By rbhargava
With only a few more weeks left in Stellenbosch, I’m quickly becoming aware of my limited time here. Having passed the midway point two weeks ago, time is flying faster than ever before. Nonetheless, I continue to try to do as much as possible. This weekend was no exception as I went to the famous Newlands Rugby Stadium in Cape Town for a rubgy game between South Africa and Australia. A definite highlight of my time here, I’ll make sure to discuss it in this blog post as well as what I did during National Heritage Day on Wednesday.
This past Wednesday was a national holiday – Heritage Day, which was established in the mid 1990s to celebrate the many heritages that exist in South Africa. However, in the past few years, Heritage Day has informally become known as Braai Day. For those of you who have never heard of braaing, it is the South African equivalent of a barbeque. Anyway, for Heritage Day, our program director and his wife took us to the River Festival in Stellenbosch, where we were able to listen to some live music, check out some very cool local vendors, eat great food, and even make our own bread over a braai. Following this, we headed to Cape Town and enjoyed some great food at the Eastern Bazaar – a popular area with many vendors selling all kinds of Indian, Chinese, and Middle Eastern food. We then went to the National Gallery to see some amazing exhibits of South African art. After that, we went to the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, my second time there now, and enjoyed the beautiful gardens there. I was reminded of how much I like Kirstenbosch, and I hope I’ll have a chance to go again before leaving. The highlight of the day was in the evening, when we went to a friend of the program director’s house in a suburb of Cape Town and had a traditional meal with our course convener and her husband, our program director and his wife, and the couple that invited us over. It was a very enjoyable evening, and one that we got to truly feel home and welcome in South Africa.
Moving on, on Saturday after a great hike in the rain with our program director at the Joenkershook Nature Reseve (my second time there as well), I joined 9 other friends to go to Cape Town for the Springbocks Wallabies game. The stadium was packed for the game, as both teams are very competitive and two of the best in the world. We had bought standing tickets, and were lucky enough to find standing room only 3 rows back from one corner of the field. The packed stadium had an electric feel to it and after one intense half the Springbocks were down 10-5. The second half was another story though, and in the last 5 minutes the Springbocks scored several times – two tries were actually directly in front of us in our corner. The Springbocks ended up winning with an impressive 28-10 score, and we all left with an appreciation for the sport and now a longing to watch more. Although I regularly follow the NFL back at home, I think I find rugby now more interesting and fun to watch!