Maddy's eventfully full week of introducing her family to Cape Town

Maddy & her sister with children from Eros School
where Maddy is completing her internship

This past week my family came to visit me here in Cape Town. We basically turned it into a family vacation and had a very eventful week! At first it was a little hard to adjust to having to worry about other people, as bad as that sounds. For the past 2 months, I have just had to worry about myself and what I wanted and needed to do. Now, with my family here, I was worrying about 5 people and wanted them to have the best experience ever so I stressed every detail of the busy itinerary. Though we had to make adjustments and didn’t get to everything I wanted them to see and do (that would be impossible with only one week) I know I had a great time sharing the experience with them and think and hope they had a great time experiencing things we couldn’t experience anywhere else in the world. We had a very busy week doing many touristy and local things. One of my favorite days actually was going on a field trip with my internship with my sister. My family came to visit my internship the day before and Sam, my supervisor invited my sister to come on the field trip and help out with and my sister, Lindsey, could not pass up a day with little kids. I was so excited to have Lindsey see what I do in my every day routine here and not just the fun exciting excursions. She got to see and help out with the kids I work with every day and I think she got a new appreciation for people working with kids with physical disabilities.

We did many other things as well such as a game drive, zip-lining through huge mountain ranges at crazy heights, surfing, a township tour, wine tour, and lots of hiking. The first day we hiked Table Mountain on the Skeleton Gorge route. This is one of the only things we did that I have not done yet and let’s just say it was a little longer than I was expecting. It was a beautiful hike though through all kinds of terrain and we had my brother there lightening the mood when people were ready to quit the hike. We also got to the top expecting to take the cable car down and enjoyed a nice drink and lunch at the top yet the cable car shut down because of wind so we had a nice windy walk back down. Having my family here for some reason really made me realize I’m only going to be experiencing this opportunity once and to really take it in as it’s happening. Overall it was a great week and definitely a trip to remember.