By Amy Cheng

US consultants (Amy, Dianne, Elisabeth, Linh, Melissa, Sheren, Eric, Scott, Fady on the way) and US Team leaders (Kim, Kevin, Lyn, Brett) arrived safely in Cape Town. Praise God! We are all staying at the Bell Rosen hotel in the northern part of the city.

We conquered jet lag by actively sightseeing all day Saturday. We traveled along the coast by car (on the left side of the road) to different parts of the Cape. We visited Camps Bay, Hout Bay, had lunch at Simon’s Town, and visited the famous Cape of Good Hope.

This beautiful land is surrounded by the Atlantic (cold water) and Indian Oceans (warm, shark-ladden waters). We even saw penguins! Can you believe it? The climate is much like San Francisco’s – warm and sunny during the day and cold and windy at night. Cape Town is gorgeous with Dutch architecture, blue water, sandy beaches, and the impressive 3000-foot Drakensberg Mountain Range as a backdrop. Simply breathtaking. (Please click the pictures below.)

The diverse South African people are very warm and typically speak several languages, including Afrikaans, which uses different vowel pronunciations than English. Moreover, some English words and phrases are very different. For example, “Turn left at the next robot” translates to “Turn left at the next traffic light.” South Africans use the word cutlery and not silverware. The word for “thank you” sounds like “buy-a-donkey.”   And, the South Africans love their beef biltong (beef jerky)!

Our day was culturally rich, meeting African street vendors from other countries such as Kenya and Malawi as well as people born and raised in town. It is fun for us to learn South African expressions and more importantly, we are reminded that we are on a different continent and should be open to cross-cultural experiences with different peoples.