In the Market near St. Georges Mall, uploaded by amybaeder.

Well….here I am in South Africa! When I first arrived, I thought I could be anywhere. The main difference I noticed when I got here were that people drove on the left, but other than that, there were ads for Nikon, Audis, and other familiar brands. We’re staying in a Holiday Inn and there are KFCs and Haagen Daas stands around. I felt like I was being cheated out of a true South Africa at first. As time has gone on, I have felt less like this, and our professor says that when we get to Port Elizabeth, it will feel even more like we’re in a different city in a different country on a different continent.

One fantastic aspect about Capetown is its diversity. We had dinner at a cozy Indian restaurant, toured a 200-year old English and Muslim Malay neighborhood (Bo-Kaap), and heard Xhosa being spoken behind us at a stoplight. Today we’re touring the District 6 museum, which chronicles the history of District 6. Here’s an excerpt from their website, which explains it better than I can:
“District Six was named the Sixth Municipal District of Cape Town in 1867. Originally established as a mixed community of freed slaves, merchants, artisans, labourers and immigrants, District Six was a vibrant centre with close links to the city and the port. By the beginning of the twentieth century, however, the history of removals and marginalisation had begun.

The first to be ‘resettled’ were black South Africans, forcibly displaced from the District in 1901. As the more prosperous moved away to the suburbs, the area became the neglected ward of Cape Town.
In 1966, it was declared a white area under the Group areas Act of 1950, and by 1982, the life of the community was over. 60 000 people were forcibly removed to barren outlying areas aptly known as the Cape Flats, and their houses in District Six were flattened by bulldozers.

The District Six Museum, established in December 1994, works with the memories of these experiences and with the history of forced removals more generally.”

For more photos, visit my Flickr page .