Journal #4 from Cape Town

The Olivet College women's volleyball team is on a 10-day trip to Cape Town, South Africa. While there, the players will be writing blog posts and sending them back to the U.S.A. to be posted on the website. The home page for the blog, where future posts will be linked to is: www.olivetcomets.com/sports/wvball/2019-20/cape_town_blog/

THURSDAY, DEC. 12 -- written by Ellie Louiselle, Madison Floria and Lauren Gunter

Today was a busy day. We started by getting a yummy breakfast from the hotel. We then left right after and made our way towards Table Mountain. There was not many parking spots when we got there so we had to walk 400 meters up the mountain to get to the lodge. Once we got to the lodge, Coach Merchant purchased our tickets and we waited to head up the mountain. When we got in the cable car, it was a short but amazing ride. At first, a few girls were scared to get in and go up the mountain but that quickly passed. It was all windows and the floor spun so everyone got a full view of everything as we went up. When we got to the top, everyone got in for a group picture and then we went our separate ways to get our own fun pictures and enjoy the view. It was incredible to see Cape Town from the top of a mountain and in the clouds.  It was more than just a view from the top of the mountain, it was a beautiful rock and flower garden with paths which would take hours to explore. We were able to walk the top of the mountain and the view never got old. At one point, Lauren and Abby almost had a collision with a bird as one flew right towards their heads. Luckily, the bird missed. There was a gift shop which some of us walked through. Kennedy found a recycled nik-nak case from the gift shop and 90% of their sales are from local vendors.  We then headed back down the mountain. The ride down was just as beautiful as the way up.

Before the Green Market, we got some Burger King. It was very delicious and very busy there as well. After lunch, we split into groups of three or four and went our separate ways at the market. The Green Market is a huge group of people which take weeks, even months to make their own homemade materials like clothing, dishes, jewelry, and so much more. A lot of us girls bought bowls for our mothers and hair accessories, they were so cool and the way they were made were amazing so we could not resist. There were sellers everywhere where they tried everything they could to sell you their products. They would ask you to come look and lower prices, make jokes, and ask you questions on what you like so they can fling the best product they made for you. A few girls talked after purchasing and realized they got jipped. For example, Kennedy got two scrunchies for 70 Rands and Madison got two scrunchies for 100 Rands.

Kennedy, Ellie and Lauren brought their left over Burger King to some of the refugees living outside the market. Kennedy and Ellie stayed and talked to them for a while. Learned their names, their story and much more. After a while we saw a few children walk out of a church and realized that there were more people and a whole lot of children staying in the church. We asked our new friend “Lee” to bring us into the church to say hi to the children. We walked in and an instant upsetting feeling hit us. We realized how lucky we are after seeing all of the infants sleeping on the floor of the church and all of the refugees all over and sleeping in pews. The children loved seeing us and gave Kennedy and Ellie hugs, high-fives and welcoming smiles and laughs. We loved every moment of it and did not want to leave them. But we said our goodbyes as Lee walked us out of the church.

Last but not least dinner time. Dinner was held at an African restaurant called Gold. We had a reservation for 6:30p.m. Walking into Gold, there were people greeting us in African attire. The women had on long, beautiful colorful skirts and or dresses; the men had on African style pants and shirts. Once we were seated to our table, a lady came around and offered to paint flowers on all of our faces and we were all given drums. At first, we were somewhat confused on why would a restaurant give us drums. Shortly after when more people started to showing up to the restaurant, the servers put on a show for us. We actually have to be in the show in a way. The audience was told to grab the drum we were all given and join along. We spent the first 30 minutes we were there drumming with the performers. We were so amazed by the acts which were going on stage. While the acts where going on, we were given a list of food we would be eating for the night. The waitress brought out the 14-dish tasting menu made up of African dishes from different countries one by one for everyone to try. If we liked something we could request more of it. A few things we tried were an ostrich fillet salad, Malawian sweet potato cakes, Xhosa pot bread, Mozambiquan chili chicken wings (the team thought these were the best chicken wings they had ever had!), Tanzanian fish curry, Ethiopian Pilau rice, Ghanaian peanut chicken to name a few!  The ambiance of the restaurant made for a real African dining experience that was absolutely incredible

Click here for today's photo gallery.