Why hello there!

     Long time, no talk. In case I haven't mentioned it before, the internet here is really expensive and my new house doesn't have it unlimited...yet. For now, I'm walking to cafes, buying some delicious hot chocolate, and using up megabytes left and right. Soon, that will all change. After spending a couple of days in a 4 star hotel, we moved into our house for the semester. 10 people, 9 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms. I volunteered with another girl to share a room. It's massive. Bigger than my parents' closet. It's great!
While we were at the hotel, we just had some meetings and watched Titanic. And we went to see Harry Potter on Wednesday night for $3! I think I'll leave my opinions on that alone and just reflect on the general amazingness of it. We moved into our house on Friday and began to visit some of the project sites that we'll be working at over the next 4 months.
     I came here wanting to work in Yabonga, an HIV/AIDS clinic for children affected and infected with the virus. However, we visited a TB hospital and something there just clicked with me. There are so many opportunities for different projects within the confines of the hospital. The children get shut away from the rest of the world, so there are many different ideas I came up with to maintain some sense of normalcy for them. Funny how things work out. Nothing is set in stone until this weekend though.
     The last few days, I have toured Bo-Kaap, a Malay community set slightly above Cape Town, and visited Langa, the oldest township in the Western Cape. Bo-Kaap is becoming an expensive and trendy place to live with bright little houses. Usually, if you google image Cape Town, Table Mountain and Bo-Kaap show up. That's not the case with Langa. Along one road, I saw shacks without doors and small gated houses. Our tour guide called these houses Langa's Beverly Hills. You needed to have a good imagination. I also tried some traditional South African beer on the tour. It's brewed by the women and drunk by the men. It was passed around in a big bucket and I felt like I was at a vert strange church service. I don't like beer and this was no exception.
     Tomorrow, I'm going back to Robben Island and then this weekend, we're going an hour out of the city to do some ropes courses and stuff like that. Classes and service work starts Monday. As soon as my house gets uncapped internet, I'll be posting up pictures from the last two weeks. It's so hard to believe I have been gone for 2 weeks already. I feel like I should be coming home any day now. Luckily, I have 4 more months! I'm just excited to get into a routine and jump into my service project.

   For now, in case you all have forgotten what I look like. This is a picture of me from Robben Island with Devil's Peak on the left then Table Mountain.