There is now Here

Capetown! Days 1 & 2
Well I made it. After 24 hours of extremely disorienting airplane flights, where I guaged approximate time and destination by the mystery meal being served and the language of the packaging.
Funny story about banking and travelling abroad: tell your banks you are leaving, so they don't freeze your account. Another funny story: sometimes exchange booths run out of cash to trade in the little money you do have on you. Yeeahhh. I shall learn to live the simple life (until tomorrow at least).
Heavens, I have been thinking about so much I don't even know what to say. . .
...A few things...
I usually tear through a novel or something on flights, but this time it was kind of nice to just sit alone with my thoughts. Really, I do feel like I am learning something about simplifying. I decided to skip out on portable electronics, so just sat and soaked in humanity en route (between cramming myself into awkward in-flight sleeping positions). It was kind of peaceful, really. I saw so many beautiful families. I also watched the little map on the screen move along as we went for a while. It was surreal, the plane tracing a little line across the globe. I couldn't help but feel the, I suppose you could call it humor, of seeing the earth in all its rugged peaks and huge waters, with neat little white lines atop it, marking out spaces of land we claim to be ours. It made me realize, it's really not, at all.
...
The unexpected beauty of Table Mountain silhouetted against the night sky positively took my breath away in our drive to our hostel last night. I haven't felt that kind of awe at the sheer splendor of nature in so long. It's hard to explain, but the starkness of a single, jutting land mass amongst silhouetted trees and city lights was mystical. I didn't even take out my camera, I was so entranced by its might.
...
This morning, my internal clock rang its own alarm and woke me up at promptly 4am. Such a convenient time. After trying, and failing, to fall back asleep, reading, sitting, I gave up. Around 5am I discovered I was not the only one on this schedule. A girl on my trip & I decided to go outside to read, journal, and wait for the sunrise.
If I thought the mountain at night was breathtaking, it was nothing to watching the slow dawning of the sun's light on its face.
...
Today was our visit to Robben Island. It has seen many uses, the most recent an Apartheid-era "hellhole of a prison,"comparable to Alcatraz in its locale. We were guided on a tour of the former prision facilities by a former political prisoner, who now lives and works on the island.
The very concept of living on an island where for years of your life you were imprisoned in abominable conditions for no real crime is a testament to the human power to overcome. I honestly can not tell you yet what all I felt while visiting. The pain of the place felt so raw- and indeed its atrocities are quite recent, in our lifetime. Yet, here are these people, reclaiming it, sharing their stories that the world may know and learn.
Our tour guide for the rest of the island was not a former prisoner, but grew up in the townships, and remembers celebrating Mandela's release. I stopped to talk to him for a while about what it was like, commuting to give tours each day. He told me that each new day, he feels he learns. There are so many people, from the world over, who come to see this island- and he sees that as a symbol of hope, that so many want to know, want to learn and re-build. The responses of visitors can be very visceral, and very emotionally charged, he told me. He said he often worked with groups of white visitors who, even if they were from another country, felt an oppressive sense of guilt. It was so interesting, talking to him about his work of being a tour guide, yet not in the usual sense of pointing out landmarks and facts, but telling stories and relating history.
...
On a lighter note, there were penguins and peacocks on the island!
And I got teased an unfair amount for our guide introducing himself to me. It was educational, people. Even if he was just a little bit charming.
...
Well, my group is ready to head back to the hostel for the night. We are all exhausted but powering through to 9 pm (such party animals) before we sleep.
I'll try to organize my thoughts some more at some point, skipping out on cliches and all that jazz. But, in rough form, as they are in my mind, here they are.