Almost to Cape Town!

Tomorrow we land in South Africa! I am so excited, that I don’t know what to do with myself. I have a test this morning in my International Conflict Resolution class, but after that I won’t have any school stuff to worry about until after South Africa, when I have to write a 5 page religion paper in about 2 days. The past few days have been really interesting. We had “apartheid day” during which we were separated into two classes. The elite class was those people who had shaved their heads, and the rest of us were restricted for the day. We couldn’t eat in the upstairs dining room, use the elevators, or go on the pool deck and if someone with a shaved head wanted your gym equipment you had to leave. Well, for the most part it didn’t really affect me because I don’t eat upstairs or go by the pool usually, and I almost never use the elevators. At dinner time though, the downstairs dining room was completely packed so Kendall and I decided to eat upstairs in protest. When we got there, a bunch of people had set up outside the dining room protesting apartheid, it was really interesting. We were some of the only people brave enough to go in and eat though. People were chanting and yelling at us and one girl even shoved me. It was actually kind of traumatic. We just got our food though and sat down and ate. Nobody really bothered us after a while. Also, Desmond Tutu has spoken in a few of my classes. He is incredible! The things that he has seen and been through would be enough to make anyone bitter. But he is so joyful, you can almost see the holiness come out of him as he smiles and dances (which he does ALL the time). He has definitely touched my heart, and I don’t think I will ever forget some of the things he has said. In our Global Studies class today he is taking questions. To make it fair, they had us submit questions and they will choose a few to ask him. I asked what his experience has been with aging and what advice he would give to us who will be working with older adults and to everyone as we all get older. I really hope they ask him that, I’ve been wanting to know his thoughts for a while. I’m so excited to get to South Africa, it’s going to be amazing. I’ll take lots of pictures and post them when I can. It’s really nice getting emails from people, so if you have a few minutes, drop me a line and say hi!