Our third week in SA
Our third week in South-Africa and Cape Town is now almost over. Again we saw new things and we got new impressions. Molo as the Xhosa people say (it means hello)! Sunday we went to the Waterfront and Robben Island. The Waterfront is the harbour but it also has a fantstic shopping centre and there are some beautiful old houses in Dutch style. 
 The Waterfront
From the Waterfront we went with a boat to Robben Island. On Robben Island used to be a prison, but now it is just for tourists. There we quite some famous people, often politicians, who were sent to that prison, for example Nelson Mandela. We've seen his cell and it was so small! It was 1.5 m by 2 m! We also got a bustour around the island, which is now a nature reserve. A time ago some bokkies were close to extinction. They were brought to the island, where they would live in peace and now their number is growing rapidly again. After the tour we had another tour in the prison. Our tourguide was a man who had been in that prison aswell for quite some years. That made it very special. He told us about the horrors, but also the less horrific things that had happened inside his cell (he was in a big cell with 15 others). This all together made our sunday very special.  Monday the school started again and we had to get up early again. That was quite a big step because getting up at 6 o'clock is not really my thing! Being at school is nice though. Everyone is friendly and the weather is the best! Monday I also started playing hockey here. The hockey coach told me to come to the training for squad 1, which is 1st team and 2nd team. I was quite nerveus and didn't know what to expect, and they thought I am very good because last year Anna and Leonoor were here and they are very good players. But then it was time to go and play and in fact it was very nice! I had highly overestimated their level and the hockeying was nice and all the girls were nice aswell. Tuesday we had again a trainig and wednesday a match against Fairmont, another school in Cape Town. We won with 2-0! It gave me back all the energy I had lost with every day getting up so early! The school is very nice and I start to appreciate the uniforms and the fact that there are only girls. The thing that's still quite weird is that every day and every hour the classes differ in how long they are. The first class can be 45 minutes, the next then 35 minutes, sometimes even 30 minutes and then again 45 minutes. It's very confusing and when a class is 30 minutes you can't really start working or studying because then it's already over again! Tomorrow we'll probably be going cable skiing! That is a sort of waterskiing but then there is no boat but a cable pulling you. It will be so much fun! We first had a plan to go hiking up the Table Mountain. It probably looks like it will take days but you can actually do it in 2 of 3 hours. We changed the plan because there's a huge fire raging over Table Mountain. One woman died already and there are still 16 people somewhere on the mountain. It's quite dangerous. Some houses had to be evacuated, including the house of Melissa's dad. I don't know if it has been on the news, but they think that a German tourist started the fire when he threw his still glowing cigarette out of his window when he drove past. I can't believe how you can do that here because in summer everything is so dry! The smallest spark of fire and a whole forest can burn down! This was it for this week, I'll place new pictures on the site as soon as possible! Sala Kakuhle! Leoniek  |