Greetings from South Africa

Since we are already two weeks into the quarter I figure I better start blogging. I arrived in Cape Town, South Africa early Wednesday March 28th after 20 hours of flying and a 12 hour layover in Frankfurt, Germany. From the Cape Town airport, the group traveled to the university town of Stellenbosch, the second oldest city in South Africa (you can probably guess what is the oldest). The city was founded in 1679 and is about 30 miles from Cape Town. Stellenbosch university was established in 1918 and has around 20,000 students. The university is noteworthy among South African institutions of higher learning in that most lectures are delivered in Afrikaans (this is significant; I may explain in a later post.) Afrikaans, one of eleven official tongues the country has (English is another), originated from the Dutch language, although it is grammatically simpler. Southern Africa is the only place in the world where the Afrikaans language is native. The English words "trek" and "veld" come from Afrikaans.