A Week Till Cape Town

Whelp, I’ve got about a week left before heading out to Cape Town. And I’m already packed. Sort of? All the clothes, book, and other odds and ends I will be taking with me are definitely in the general vicinity of my suitcase. A last-minute trip to Florida with some of my family ensured that I’ve already gone through the process of wheedling down my clothes and deciding what goes in checked versus carry-on. So in a way, I’m on top of things. (It's the small victories, friends). It’s just a matter of actually putting it all back inside my suitcase and zipping it away. But hey, I’ll get there.

Anyways, packing and repacking aside, the semester ahead of me is looking pretty good. It probably goes without saying that I'm excited. There is some inherent adventure in going to a place you don't know with people you never met before even when inside the well-established structure of a study abroad program. Even beyond that sense of adventure or wanderlust or whatever you want to call it, I'm ready for a change of pace. I go to a small school in a small Iowa town called Grinnell. Now don't get me wrong; I like, and more often than not love, my small school and its small town too. But with them can come a certain kind of isolation that’s been getting to me lately. After two years in the same place, I think I’m ready for a break. I’m ready to get up, stretch my legs, and wander over to somewhere new. This new place, obviously, is going to be Cape Town.

It’s something different for sure––a semester of school in a larger city, a different continent. And I can’t wait. At Grinnell, I am majoring in sociology and am excited to continue to take sociology and similar courses at UCT. I also plan to take an IES Abroad service learning course in health studies where I’ll gain more experience in public health and the social and economic factors that affect it. I’ll let you know how it all goes, the classes and everything else too. These blog posts will naturally be a place for me to reflect, but I also hope to gather a bunch of information that will be useful to those who are planning to do the same program. I’ve been where you are (heck, for the next week I’m still where you are) –– anxious, excited, and trying desperately to imagine what my coming adventures might look like. I'll try my best to help with that in some small way. 

See you in Cape Town! With just under a week left, I'm almost there.