Lily falling in love with this city that of many cultures

The start to the semester has been both amazing and overwhelming; there is so much going on in Cape Town and so much to see! The first drive through the city felt more like an area of southern California, especially since my mind hadn’t fully wrapped around the fact that we were in South Africa. It’s a very modern city, which many people from the US don’t seem to understand. There is a huge diversity in the people, cultures, food and architecture of the city. After learning about the country’s history in human rights classes and the pre-departure course, seeing everything here really helps place it all into context and see how the history has affected the area. The mixture of architecture, much of which is European styled, immediately amazed me, especially with Table Mountain towering in the background. The views of the water are spectacular and there seems to be a view in every direction you turn! We have spent the week doing everything from a tour about the slave trade history in Cape Town to visiting the Cape Point lighthouse. Each activity and tour we have done has been so different from each other, but they all interact to help us understand the mixture that makes up Cape Town’s culture. We have been going to different restaurants that make many different types of food; from Ethiopian to Malay and Portuguese. My first impression was that Cape Town has a wide variety of food to choose from. However, when you look into the types of food with relation to the history of the country, you can see that many of these came from countries from which slaves were brought to Cape Town. This seems to be the case with much of the city; our first impressions always turn into some type of education because there are so many connections between the history and the present. It’s amazing how quickly we all fell in love with this place!