Tourists

My internship starts soon! On Tuesday, in fact. Really excited to have an opportunity to be useful. Never wanted to be one of those university students who goes abroad and comes back and says something hollowly dramatic like, "They gave me so much more than I could ever give them!" If I leave Cape Town having given back less than I received, it won't be from lack of intense effort. I'm here for a reason, and it's not just so I can feel good about myself. I have skills and abilities that should be of use to someone. No effort will be spared in making that happen.

I'm a bit nervous about the internship, but not much. There's one thing, however, that actually frightens me about the next eight weeks: being a tourist. I'm terrified of group tours and group photos and tourist hot-spots and t-shirts with stereotypical touristy landmarks printed on them and everything else that goes with being a tourist. It turns your adventure into some quasi-authentic experience. It's like traveling and seeing everything through a camera lens instead of seeing through your own eyes. You may as well not even be there.

I was walking through a museum the other day and I realized how many photos I was taking. My "photography" (the quotation marks denote my amateurism) was actually disrupting my visit to the museum. Instead of taking the time to read and learn, I was so concerned about photographing everything. The drive to document every artifact was taking away from the actual experience. So I'm making a rule for the coming two months: when out and about, I'm not allowed to take more than one photo per 10-minute span. Some pictures are fine. It's something to show your family and look back at down the road. But too many photos is bad news, so I'm really going to be strict about that rule. It may just help me avoid becoming a tourist.