Farewell, South Africa

As you can imagine, the three days that I had remaining between my return to Cape Town and my ultimate South African departure turned out to be rather hectic. It was filled with recovering from my Joburg/Soweto/Mozambique trip, sorting through my bedroom, having a large amount of clothes cleaned and packed, seeing people that I really needed to see, and preparing for leave everything behind. This even included packing for another trip in Germany. As a result, I didn't have a chance to blog. I'm a bit sad about this, and still hope to share the highlights of my travels in a future post.

However, I'm getting behind! Yesterday, I woefully said goodbye to a number of great friends and packed my life into 2.5 suitcases. After sixteen hours of traveling, I arrived this morning in Germany. More on that later.

Leaving, on a jet plane...

The purpose of this post, though, is to reflect on something that our group was told when we first arrived in Cape Town. I began tuning people out as speaker after speaker tried to talk about their part of UCT at orientation. However, a certain Deputy Vice-Chancellor caught my ear. Prof. Thandabantu Nhlapo, a very kind looking older man, stood at the podium and softly said, "Welcome, welcome, welcome to Cape Town. Let me first say that above all things, you students are very welcome here. You add to the diversity of our campus, and we appreciate you adding your perspective to our institution." Or something like that. He then went on, "South Africa is one of those countries that tends to get... under your skin. I hope your time with us is special, and that our beloved country touches you all in some way."

I've been thinking about that lately, because it certainly has. As I sit in my German coffee shop, quenching the thirst of intermittent, slow, and costly internet access over the last month, I'm struggling a bit to put this feeling into words, but the uniqueness of the country and my experiences consistently became more complex as the months went on. I'll perhaps write more about that later, but in the meantime... here's my final slideshow. It's a short video of my favorite photos, both in terms of scenery as well as capturing certain moments that I really savor.

Enjoy! And I'll see all you Wisconsinites real soon.

It's best to watch in full screen and HD.
Click here to watch in HD!
And as a reminder, here are my travel plans over the next week. I will be home on July 1st, one week from today.