“This is the view of Lion’s Head from a hike up Table Mountain,” Rose Caplan wrote when sending pictures back to Boston.
Caplan is currently on co-op in Cape Town, South Africa. There the environmental science major is working in the Biodiversity Management Branch for the City of Cape Town.
Though there to work, Caplan is soaking up as much of the region as she can.
“I’ve been making the most of being in the city by hiking, going to the beach, and hanging out in the many restaurants and cafes in the neighborhood that are full of other students and volunteers from all over the world,” she writes. She’s living with 16 roommates in what she terms “the funky neighborhood of Observatory.”
But it’s not just fun and games. There is work.
“Through my co-op I’ve been able to see many of the reserves in and around Cape Town,” writes Caplan. She adds she’s been able to participate in unique projects “like an ecological burn at Tygerberg Nature Reserve and vegetation surveys for a project meant to reintroduce eland (a species of locally extirpated antelope) to some reserves.”
Then there are the days when a co-worker brings in mongoose and it falls asleep in your lap. Yes, that happened to Rose Caplan, too.
See more stories from our co-op students in our album on Facebook.
Learn more about co-op in the College of Science.
Photo courtesy Rose Caplan.
