We went to downtown Stellenbosch today in order to get a few things and to see how far everything was. The closest University building is about five minutes and the center of campus is about ten minutes away. Downtown is probably about a 20 minute walk, but it's not bad because it's so beautiful and it doesn't feel nearly as humid as it does back home. These are pictures of the walk and of downtown.
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| This is the view from the patio outisde the door of our apartment. |
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While we were walking we saw this house being built. How cool looking is that house?? You can also notice the gate. All houses and apartments here have gates in front of their homes, so you have to have two keys to get in.
 
I don't know if you can see the words, but they say Aankope, Huis Visser, Huis Marais, and Simonsberg. This is the first University building we come up on. What a language...
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| Downtown Stellenbosch!! The buildings aren't very tall. The whole thing is like one big strip mall. They also had some outside markets, but I forget to take a picture of one. |
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| This is the last picture of downtown. I would first like the point out that the car is driving on the opposite side of the road and it's taking awhile to get used to-especially while we are crossing the streets! Also, We are very far into the downtown area at this point and can STILL see the mountains. They are my favorite part of South Africa. |
As you can see in the pictures it is a BEAUTIFUL day. It is in the upper 70's, but the breeze is so nice that it feels about 70. While we were downtown we found a food court which is nothing at all like you would think it was like. A food court doesn't mean that there are a lot of restaurants there, it means there is one. This particular food court was indian food, so we decided it was time for lunch. We both ate the chicken curry and it was AMAZING. It was in a container that had rice on one side and the actual chicken curry on the other. The chicken in the chicken curry was still on the bone, but was literally falling off of it. We were able to get all the chicken off with a spoon and a fork. We got all this food and two sodas for about 54 rand which is about 7 American dollars max.
We were surprised at how many different nationalities we saw downtown. Of course there were Indian people in the food court, but we also so a lot of black Africans, Europeans, and Asians as well. This is a very diverse part of South Africa (I make this comment not knowing what the rest of South Africa looks like). While there are many people here, not many are friendly at all! We would be walking down the street and come up on a person and they don't even look at you. I smiled and nodded at a few people and they just pretend I wasn't there. When I told Tyler about it his only response was, "Good".
We both really like it here. The only thing I am struggling with is some of the things in the apartment. We have no stove, oven, toaster, dishwasher, or air conditioning. The lady who owns the apartments told us that she is going to give us a stovetop oven, but until then I can't cook which really really sucks because the grocery stores here are very cool. The actual stores are built the same, but the bakery area and the meat areas are what are really cool. You can tell that everything in the bakery is home made and it looks delicious. We got some pumpernickel break that was made there and it was delicious. There are no bagged meats in these stores. There is a meat area where all the raw meat is shown to you, so I like to think everything is fresh or we would able to smell it.
Well, that's about it for today. We are going to the store around 5 to get some groceries. The sun here doesn't start going down until 7, so we will be safe. I will try to post in this as much as possible, but no promises. =]
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