CIEE Orientation day 2

Today, we had another day of orientation to talk about housing placement. Out of the 156 of us in the program, only 40 people chose to stay in the dorms (2 CIEE studnets and 2 african students in each flat), and only 8 students chose to do homestays. Myself and another girl are the only ones living in townships. ONLY 8!! That means almost 100 american students chose to live with other american students. Chances are, those 100 students are also taking african classes at UCT which means little to no africans will be in those courses. Tonight we went to a place on Long street called Zula. Long Street is basically where all the hip clubs are and cool bars. No one gets carded, and no one really cares. Drinking age here is 18, but kids can go into bars with their parents, unlike america.
I met this nice man named Steve whom works at UCT and is training to be an RA for one of the dorms. I asked him lots of questions about South Africa. He was also surprised that not many people are doing home stays. We talked a lot about how ignorant Americans can be and that's how SA's label us. Words of advice: if you are going to SA ever, do your research on the country before hand. It will help so much when you get here! We also talked about how many of the students chose to live in houses with other americans because they want to feel comfortable. Living in a foreign country can be uncomfortable at first, but once you get used to the country, it becomes comfortable. I decided that I feel bad for those people. They will go to class every day learning about african cultures and the history of south africa with all americans in their classes. Then they will go home to more americans, then they will go out and party with americans. I talked with my program coordinator and we both agree that we are disappointed in the majority of the students on this trip. People I've talked to only came to SA for certain reasons. either A: they needed to study abroad for their major and didn't want to take a foreign language, or B: They had a friend who came here and wanted a change of scenery. One girl said she only wanted to visit her cousin. This is very frustrating because I feel like I came here for good reasons, and I'm going to go home with an amazing story, while the others will go home with cool places to hang out.