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By rbhargava

This past week was another fun packed week with a many memorable events including a bike ride from Stellenbosch to the Jonkershook Nature Reserve, watching a movie at the student movie theater on Palestine as part of Gaza Awareness week, attending my dorm's House Dance on Friday, going to Cape Town on Saturday and visiting friends from GW at the University of Cape Town (UCT), hiking the frontside of Table Mountain on Sunday, and going to a movie screening of Unearthed (a movie on fracking in the Karoo) in Cape Town and meeting the director of the movie! As always I continue to keep myself busy and take advantage of all that Stellenbosch and Cape Town have to offer. This week I want to talk about two things, the House Dance on Friday and my time in Cape Town over the weekend.

Practically every student residence at Stellenbosch organizes a fancy ball for all its residents called Huis Dance or House Dance. Living in Metanoia, I was fortunate enough to attend the event and enjoy one of the most looked forward to event of the year. This year, the residence had its dance at the Town Hall, a beautiful building in the center of town. It is hard to compare the dance to anything like that at home, but the closest comparison would be a fraternity or sorority's formal event, but slightly fancier...so almost like a high school prom for college students. The guys buy the girls flowers, and only after arriving at the venue did I realize my grey suit and purple shirt was a bit too casual for the event. I was lucky enough to attend the event with a South African date, and sat on a table with a few other international students from Metanoia. We all enjoyed the experience of being at such a formal event in Stellenbosch and one that very few international students have the chance to attend. The night was also full of Sokkie dancing, which is the traditional Afrikaans ballroom dance. Just for the Huis Dance, Metanoia had organized a lesson a few nights earlier, so I was able to learn the basics of the dance and slowly pick it up during the Huis Dance until I was relatively competent in it (I think). The entire experience reminded me how lucky I am not only to be at a university with such a rich student life and culture, but also to be living in a dorm that allows me to get involved in these events.

Moving on, this past weekend my program - CIEE - set up a weekend in Cape Town where the three of us on the CIEE program in Stellenbosch were able to stay at the Alrge apartment building in Cape Town that hosts about 200 CIEE UCT students. On Saturday I was able to run into two friends from back at GW,  which was a nice change of pace as they were the first two faces I had seen in South Africa that I actually knew from home! It is quite interesting to think that for the past 6 weeks I've solely been interacting with people I had never met before. Not too often one has the chance to do that! Talking with my friends from back home,  it was great to discuss our time in South Africa and compare our experiences at UCT and Stellenbosch. I am definitely happy to have chosen to go to Stellenbosch, where my program is all of 3 Americans, whereas their program at UCT has somewhere around 200. I can't imagine coming to another country to study abroad and living in an apartment building solely for Americans. What a waste of time!

During the weekend, I had a chance to experience the famous nightlife of Cape Town on Long Street, which has very similar architecture to New Orleans. We also hiked up the front side of Table Mountain on the Platteklip trail that was an extremely steep, but direct hike to the top. The hike was an intense 2.5 hour trip up, but the views from the top were stunning, and made me appreciate the beauty of Cape Town on an entirely new level. There's not a city like it! On one side of the mountain you could look down and see the city bowl, Robben Island, and all the iconic places of downtown Cape Town. On the other, you can see the beaches of Camps Bay and the mountains that stretch down the peninsula until Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope. After the hike, we attended a film screening of Unearthed, a movie about fracking in South Africa, at the Labia Theater in Cape Town. The director was also in attendance and it was extremely interesting to see fracking from the South African perspective, especially since that is a topic that I have studied in detail at GW. The film was very similar to the American film Gasland, and we had a chance to talk to the director briefly after the movie. Quite cool to talk to her as she is at the forefront of the fracking debate in South Africa. It's one thing to study abroad and experience living in a new place, and it's another thing to slowly become involved in the issues that you are passionate about back at home in that new country. It's exciting to become increasingly involved in the community here and feeling less like a tourist.