which is weird seeing as they live in the heat the whole year round and I come from a country where summer is basically non-excisting. After freshening up we headed off to the Waterfront.
The view of the Waterfront from the boat |
As you would know, if you have read my last blog posts, I had already been to the Waterfront before. However this time we did not only walk around and visit the mall, but we also went on a boat tour of the harbour. It was a lovely way to see not only the harbour itself, but also to see the Waterfront with Table Mountain in the background. After the tour we went for dinner at a sea food restaurant and then headed back home.
We passed the beach on the way back and decided to watch the sunset on the beach. It was one of the prettiest views I've ever seen, but unfortunately due to the sudden change in weather we did not stay too long, because it was way too windy and cold for what we were wearing (shorts and a t-shirt). All in all it was a great day and I'm really thankful to my host family for showing me around. Seeing more of South-Africa makes me realise how beautiful this country is. It makes me fall in love with it even more.
Table Mountain at sunset |
Jagger Cupcake |
Today (wednesday 22 January) we had to wear our house t-shirts to school. You must be wondering what the hell house t-shirts are. House t-shirts are t-shirts, which each represent a house in the school. A house is nothing more than a group of girls, who for example during inter house competitions belong together as a team. They also have their own cheer, which is supposed impress the other houses. At Herschel there are four different houses: Carta, Merriman, Rolt and Jagger. Sara belongs to the Jagger house, which means that I'm also a part of that one. The reason for us wearing our house t-shirts today is that it was house introducing day. Each house had to present their cheer to the other houses and then we all got cupcakes. The funny thing is though is that neither me nor Rachel, who was also part of Jagger, knew the cheer. So we just awkwardly looked around us and tried to join some of the clapping. I can tell you, it was not a pretty sight. We enjoyed the cupcakes though.
Congratulations, you made it to the end of this very long post. Hope you enjoyed it :) Talk to you later!
Sincerely,
Paulina