Alex L is beyond excited to continue learning about South Africa

I am extremely grateful for being enrolled in the pre-departure course before heading to Cape Town for the next semester. After being accepted into the program, I was thrilled and couldn't wait to actually get there and start learning and exploring everything once we all landed. Little did I know, there is SO much learning and background information that needed to be processed before flying half-way across the world into a completely different culture and life style. There were so many things that enlightened me while taking this one credit course because it opened my eyes to how complex South Africa is and that it is much smarter to fully prepare yourself with all the knowledge and information you can get before actually traveling somewhere, opposed to immersing yourself in something totally new without knowing much about it at all. Specifically, this class taught me about the things I know, the things I think I know, and the things I had no clue about. The things we talked about in this class made me realize that there are a lot of things in this world that I need to take the time to learn more about. It makes a lot of sense to brush up on American history and politics when traveling to a foreign country because you want to be able to have intelligent conversations with locals while also representing your country in a sophisticated way while being open to new things and ideas all at the same time. I am beyond excited to continue learning more about South Africa while actually living there and experiencing everything it has to offer first hand.