by Bella Tobin
5/5/2012

We celebrated Freedom Day, a public holiday, and walked to Rhodes Memorial above the campus on Devil's Peak with an incredible view of this beautiful city. 

Later that day we went to a soccer game at the Green Point Stadium which is the World Cup Stadium. Cape Town Ajax (pronounced Ahax,) played the Orlando Pirates (Johannesburg). Getting into the stadium was interesting as there were long lines to get tickets scanned. The crowd was getting antsy, it was about two minutes from kickoff and we were right at the front. Eventually security let people in right after kick-off .

We ended up being surrounded by Pirates fan and decided to root for them since we had no team loyalty. We were in an intense section and stood on our seats the whole time, dancing and singing the cheers with the crowd. None of the cheers were in English so we had no idea what we were saying, but we went along and they loved us.  When we left, the people around us shook our hands. The game ended in a tie, but it was such an amazing night.

On Saturday morning we drove for about three hours to a township called Touwsrivier. It’s a very poor, black, Afrikaans town and we were volunteering at the school for children up to the fifth grade. The school was one room with five teachers and over 100 children. We separated into groups and my group built a jungle gym, and the rest helped paint and decorate. There weren’t really instructions on how to build it, so we figured it out as we went long and finished it in about four hours. It was difficult but a lot of fun. I like to think I was helpful, thanks to my Dad for teaching me everything I know about building stuff. 

After a nice afternoon break we got back on the road and continued to Aquila Game Reserve. We settled in and then went on a sunset game drive. 

It was three hours long, and we saw elephants, rhinos, hippopotami, lions, giraffes, zebras, springbok, ostrich, cape buffalo, wildebeest and some sort of deer/goat . It was amazing, and we stopped halfway through and watched the sunset. We returned to the game reserve in time for an amazing buffet dinner and to enjoy good company and the amazing nature. We left early in the morning for another game drive. It was still dark and we saw the most beautiful sunrise. The pink sky was stretching from behind the mountains and the crescent moon was setting behind another set of mountains. It was worth getting up early.

We saw all the same animals except no elephants, and the addition of cheetahs. The cheetahs were rescued for some reason, and were kept in a smaller area. It was really neat as they were feeding at the time and we saw them destroy a huge leg of an animal. The lions were also interesting and were playing together. We witnessed the dominant male have his way with the female lions four times, and apparently they do it around 30 times a day. It only took him about 30 seconds and he roared pretty loudly and went to sleep.

After the Game Drive, we returned  to the campus. Another great experience in South Africa.