Welcome to Cape Town!

Welcome to my blog about my language stay in South Africa! I will weekly write about experiences I made in Cape Town, as nice places I visited, people I've met, cultural customs and other surprising or shocking things...To start off with, here my first entry about my expectations and really first impressions of Cape Town!

For the next eight weeks my location will be Cape Town. I've heard from many people that this is such a wonderful and lovely city. We will see :)...But why have I chosen to pass my language stay 9000 km away from home? Actually, the amount of positive feedbacks I received for this city convinced my. Furthermore, I like the combination of four weeks of school and 4 weeks of volunteering project. Like this I hope to see different aspects of a country with a long and shaken history. Is the topic of Apartheid fully out of the way? Or is it still possible to see a cultural difference between black and white? This are a few of the questions which were in my luggage when I arrived on the airport of Cape Town and met for the first time the wonderful landscape around Cape Town.

The goal of this language stay will initially be to improve my skills in the English language. For that reason I'm visiting during the first four weeks the language school "International House Cape Town" in the mornings. As I've off the afternoons, there will be many possibilities to participate on events of the school, visiting the town, shopping and doing a lots of sports, like jogging on the wonderful beach.

A big topic is the security in Cape Town. Is it true that you have always to be afraid of being mugged on the streets? I asked this question right to the first person I met in South Africa: The driver how picked me up at the airport. He told me that it won't be a problem, Cape Town is the safest place in South Africa. So my concerns were disposed and I was really looking forward to inspect the city.
The first week will be most about getting familiar with my new environment: meeting new people in school and elsewhere, visiting the different parts of the city, finding the best restaurant and so on. So finally I can just record that I'm really happy being here in Cape Town and will hopefully meet many interesting people.