Becoming the Surfer I always wished I could be.

Something about Cape Town has encouraged me to seek out opportunities that I have always wondered about but have never had the courage to actually pursue. Maybe it’s the opportunities that are so easily accessible all over the city, or maybe it is the fact that I have known from the beginning how little time I really have to spend here, but I’ve found myself really engaging with new things while here in South Africa. More specifically, I have gone surfing twice a week for the past six weeks, have joined the gymnastics club at UCT, and have met with a fluent French speaker to practice my own French several times in the past week.

It may not seem like such a huge deal, but trying something new like surfing, or speaking French, or gymnastics at an age already so far past the normal beginning age has definitely been intimidating. It’s certainly difficult sometimes to see little kids surfing more easily than me, or having difficulty completing the most basic gymnastics moves when someone ten years younger than me has no trouble, or stumbling over basic French grammar when I have taken a year and a half’s worth of courses on it already. But at the same time, it has been so satisfying to be able to stand up on the surfboard and surf into a wave, to complete gymnastics moves that I was terrified of only a few weeks ago, and to no longer have such a mental block about speaking French with French speakers. It’s been the type of feeling that is rewarding because I have worked so hard and started from a point so far behind. And to be able to say that I can surf, I can speak French, and I do gymnastics has been an incredibly cool feeling.

I think one of the most interesting things I have learned while studying abroad in South Africa is that I am stronger and more adventurous than I ever thought. I don’t know why it took a place so foreign from home to encourage me to try things I have always wanted to try, but regardless of the reasoning I am grateful. I have plans already to continue these activities when I get home, and though it will certainly be difficult to go surfing when I no longer live forty-five minutes from the beach, I am confident that I will find a way to get there. I’ve had a lot of cool experiences while living in Cape Town, but, strangely enough, the coolest thing I’ve experienced here has been seeing the small changes in myself.

When I get home, I’m certainly not going to be even close to the same person that I was when I left.