First Week In My New Home!

I’ve only been here less than a week? This place is already starting to feel like home. I’m sure there will still be a lot of adjustments and hard times, but it’s a good start. This week has been orientation for us interns and we’ve packed a lot into each day so far.

First, our office is awesome. The physical building is such a cool space, but everyone in it is even cooler. For example, upon arrival the whole office gathered in the common space and we had a Rock, Paper, Scissors tournament. Each day we have had presentations from all the departments so that we can get to know even more about GRS… I still have some studying to do though. Last night I felt like I was in college, falling asleep in bed while reading documents and taking notes. I’m a Business Development Intern, the first they’ve ever had, and am really excited about my position. I have a TON to learn, but my boss is great and it’s a brand new department so we can really form this whole new section of GRS. It also involves working a lot with the Communication and Marketing team, which is a little more up my alley. For lunch we’ve done walking tours and pick new places to sit and eat and a lot of the staff comes along. The very top people in the company even make and effort to come hang out with us lowly interns. Also, nobody has their own office so everyone is really accessible and willing to answer questions.

Artsy shot of the decals on the windows

Conference room

GRS Headquarters

I’m obviously excited about work, but life outside work has been good too. I have four roommates (Ali, Kat, Betsey and Jeff), and we live in Gordon House. Kloof house is where the other interns live and is much fancier and has and INCREDIBLE view from their crazy deck… but ours is much homier. And we have a cool garage? We also have Roxy’s down the street, which is a great little bar with 10R drinks aka $1 beers. It’s our new spot.

Kloof house deck with view of Table Mountain

Roommates at Roxy's our first night in Cape Town

Home sweet home

Our street

For one of our orientation days we got to climb Lion’s Head, one of the many mountains in Cape Town. Needless to say, the views were incredible. I’m definitely going to have to do it a few times this year. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Friday of this week was a national holiday, Women’s Day, so we had the day off work. GRS was hosting a HCT (HIV Counseling and Testing) clinic out in Khayelitsha (a huge and very poor township) so almost all of us decided to go out and see it. In honor of Women’s Day, this HCT consisted of soccer and netball tournaments only for girls. In order to encourage testing at the event, teams get three points for winning a game and then each team member that gets tested gets an additional two points for their team. Almost all the teams got tested plus their coaches and people that just came to watch too. I helped take some teams to get tested and you could see how nervous and scared many of the girls were. It was a pretty incredible event. It was also finally sunny so everyone was in a good mood and there was lots of singing and dancing involved.

FIFA Football for Hope Center (FIFA promised to build 20 football fields in different cities for the World Cup, GRS is in charge of this one and two others)

Trophies for the winners

Girls playing netball

Where people got tested

The winners of the tournament

Spontaneous dance circle

Last night we had our first family dinner over at Kloof and made our way out on the town. Then this morning some of us went to our first Old Biscuit Mill market… it’s my new favorite thing. It is this outdoor/indoor market with tons of amazing food, drinks, and clothes/jewelry. I loved it. I think it will take me all year to try everything out, but that’s something I’m more than willing to do.

For those of you wondering about Cape Town, it’s an awesome city. It rained our first couple days here, (it is winter after all) so I’m just starting to realize how beautiful it is. It’s right on the water and is surrounded by mountains. It kinda has a European feel, but a lot of people have also compared it to San Francisco. It is definitely a city of extremes as well. There is so much wealth in places yet unbelievable poverty in others. Just driving 20 min away feels like a whole new city. Not only is there contrasting wealth, but there are different languages (English, Xhosa and Afrikaans), multiple different types of outlets (this drives me crazy… why do I have to use converters with things I buy here?), contrasting architecture, and the mixture of modernity and more traditional “Africa” culture. It seems like it’s a city, or maybe even country, trying to find its identity. The food here is great so far though and they love avocados, gouda cheese and coffee… all my favorite things! There is also a surprising prevalence of burgers, it seems like every menu has a burger on it… then again I’ve only been to like 4 restaurants so that might be a bit of a generalization. Vegetarian options are easy to come by as well so I'm a happy lady. This week I'm hoping to explore the city a bit more so hopefully I'll have some more insight for you all.

Missing everyone and hope things are good where ever in the world you are! Download Viber so we can text, and come visit!!!

Sharp sharp