The difference between Madrid and Cape Town

The black dots are the shopping, the house is my house.*

Also, as an excuse for my infrequent updating: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8248056.stm

(another difference between Madrid and Cape Town)**

*This post is inspired by my mother's request for more maps to be involved in the blog.

**I don't mean down on Cape Town, there are lots of ways it's better than Madrid. For starters, everyone is really friendly!

Man is greater than the ring

This week was the "Infecting the City" Public Arts Festival in Cape Town which was incredible. I highly recommend it.

I saw Xhosa Stick Fighting, Ballet, BBoys, Tai Chi, Drum Majorettes and all kinds of interesting performance art. I took an outdoor class in "Jazzing", supposedly a Cape Flats version of the Samba. The most exciting part, however, was the Treasure Hunt.
It began with a woman in an old fashioned white dress throwing gravel at a women with a brief case in one hand and a birdcage with tea bags and keys in the other, led to a professor from New Zealand leading us around a museum talking about Vermeer and being tended to by a nurse who only spoke Spanish, then to a tiny room in the flower market covered in maps. We ended up Saturday morning exploring the sewers beneath Cape Town. All of this is entirely true! I described it to my friend and he thought that maybe I had done some drugs and hallucinated it all.
I won a massage at a spa! (Yay! I've been needing one after spending 20 hours on buses and bungee jumping last weekend)
Plus, I got to explore the city and go on a treasure hunt. Amazing.
This is the only picture I have, taken by the organizer and put on his twitter.

Oh, and I found this online:

See the birdcage with tea bags and keys? Didn't hallucinate it!

Wheee!

Sorry, I haven't updated forever. I've been doing exciting things. Exciting thing 1:

Last weekend, I took a 10 hour bus ride along the coast with 4 of my friends. We went to Stormsriver in Tsikamma National Park. We spent our first day mountain biking and going to one of the only restaurants in town which also happens to be Elvis themed.
The next day we woke up bright and early and went to the Bloukrans Bridge. The bridge hosts what has been variably called "The largest bungee in the world", "The largest bridge bungee in the world", "The largest commercial bungee in the world", and "The largest commercial bridge bungee in the world". I suspect it's really the last, but it doesn't really matter because the bungee is 216 meters, also known as a lot. And I did it!! It was a little bit scary but so much fun.

I have a video, too, but I wasn't about to spend all of my megs uploading that. Next time you see me with my computer in real life, I'll show you.

Jo'Burg!

This weekend, we went on our Bing trip to Johannesburg, which was awesome. Cape Town is really just a big beach town, pretty slow and spread out, but Johannesburg is a CITY. We stayed in Melville, the "trendy" area, which I loved because it had a vintage shop, several used book stores, and a cupcake place. I could stay in Melville forever.
We're all required to take a class about the way that memories are preserved in monuments, museums, etc in South Africa and our trip focused on cramming as many "sites of memory" in as possible:The Constitutional Court is built from the bricks of the prison that used to stand there and says "Constitutional Court" on the front in all 11 official languages.

A property outside of JoBurg called "Lilliesleaf" where Nelson Mandela (and other freedom fighters) stayed while underground and the former headquarters of Umkhonto we Sizwe(MK), the ANC's paramilitary wing. In 1963 a police raid found all of their documents, captured 19 ANC and MK leaders and used the evidence to convict them, including Mandela, to life in prison for sabotage.

This monstrosity is the Voortrekker Monument, built by the apartheid government to honor the Voortrekkers, Afrikaners who left the Cape Colony in the 1830s to settle (read: take the land of people who were already living there, and kill them if necessary) the interior.

The monument is ripe with distrubing images of savage Zulu warriors attacking the innocent Afrikaners, but the most disturbing part for me was the resemblance to the stories of the pioneers in America, wagon trains and all.

Isivivane at Freedom Park. It's supposed to be a "resting place for the spirits of those who have died in the struggles for humanity and freedom." The boulders come from each of the regions of South Africa and are reminiscent of the heaps of stones that used to bring fortune to long-distant travelers.

"World on its Hind Legs" outside of the exit of the Apartheid Museum.

Lots of learning.

In Spain and South Africa, they say "ciao" instead of "good-bye" or "adios".

Brief South African to American Food Dictionary

spring onion – green onion

rocket – arugula

aubergine – eggplant

avo – avocado

veg – vegetable

mild – spicy

chips – french fries

braai – barbeque

medium pizza – small personal pizza

Kloofing

This Sunday we went canyoning, also known as kloofing. I'm not sure the full extent of the word, but we abseiled (repelled) down waterfalls and jumped off rocks into a pool. It was all in this serene, beautiful valley and I enjoyed myself immensely.

Here's the valley:

Me rapelling, Jessica prepared to save me:

The pool:

I ended up jumping from 12 meters (~36 feet) which was terrifying and exhilarating.