Cape Town: By the Numbers

It's no secret that I am a language person. I am passionate about the power of a well-constructed sentence, and I thrive on the feeling of finding the perfect word(s) to describe something intangible. Travel provides endless opportunities to explore words... in crafting descriptive messages sent home, in deciphering location-specific phrases and slang words, in discussing tough concepts with people of a different perspective.

There's another side of traveling that doesn't come so naturally for me. No matter where in the world I find myself, I'm inevitably left with a period of time hallmarked by the overwhelming feeling of numbers and conversion formulas swimming around my mind. With that being said, I thought I'd take a different approach for this update. My adjustment to Cape Town... by the numbers.

Dear USA (and I really do mean dear),
Why must you make it so complicated?
Yours truly, International Travelers

One of the most obvious adjustments to a new country is the currency. The unit of currency here is the South African Rand (ZAR). Like most foreign currency, it's much more brilliantly designed, boasting illustrations of the "Big 5" animals of South Africa and, on the recently issued editions, Nelson Mandela's portrait. As I write this, the exchange rate sits at 9.78 ZAR per 1 United States Dollar, meaning that my R17 coffee costs $1.74 and my R30 taxi ride from Long Street costs $3.07. This is especially overwhelming when you're trying to budget according to a spendable amount of US dollars, but all of your expenses are in rand.

Currency: South African Rand

Checking the weather forecast is still incredibly puzzling to me. When you've grown up with the Fahrenheit system of temperature, it's really hard to decipher the appropriate attire for 17 degrees Celcius. I, of course, learned the conversion for Celcius to Fahrenheit at various points of my education, but that doesn't mean I can calculate the conversion quickly. I usually end up typing it into my Google search bar to find that 17 degrees Celcius is (a more understandable) 62.6 degrees Fahrenheit. As my friend Michael Mizrahi (@miz) tweeted not too long ago, "Wanted: a weather app called 'Yesterday' that tells me if the weather will be warmer or colder than yesterday. That's all I need."

Weather forecast... in Celcius.

Let's not forget the whirlwind of confusion that ensues when an American, raised on the customary (imperial) units of the USA, gets dropped into a world of metric measurements. Speed limit signs, recipes, and nutrition labels all become a blur. What does it mean if koeksisters have 1879 kJ of "energy" per 100 g? Oh, right... 447 CALORIES. How fast is 120 km per hour? Of course... 74.5 mi per hour. And how much of a 750 ml bottle of vinegar should I use for 2 cups? Let me set up a casual algebra problem. Aha... two-thirds of it.

Nutritional information for koeksisters,
a super sweet South African treat

A South African speed limit sign

Needless to say, it's easy to become overwhelmed by the conversions. I often find myself laughing, though, because it's almost as all my math and science teachers of the past are mocking me. Those unrealistic word problems that force you to construct and sort out an equation to solve for x? Not so unrealistic anymore. All those teachers needed to do was wag a finger in my face and say, "You'll need this when you travel abroad someday!"