So the sunset cruise was awesome and I managed to still finish my assigned blog for the day so Wednesday was an overall success. After the cruise, a lot of our group went down to the restaurant/bar called Quay Four right on the water that had some good live music and just a great atmosphere. We got all got rowdy and had a good time dancing and what not, needless to say, we stood out as Americans haha but I loved it. We didn’t stay out too late though which was good because we had a great speaker the next morning.
Kevin Chaplain, a very successful businessman and chairman of the Amy Biehl foundation, which we became very informed about, was our guest speaker Thursday morning. This foundation provides a source of education and builds schools and facilitates them for the kids in the poor townships. He was brilliant and spoke with such meaning and enthusiasm giving us advice on the social responsibility aspect of business and recognizing that you always owe something to the community and those who are socially responsible are rewarded. I encourage you to read up on the Amy Biehl story further because it is a powerful moment in the history of South Africa. But long story short, Amy Biehl was an American girl that spent time in Cape Town peacefully fighting for the oppressed people in apartheids and wanted freedom for them. The people for whose freedom she was fighting for ironically murdered her in a riot. It was an anti-white riot and her car was stopped by mobs of people and she was stoned to death. The powerful part of the story is her parents starting this foundation in Amy’s name because they knew she would want something positive to come out of her untimely death. And positive is an understatement, this organization was started in 1998 and has made great strides in improving the quality education of these poor kids. Amy’s parents came out and were able to publically forgive the 4 killers who murdered their daughter and furthermore defend them in their sentencing trial. Amy’s mother saw such a bigger picture, she said it wasn’t those people who killed her daughter but rather the horrible system of the apartheids and the conditions those kids were in. Seeing her strength was incredible along with the dad. The parents have come face to face with the killers and accepted apologies and even work with two of them frequently as one of them has a position high up in the Amy Biehl organization. This was a very moving story to hear before our first township visit which we went on later that day. We went by the exact place Amy Biehl was murdered. We then continued to the schools and saw the great programs being implemented to root a legitimate core education in these kids and also offer the arts like dance and drama. This visit got me pumped for the our full week of service as this was only a taste. The last stop of the day was a little dance show they put on for us which was unbelievably good. The kids were breaking out moves like Michael Jackson x5. Apparently we are going to have to make up our own dance like that during service week which should get interesting…
Friday was Table Mountain Hike day. Favorite experience so far this trip. Its just indescribable and the pictures really can’t do it enough justice. There’s a phrase in our Global Lead book that says “it’s not about the destination, its about the journey”. This really applied well to this hike because all I thought about the whole time was reaching the top and how great it was going to be when I finally reached the summit, but just the experience of the climb up and making it through the pain with everyone was very unique and so rewarding. I can still feel the burn in my legs…literally, and today is Tuesday. The view over the city was breathtaking, I’ve never seen something like it, and it felt like I earned it from hiking up, which made it better hah. There was a huge restaurant/shop at the top that we ate at and then took a group picture. By this time my legs my whole body was starting to cramp in places I didn’t even know I could cramp but I had already committed to hike back down the mountain with the group with some people. The original plan that the majority of the group did was ride the cable car back down the mountain but we didn’t want to cut short the experience so we asked if we could hike down. This was even more fun than hike up, but a lot more dangerous. When you get you’re momentum going fast its hard to stop yourself, so my new kicks saved me quite a few times. Thanks mom. Needless to say, this day was one of the coolest days in my life.
Weekends are our free days and we woke up Saturday morning and went to this really unique place called the Old Biscuit Mill. It was this open-air food market that is only open on Saturdays from 11-2. Its basically setup as a square that small individual local venders setup and have samples of their food and they either sell food/beer to eat there or take home. Its all so fresh like we got some homemade pita bread and hummus. Hopefully we will be going back this Saturday and I’ll take some pictures and post them. After we ate and looked around for a while, we went further into town to the Green Market Square. This is a “Chinatown” type of place where you nickel and dime and try to bargain down for better prices. We didn’t stay too long but I got a couple of good jerseys, but we will be back because it’s a great place for souvenirs. Sunday morning we went to Hillsong church, which is a family church of the Hillsong’s around the world that began in Australia. This particular church in Cape Town was unique because it was located in a building that used to be the biggest night club in the city at one point and was shut down because the owners were involved in dealing drugs. So it has since then transformed into a huge church. It really reminded me of Passion City church in Atlanta that Louis Giglio pastors that was located in the Tabernacle. The band was awesome and the pastor was even better. It was nice to experience church in such a different culture, but the message stays the same. Right around the corner(literally) from Hillsong was Canal Walk which is the largest mall in the southern hemisphere. This is where we spent a good majority of our afternoon exploring and we still didn’t even come close to going end to end. The food court was probably the coolest part, it lit up like Vegas.
