Day One in Cape Town

Perspective matters and attitude matters, but the desire to learn changes everything.

I am so happy to be surrounded by a group of people who have a desire to know more about this world. For the next ten weeks I will be traveling South Africa with the Parks & People program. We’ll be focusing on migration, energy, diversity, and health, starting in Cape Town. When I departed State College on Tuesday, I felt incredibly nervous. I don’t know much information about what we’ll be doing, and I was feeling a bit uneasy about the program’s length. During my flight from Washington D.C. to Johannesburg I was seated next to a middle-aged hospice nurse who was returning to Ghana for her grandmother’s funeral. The nurse shared with me that she had gone 19 years without being able to return home to Ghana from the United States. Wow! Perspective matters. Ten weeks will blow by.

We have concluded our first day of the 2016 Parks & People program today and it is clear that we are off to a great start! We’ll be in Cape Town through the majority of January, where the weather is forecasted to be about 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) and we have a great group. Throughout the program I will be with 12 students in our group and 2 faculty leaders (Neil & Danielle). We’ll also have guests come and go, like 3 members of the education team who will be with us throughout our stay in Cape Town.

Our first module is about the people of Cape Town & Table Mountain National Park. We spent most of the morning in a classroom environment with the intention of preparing for our future school visits, in which the Parks & People students will teach lessons.

We got out to explore a bit today and hit up a local flower market. We purchased some flowers, including Protea, South Africa’s national flower. We later used the flowers to practice our technical drawing skills. IN the future, we’ll use those skills to teach lessons to children in South Africa schools. There are many components to this program, but they all tie together well (thanks to Neil’s big picture thinking).

We had plans to go to Table Mountain, but were unable to go to the top by gondola because of high winds. Our group was very understanding, but hopeful to make it back to Table Mountain. Attitude matters. Instead, we spent some time at Signal Hill, where we had dinner and watched the sun set.

Did I mention that I drove on the left side of the road today? I was a bit uneasy because it feels so different, but we came back totally unscathed! Here's a picture of some group members eating in our "bus," which Neil drives. 

Day one set a great tone for the Parks & People program and I'm looking forward to more adventure and learning in the next 69 days!