By rbhargava
With my second week in class over, I’ve finally settled down into university life here at Stellenbosch. Having gone to school in DC for the past two years, it’s a refreshing experience to be studying in a “college town.” It only took me a few thousand miles, but it’s great to be at a school where you actually feel like a college kid rather than a pre-professional living in a big city. This week, I want to focus on three separate events – teaching at Lynedoch for the first time on Monday, visiting the Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden and hiking up Table Mountain on Tuesday, and hiking up Stellenbosch mountain twice.
As I mentioned in my post last week – as part of the LSCE (Learning, Sustainability, and Community Engagement) class I am in, I have the chance to teach 7th grade boys at a local school once a week. Monday was my first time interacting with the kids, along with my co-teaching partner Brandon (who also happens to be from northern NJ). In our first class with the students, we showed them pictures of our families, NJ, NYC, and our schools to give them a better understanding of our backgrounds. To get to know the kids better, we then went on to play several different games including 7Up, Four Corners, and Charades. From what we’ve been told, the majority of our students have ADD or fetal alcohol syndrome, making teaching and even playing simple games like Four Corners a difficult task. On a lighter note, I did get a chance to play some soccer with the students during a 20 minutes break, in which I was extremely surprised by how talented they all were and how well they worked as a team. I’m 100% confident they would beat 99% of the teams I played when I was their age in the US. Their talents on the field and struggles in the classroom point towards a background in which playing outside with a soccer ball is much more common than having a book to read at home. Looking back on the students thus far, they are almost identical to the middle school students I taught in India a few summers ago. The students here behaved, acted like, and were interested in the same things as my students in India, and it will definitely be interesting to continue to notice those similarities over the next several weeks.
Moving on, last Tuesday I went with some friends to the Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden near Cape Town. The grounds were beautifully kept and we spent much of the morning walking around the garden and enjoying a rare sunny and warm day. The highlight by far though was a hike up the backside of Table Mountain on the Skeleton Gorge Trail. The strenuous hike took us above the clouds through a never-ending path of log steps, ladders, and climbing a waterfall. The top was well worth the effort though, as we looked down at the clouds below and came across a reservoir with bright white sand. It was quite surreal climbing up so high, above the clouds, and coming across a nice little beach. We took a different route back down – Nursary Ravine – which was anything but easy. Luckily, our walk down coincided with the clouds moving out of the area, so we were able to hike down and slowly begin to see the land below. The hike took several hours, but was probably the most rewarding hike I’ve gone on.
Of course after such a great hike I was eager for more, so on Thursday I hiked up Stellenbosch Mountain with a friend. The hike was much less intense, but offered equally stunning views of Stellenbosch and the surrounding areas. It was clear enough to see Table Mountain and Lion’s Head directly west, and the ocean just south of the mountain. The mountain is just behind my residence, so I returned again to do the hike with some more friends on Sunday. It seems like hiking up the mountain may become a weekly activity for me!