Within just a few hours of arriving in Cape Town, (after living on airplanes and in airports for the past 48 hours, functioning on total of 5ish hours of sleep) the CIEE program staff had us hiking up Lion's Head Mountain--climbing up rocky ledges on all fours, grabbing onto chains and metal hooks during the 2 hourish hike...nothing like jumping straight into an adventure!
During the hike, many people were discussing our housing assignments (that we hadn’t found out yet), and rumor had it that the letters written on our nametags were initials of the place we were living. I glanced down at my nametag to find an “HS”…and my jaw dropped. Home-Stay??? Uh oh…NOT what I where I was expecting to live. Students around me continued to gossip about the homestay houses being really far away from the campus, that most houses did not have internet access, how some of the families didn’t speak English very well, and that the parents were often super strict and controlling. Yikes. I could feel my blood pressure rising as we hiked up the mountain, and people made jokes about my nametag, but I tried to stay calm and collected. Stress wasn’t going to help anything, and there was NO WAY I was given a homestay, especially since I ranked it last on my housing application, and the program director assured us that all students received their first choice…
Well, Wednesday afternoon when the housing assignments were revealed, the housing director flipped on the microphone and announced, “All students with an ‘HS’ on your nametag, you will be doing a homestay. Please follow your advisor outside to receive your family information packet.” Shocked and in denial, my feet somehow managed to carry me out to the patio with the other homestay students, most of whom were grinning with excitement because homestay had been their first choice. The advisor read off the list of families and student pairings, but 6 of us were not on the list. Puzzled, she told us to stand over to the side and that someone would be coming to help us. The 6 of us sat on the ground for 5, 10, 25 minutes without anyone addressing our homelessness, so we planned out places to pitch tents around the University of Cape Town (UCT) campus, nervously laughing because we were all half joking but half serious. Finally, the housing director came over and looked over her notes with a confused expression, while the 6 of us shot worried looks at each other across the circle, wondering what our housing fate would be. “Oh!” The director exclaimed. “You’re all in Highstead House. Someone must’ve written your nametags wrong. No worries!” Relieved, we walked over to the rest of our housemates and were welcomed to the group. Phew.
Next, the cell phone company came to sell us South African phones, and so all 140 students lined up to get our new sim cards and cell phones. After I received mine, a black brick of a phone, I tried to turn it on, but the screen remained black. The cell phone seller responded, “Just plug in. After charge, it work fine.” Hm, okay sounds good. I looked over at the outlets on the wall and then back to my phone plug, and realized the two would definitely not fit together. The seller looked at me like I was dumb and said, “You need to buy adapter for phone. Then put in the wall. No worries.” Alrighty. So I walked down to the drugstore, bought an adapter, and then plugged my phone into the wall…and nothing happened. At all. It was definitely broken. By the time I went back, the sellers were gone, and I found an advisor who looked at my phone and said, “Wow. Your phone is sick. Not good.” Awesome. My phone is sick. Even though I paid $175 dollars for it haha. Plan B? Didn’t have one. Once again, I reminded myself that stressing out wouldn’t change my situation at all, so I just took a deep breath and decided I would just be out of contact for a while, hopeful that I could find someone to fix my phone later this week. After asking another advisor, I was told that the cell phone sellers would be back tomorrow, so I’m hopeful to get another phone…? At this point though, I’m not stressing about it…Hakuna Matata , right? It will be nice to have a break from my cell phone, so no worries at all!
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