Having my mom visit towards the end
of our semester in Cape Town has been bittersweet. I couldn’t have been more
excited to show her the city that I have fallen in love with, but as I see her
excitement and admiration, it makes me realize that it’s almost time to leave.
I have really grown to see this city as home and have already spent time
looking into ways to come back after graduating from UCONN next year. It is my
favorite city that I have spent time in and even after three months, there is
still so much that I want to do and so many people to meet. I am genuinely
dreading the day that we leave this house for the last time and the entire way
back home I will be thinking about when and how I will come back! When I was
discussing it with my mom, I told her that if it weren’t for my parents and
siblings living in MA, I would move here in a heartbeat. I probably sound super
dramatic right now, but it really is an amazing city and I don’t think you can
truly understand how amazing it is until spending time here. My mom was telling
me that she wishes my dad could have come with her because pictures and
explanations don’t do it justice; there are so many complexities to the city that
need to be seen to be recognized. When we were talking to our Uber driver about
it, he summed it up pretty well…he said he’d never spoken to anyone who did not
love Cape Town after being there, even though they had not always wanted to
visit the city in the first place.
Focusing on the positive part of it,
my mom is here!! I have been showing her all of the things that we loved most
about our semester and it makes me feel like I’m re-living the new experiences
because of how much she loves each part of the city. We spent the first weekend
she was here on a garden route safari weekend and were able to hug elephants,
pet baby cheetahs and get a neck massage by a group of ostriches! Since then,
we have done so much to try to show her Cape Town in ten days. We did a
peninsula tour with Chantel, wine tasting, the double-decker bus tour, explored
the waterfront and city center, spent an afternoon at a beach club, went on a
catamaran champagne cruise, heard some live music, and much more. Not to
mention eating more excellent food than she thought could exist in one city. I
can’t wait to show her even more of Cape Town this weekend, such as Old Biscuit
Mill, taking the train to the beach, hiking Lion’s Head and more. It’s
really nice that the cold rain went away and left beautiful weather in it’s
place until she heads back home to April snow storms. I will definitely be sad
to see her off on Sunday, but even more sad when I head to the same
airport in three weeks time.
Our activist project has many
updates and is coming together nicely! After picking out three carts full of
plants at Kirstenbosch Gardens, we had them delivered to the hospital. We
continued to weed and pulled out bushes that were about the same size as we
are. We planted all of the plants intended for the garden and gave them new
soil. We widened the walkway where the wheelchairs could not previously fit and
put down new gravel to unify these spots with the rest of the pathway. We
accomplished so much since we began working on it, but there always seems to be
more to do! We have pots for the children to decorate before we put the smaller
flower plants in them, we need to bring more gravel to further improve the
walkways and more compost soil to help the new young plants grow. As a
finishing touch, we had the idea to purchase beaded flowers and birds from the
men who are always making them on the commons so that we can support their
business while also adding more color to the garden which the kids will love!
It has been such a fun project to work on and I can’t wait until we can share
the finished product with the staff and children!
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