Experience.

Our first full day in Joburg was full and exciting. This afternoon, we met up with a few LEAP students and student alumni, as well as Rebecca and Mapuleng, and took a walking tour all over the Alexandra township. We laughed and chatted, talked about poverty across our countries, and exchanged bits of cultural information here and there. We visited many of the heritage sites in Alex, like churches that held ANC meetings long ago and Nelson Mandela's one room home that he lived in while working in law offices when he first arrived here.

We also went to one of their social responsibility sites, which is a home for the elderly, and actually went inside and sang a song and danced. I think social responsibility is such a wonderful thing that they do here, and I hope that we can do something like it when I come back. It makes so much more sense to craft relationships with organizations, and have students elect for which ones they want. The way we do community service at my school is such a token gesture.

Alex felt very different from Langa. There were parts that were well-off, and parts that weren't. Many brick houses, some dirt roads, lots of fences with barbed wire or broken glass to deter people with poor intentions.

At the end of our tour, we went to Joe's Butcher and that's where the real experience began! It was outdoor grilled meat, and pap (mealies). We grilled one another on cultural differences, and explained that the United States is not a whole lot like it is in the movies (as Piladi would say, "sensualism"!).