Hey Guys So nobody is more sad to report this than I am. Travelblog.org, the website that hosted my blog, underwent a massive server failure, and lost all the blog entries that anybody has recorded for essentially the last three months. That is basically my entire blog. It still has some of the pictures, and thank god, all my pictures are on my computer. I also probably have some of my blog entries saved on my computer, and when I get back home, I will be able to check on that, but for right now, I am not using my own [View Full Entry]

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Today, I joined my Uncle Robert in the ranks of "participating in extreme sports that may or may not send my mother to an early grave." I went skydiving. And...I LOVED it. Now, I have to start this out by saying that skydiving has never really been on my list of "101 things to do before I die." My general theory has always been "Why would I ever voluntarily jump out of a perfectly good airplane?" It seemed to be tempting fate...laughing in the face of whatever physics god keeps planes in the air, with me safely in them. However, [View Full Entry]

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Yesterday, my class took a field trip to Goodwood Prison, a "Centre of Excellence" in the Correctional System here. Goodwood is what would be classified a medium-security prison in the States, and in my Criminal Justice class, we've been reading all about how poor the conditions are in prison in S.A., so I was certainly expecting rats, wire-framed cots, and general dreadfulness. I was certainly surprised by what I saw. First of all, the prisoners here are kept in dormitories. When I saw Starke, the maximum security prison in Florida, they were all in their own cells, let out only [View Full Entry]

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In all my travels (because they’ve been so vast), I’ve found that one of the best ways to get your finger on the pulse of the indigenous culture is to really experience the food of the place. And often, the snack foods really clue you in to what people like wherever you are. First and foremost, I find it really important to mention that South Africans have a scary obsession with meat. All kinds of it, and in variant forms. Potato chips here come in flavors like smoked lamb, beef curry, and boerwors (a traditional South African sausage). I don’t think [View Full Entry]

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Day 2, Nicole and I decided we were going to do a self-drive through the park while half the group went on their morning guided drive. We went and parked the car in line at 5am, bribed the gate guard to watch our car, then ran back to have breakfast and get our stuff together for the day. We were the second car through the gate when it opened at 6am, and third in line to pay. Britt, another girl in our group, caught up with us at the gate, and by then the line was about 100 people long. [View Full Entry]

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Safari Map Shylie Armon Well, I returned from my weekend on safari with all limbs intact, and no lion bite-sized chunks taken out of me. It was really an amazing weekend, and I’m not sure that I can describe it all, but we’ll see how far I get. This is a story of the wilderness, of driving on the left-hand side of the road, and of the sunset drive from hell. There were twelve of us UF students that decided to go on the safari. We arrived in Joburg on Thursday afternoon, and split up into our respective cars. I [View Full Entry]

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On Monday, after our Constitutional Law exam, Maura, Yasmin, Eric, Katie and I decided to go to Kirstenbosch Gardens, one of the largest botanical gardens in the world. It was a beautiful day outside, so I’m really glad we decided to spend it outdoors. I think the best part of the whole afternoon was when I successfully argued to get us the student discount for admission. They said we needed to have student IDs from a South African school, but all we had was our UF IDs. Soooo I used my fantastic lawyer skills, demonstrated our participation in the Cape [View Full Entry]

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Today, Maura, Nicole, Josh and I decided to go on a sight-seeing tour at the Castle of Good Hope, which is the oldest building in Cape Town. Sadly, it does not look much like Cinderella's Castle, or any castle that you would think of when you hear the word "castle", but instead looks much more like the pentagon built in the 1700s. It's a fort, and it's a pretty cool fort at that! Unfortunately we got there after the last guided tour, so we had to guide ourselves. I think that it would probably have been better if we had [View Full Entry]

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Bright and early this morning (at 5:30 am, to be precise), the group got together to take the buses to Gansbaai to go shark diving. So exciting! The trip down was about a two hour bus ride, during which I attempted to sleep, but Courtney and Kenny entertained us all with mask shenanigans and early 90s sing alongs. Our trusty boat was known as the Barracuda, and after waiting around for a while, we finally launched. The water was kind of choppy, with 6-8 foot swells, and the boat ride out to “shark alley” was pretty fun (if not wet). [View Full Entry]

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Yesterday was without a doubt one of the most memorable days I have had in Cape Town thus far, and probably will ever have in my life. I wanted to come home in the afternoon and write about it immediately, but decided to hold off until I could get the pictures from one of my friends who brought their camera with them. So, all the wonderful photography you see here is courtesy of Britt, who graciously said that I could use them with my blog. Our day was spent volunteering at a children’s group home in the Kyaletshia Township on [View Full Entry]

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