Long before the Dutch and English colonized South Africa, the Portuguese sailor Bartolomeu Dias discovered the Cape of Good Hope as a harbor of refuge from the treacherous storms along the coast of southern Africa. Seeking a passage for trade to India, Dias mistakenly found the lush and beautiful peninsula while mother nature tested the limits …
Continue reading “The Cape of Storms; the Ultimate Summertime Paradise”
Pictured above from my adventure on the Garden Route tour and a hike up Table Mountain is an African elephant and a dassie. It isn’t hard to tell the two animals apart; on the surface their appearances are as different as night and day. However, if you were to delve deeper …
Continue reading “A Land of Extreme Beauty; Garden Route Road Trip”
Life of a Biochemical Engineering Major involves late night study sessions, long lab reports, and an endless swamp of assignments. I love the challenge every semester brings but this time I will be embarking on a different kind of academic adventure; one that’s even more life-changing. I’m trading in my thick text books for biographies …
Almost five months. I lived in South Africa for almost 5 months. I could hardly imagine so much fun and pain, so many learned lessons and new perspectives, so many breathtaking and tragic sights all could be crammed into a mere 150 days. Yet I experienced all that and more. The John Luke that stepped onto the …
Continue reading “Reflecting on my time in South Africa: A Changed Person – A Changed Perspective”
I wrote my last blog about a month ago concerning the protests taking place at the University of Cape Town and other universities across South Africa. When I wrote that blog, I was in the second week of not having classes and UCT being shutdown. Now as I sit here in a cafe writing, I …
On Thursday, September 15th, I attended a mass meeting led by student and worker protesters declaring that they would be shutting the University of Cape Town down in order to protest some of the stated injustices occurring at UCT. And that they did. Since that Thursday meeting, I have not had classes and UCT has …
Important question: Mountains or Water? Which one most fits you? Which region would you choose to live? This is one of the random icebreakers questions I liked to ask. My response in the past has usually been water. There is something about the sweet blue crashing waves that just makes my heart swell with peace and …
“South Africa is a country that is developed and developing.” This is something that my IES adviser, said during my first few days in Cape Town during my orientation – a time in which myself and other students learned more about Cape Town and South Africa. On the first day of orientation we explored Sea Point in …
Continue reading “South Africa is Developed and Developing…”
Last year, during the Hope College 201 5 Orientation, I helped move some incoming students into their residential halls, most of whom were freshmen. As I interacted with students and “people-watched” from afar, I saw many typical “freshmen” occurrences. I saw the awkward interactions of students meeting their roommates for the first time. I saw …
And just like that my summer has come to end and I am off to be a student in another country with a semester that is currently overcast with many unknowns. Since the moment when I gave my sister the bittersweet and final wave before going through security at O’Hare International airport, my emotions have …
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