Yesterday morning we had our morning lecture over Leadership Theories. We basically discussed how different people and different situations require different strategies. We talked about many different aspects of situational and developmental leadership and connecting individual and group values, but one thing that sticks out is how controversy and conflict can be a good thing. We discussed how with conflict there can be no new stimulation of thought and then there would be no new ideas initiated. After the morning lecture we had the option of doing an extra activity of a museum tour and initially me and my roommates were definitely going to go but we had heard that you want to have more time at one of the ones they were touring was closing soon so we decided that we would wait and go in a smaller group on a different day. But we weren’t going to just lay around all day, we asked Ish to take us on an “adventure”. He had Corbis(Ish’s employee) take us out to Camp’s Bay where the nice beaches are located with the nice cafes/shops lining the waterfront overlooking big rocks on the beach. We were mad because we all forgot out cameras and we were out on these big rocks on a sunny day. So we just got a disposable camera, which may or may not have been a mistake since we can’t “delete” any photos. (that would come into play later). After playing like children on the rocks for a while we went to Café Caprice, which is where celebs such as Leonardo de Caprio, Gerard Butler, and Kelly Slater names were on the wall saying they had been there. So this was a hot spot to be and we got here around 3ish and this would turn into a longggg, but fun, day. Funny story while we were sitting outside. These sketchy people would keep walking up and try to sell us anything and everything from sunglasses to “handcarved” African things. We had already turned many away when one of them came up with a table that actually got my friend’s Brooks attention. It was actually pretty cool, it at least looked all hand carved and had three legs that folded out and you put the handcarved looking circular table in the grooves. Maybe there’s one of it on that disposable. But basically after sending the guy away plenty of times and being the natural heckler that he is, Brooks had him down from 450 rand to 120 rand for a legitimately nice wooden table that he wanted for their families new lake house. He was so excited and proud about his little purchase because it took so much effort to get it to such a good price. So we had gotten a little rowdy at this point and had fun on the way back to the hotel with Corbis in the taxi taking stupid pictures on the disposable and stopped at Mickey D’s for dinner, which was delicious. But anyways, funny part of the story. We all sit down to eat the rest of our Mcdonalds, and the couch and extra chair was taken so Tim decides to get out Brooks brand new table and try to sit on it and it instantly snapped. We all started dying laughing! Hahah at that point Brooks couldn’t do anything but just laugh cause he knew Tim felt so bad. We got back in time for Trivia Night too! This was organized by Global and was optional but it was in the Lagoon View room where we typically have our class and it was Byob/Byowine, ha as they said it. This was a lot of fun, and our team won, which made it better. Our prize was a free cab ride and back to the Waterfront, which will be convenient some day.
Today the Dooleys spoke! They were incredible. Vince and Barbara both were hilarious and a lot of fun while also giving some great insight and advice. Me and roommates sat front row today because it was necessary since there was a legend in the room. Not just any legend, but the one who turned around Georgia football forever. Him and his wife were so intelligent and have such an interest in this Global Lead program and it speaks volumes that they took time out of their schedule to come meet us and talk to us about life. Oh and my group didn’t win that competition to have lunch with them today unfortunately..but I still was able to meet them which was more than enough for me. Later this afternoon we got out first rugby game going on the beach since we bought a ball at the mall Sunday. This was everyone’s first time playing except my roommate Tim who played when he lived over in Australia and England. We actually picked it up pretty fast and it was really fun, that might become a daily routine. So now we are just hanging out and I believe Brooks is cooking for us tonight since we bought a lot of groceries today to cut back on some the spending we’ve been doing at restaurants so far. Anyways, I’m new to blogging so I know this long, but its hard to brief my experiences here and still vividly describe the extraordinary experience that it is.
No comments:
Post a Comment