Hi Guys,

Sorry I haven’t been updating. This week has been ridiculous. We’ve sailed away from South Africa, spent a day in Mauritius, and are now making our way to India. Once we hit India we will only have about two days between each port, which means little time on the ship to do things like update my blog! I’ve been getting emails from a lot of you asking about my village blog, and I swear I will get it up there. It’s a really important one to me, and I just don’t want to write what I did, but rather what it meant to me. Unfortunately I seriously have had no time to do that. Maybe sometime this week, or after my test tomorrow. South Africa was so awesome, and SO beautiful. It is definitely the most beautiful country I have ever been to. Catherine and I went to Robben Island the first day, which is the high security prison where Nelson Mandela and many other political prisoners were held during Apartheid. Our guide was a former prisoner, and listening to him talk about the cell he stayed in for seven years was really amazing. We stayed after and he talked to us about Mandela’s influence on him. Mandela was talking to a group of them, and told them that they might be freed in the future. Our guide told us that he said he wanted revenge on the men who captured and held him, but Mandela said that would get their country nowhere. He said they needed to respect and love their enemies. Our guide said that Mandela’s leadership was there from the beginning, and helped them all move forward. It was so powerful to hear all of this from someone who experienced it during my lifetime. It was also surprising to me that I knew so little about something that is so important. I wish we learned more about Apartheid in school, even if it doesn’t directly relate to Americans.

We left the second day for our bungee jumping/shark dive adventure tour. I think the pictures really explain it all, but I will say that they were the most Legit days of the trip. It was a seven-hour drive to the Bloukrans Bridge, but the drive was so gorgeous. We asked about the houses overlooking the beach on the coast, and they said the most expensive ones were anywhere from 300,000-700,000 US dollars. I’ve decided I’m going to retire there….or maybe I’ll force my parents to and then I’ll just go visit all the time!

Jumping off the bridge was kind of scary. I was the first in our group from the ship, which was almost better because I didn’t have time to walk away. They strapped me up, brought me to the edge, and did a countdown from 5 for me to jump. I thought I was going to close my eyes, but that would have been silly for me to pay all that money and then not watch myself dive into the river and see the trees and boulders below. The whole thing lasted about 2 minutes, and I was terrified by the end. I felt like the strap was falling down toward my feet and I was so relieved when the guy came and strapped me to him to make our way back up. They had a party for us after, with a DJ and drinks. We had to get up at 4 am the next morning to leave for shark diving, so we were in bed by midnight.

Shark diving was surreal. I never thought I would come face to face with a Great White. They had a cage attached to the boat-the top half of the cage is above the water and the bottom half is below. They have seven of us line up next to each other in the cage, with our knees on a bar half way down and our heads above the water. We hold on by putting our hands on top. I think there’s a picture on my blog somewhere. When they yell down, it means they’ve seen the shadow of a shark so we hold our breath and put our feet on the bottom of the cage. We have a weight belt on, and we hold on to the bar that our knees were on before. The shark eats the bait that they put right there, so we get an up close view of the shark. Sometimes the shark can get really close…like really REALLY close. On our last shark viewing, we went down and the shark was coming at the cage. There’s only about a foot between the front of the cage and our faces, and it’s just a couple of widely spaced bars that keep the shark from getting completely into the cage. So on the last one….the shark got the bait, and then started swimming straight at our cage. Catherine and I both let go of the bar, and tried to push ourselves away from the front of the cage. The Great White hit the cage and then turned around and whipped her tail against the cage as she swam away. We were all screaming under water and grabbing each other. Everyone was freaking out, but it was so cool! I wish we had it on video. Our friends on the boat said they were actually scared for us!

I can’t even try to compare the bungee jumping with shark diving. They were two completely different feelings. Jumping was a huge adrenaline rush, but shark diving was one of the most amazing things I have ever experienced. A pretty awesome two days to say the least.

The rest of our time in South Africa was spent hanging out around Cape Town. I went to a meeting with 5 NGOs who have been recognized by Rhoda Khadalie’s organization called Impumelelo. Rhoda is a really inspiring woman who has worked for Nelson Mandela, and to put it nicely, doesn’t take shit from anyone. The NGOs talked to us about the work they have been doing in South Africa. It was really inspiring, and I talked with Rhoda about coming back and doing an internship for her in the future. I don’t think I’ll be able to make it work, but it was still fun to consider.  Rhoda is a well-known author on politics (she reminds me of a female, South African Michael Moore), and she gave me a signed copy of her most recent book.

We celebrated our friend Lauren’s birthday that night at an awesome restaurant called Africa Café. It’s a restaurant you go to with big groups, and it’s a set menu. They have 20 dishes that they bring out, all from different countries on the African continent. We took lots of pictures, but I don’t think I got any up on the blog. The food was amazing, and they were really good about letting me know if there were nuts in anything. And we got to eat with our hands!  Everyone who works there wears traditional African outfits, and they sang and danced for us. And they even painted our faces! We had so much fun, and I want to bring all of you back here just so you can go there! We took the party from there to a local bar, and celebrated until morning. Alas, I spent my last day in Cape Town recovering…. I did some picture updating on my blog, and a lot of Internet research for my South Africa project in Abnormal Psych. Everyone else rallied and went to a winery for the day….it wasn’t going to happen for me.

All right, that’s it for South Africa! I’ll update you on Mauritius a little later, and the village blog! Miss everyone. <3 B