Vensters and the Carnival

So today is becoming a lazy Sunday for me so I thought I would update on the cool events of this week. Officially, classes start Monday for the students here at US (Universiteit Stellenbosch) and this week was the settling in week for the first years and other students.

Residence culture is very big here and there are many residences, both traditional dorm style with male dorms and female dorms, and apartment style (as I live in). On Thursday night was Vensters which I was really impressed by. For the past week and a half, the residedences pair up, male dorm with female dorm, and work on a performance. They put together huge sets, organize the coreography, paint on makeup, design costumes, and rehearse.

The result is a 10 minute performance with 70+ people dancing and acting in both English and Afrikaans. It is really impressive to see because for the end song you literally have 70+ people on stage dancing in-sync and in time, and only after one week of practice. But its hard to explain so I will let the pictures speak for themselves.

 As you can see, lots of people come out for Vensters. Each show runs on a cycle so you can move on from one to the next and see all of them in one night. The sets are also huge.

 An example of the costumes and makeup. I only caught the last few minutes of this production but it looked very impressive.

My favorite set of the evening; Beauty and die Boer (aka Beauty and the Farmer). A re-telling of Beauty and the Beast except instead of a beast, there is a poor peasant Boer. After he falls in love with Beauty, he is transformed into a rich landower...and his servants back from farm animals to servants.

After Vensters, Friday is a more casual night with the local bars doing excellent business. Saturday (yesterday) was the Carnival and the town was packed. Not only do the students work to put on Vensters, they also construct floats for a parade. They march through town with some students driving the floats, themed from their Vensters presentation, and others follow in their Vensters costumes, running through the crowd collecting money for their respective charities.

 A float from the Chinese themed Venster, with the dragon head that swings back and forth. As you can see, the town was packed.

I had to include this one because the hippos were so cute. You can see the gap underneath where the students would physically lift and turn the hippos.

I only stayed at the carnival for a few hours in the morning. Later in the day there were beer gardens and live music, but I instead chose to go to the ocean/beach. Pictures next post!

Cape Town Tour Part II

And on to part two of the Cape Town tour.
 

Here is Cape Town's Stadium for the World Cup was held in South Africa last year. It has quite a unique basket-weave type pattern that you cannot quite see from this shot but is very neat up close.

We continued on the the V&A Waterfront. This used to be a fully functioning dry dock but has now been converted to a really nice shopping district.

This is the main shopping mall which is quite beautiful on the inside, probably the nicest mall I've ever seen. It also has lots of luxury shops for those of my readers who care. Great shopping didn't really come to my mind when I came to South Africa, but here they actually have more of the American stores than we do in Canada. Prices are comparable.

The other thing about this mall, and I suspect this is true across the country, is that the concept of a food court doesn't really exist. My roommate and I were starving when we arrived and wanted to get a quick lunch. But everything here is sit down and requires service. We did eventually find a Jugo Juice type place and went through the take out line and then sat in the seated section...but I think we technically did that wrong.

After the mall, we headed back to Stellenbosch. Along the way, we drove through the Cape Flats which is where the townships (shanty towns) of Cape Town are. The main highway goes right through them.

These are shots taken right on the bus as we drove along. The Cape Flats stretches on for around 20 km our guide said. Some of the houses have electricity (you can see the powerlines in the lower photo) but many do not. Same for running water. Our guide said though that people are very proud of their township and even if they do start to earn more money, they will simply build a better house on top of where their old house was. So you'll get relatively nice brick houses in between shack houses. Townships are opening up more though, and our guide mentioned that there are guest houses in there now where one can stay for a few nights and experience township life. Apparently in Kayamandi, the township outside Stellenbosch, there is an excellent restaurant as well.

It was a bit of a sobering drive back to Stellenbosch though.

Cape Town Tour Part 1

Sorry for the delay in posting! I finally have internet access here at Stellenbosch. Internet use is quite different here than I am used to at UBC, I have to pay by the mb so it's much different. As such, I'm going to be quite choosy with posting my photos. So for today I'll show a few pictures from my Cape Town tour.

On Saturday, the International Office provided us international students with a free tour of Cape Town to give us a chance to get to know the greater area. While I am working during my time here in SA, I'm considered an "Affliate International Student" at the university so I have essentially all the benefits as a regular international student without the hassle of going to class.

So despite my jet lag (or perhaps because of it?) Saturday morning I was at the office ready to go at 9 am. We drove out of Stellenbosch, through Kayamandi which is Stellenbosch's township, or shanty town. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera out in time, so I wasn't able to catch photos. I did get shots of the Cape Flats which I'll show next post.

From Stellenbosch, we drove straight to Cape Town (about a half hour to the outskirts I would say). Our first stop was at the Company Gardens. These are the original gardens from when Cape Town was used predominantly as a produce stand for the Dutch East India Company. They still have some of the original fruit trees as well. There are also lots of beautiful historic buildings.

 Here is a view of the gardens. One of the amazing things about Cape Town is Table Mountain which you can see the edge of in the background. The mountains in this part of South Africa are especially rugged; Cape Town only really climbs a third of the way at most up the mountain. Quite different looking for the tree covered mountains we have on the west coast!

Here is the National Library of South Africa. The Company Gardens are surrounded by older Cape Dutch style buildings.

Following the Gardens, we went up to Signal Hill, the lower part of Table Mountain.

The view of Cape Town from here is incredible! Unfortunately Table Mountain was a bit cloud covered so you can't see its distinctive flat top.

And the view from the other side out onto the Atlantic Ocean. Below us is Camps Bay which has beautiful white sand beaches. Apparently its quite trendy among the celebrities too.

Anyways, I shall go but I"ll write later this week with part two of the tour.

Amsterdam

Currently in cool futuristic hotel in Amsterdam. Onward to Cape Town tomorrow!

Edit: Since WiFi is free at the hotel, here are pictures of the cool hotel room.  The blue light below is over the shower and it changes color. I can set the color with the remote. It's currently green. The lights, TV, music, alarm clock and blinds are all controlled by the remote too. So if you're ever in Amsterdam...

Well time to pack and go get breakfast. Cape Town tonight!

At YVR

I thought I should wait until Cape Town and South Africa to make my first post but I figured this is a better way for everyone to stay in touch with me on this journey.
I leave for Amsterdam in 1.5 hours, then on to Cape Town and Stellenbosch the next day.

The Vancouver airport has always appeared nice to me but the international wing is amazing. I guess that makes sense with the Olympic upgrades and all. One thing I noticed is this gorgeous aquarium. It's a bit unusual though because I think I saw salmon mixed with more tropical type varieties of fish. It may be though that I am not as familiar with the local fish species as I thought. There are definitely some very brightly colored fish there next to the silver flashy salmon. Also these black starfish which are really neat.

I'm currently sitting at the gate and another cool thing is the people sitting next to me are speaking Swedish. I can still pick out the occasional word too which makes me very happy. Maybe after South Africa, I'll adventure to Sweden next. We shall see.

Well I should sign off and make sure I have everything for the flight. I miss everyone very much but I'm very excited too! Talk to you in Amsterdam,