Wow...I don't even know how to start about my journey to and thus far in Cape Town. So much has happened in the past few days that it seems like such a blur.
Group 3 began our journey in Minneapolis on December 27th, our flight left at 7:35 and all 7 of us girls knew that we had long travel time before we would arrive at our destination in Cape Town. I have personally never flown before so I knew that this experience would be a little different for me than others. However, we all stuck together and ended up at our destination in the end. Some issues we encountered were that we had a connecting flight from Minneapolis to Chicago. We land in Chicago on time, but we could not land because there were no open locations. With a short layover we were forced to run to our next flight to London, and ended up getting there right in time. Impressed with our running ability, we were ready for the 8 hour flight to from Chicago to London. Needless to say that 8 hour flight turned into a 12 hour flight due to us having to turn around after leaving Chicago because of a medical emergency on board. Exhausted from that when landing in London we had to maneuver our way through Heathrow, which was quite the hassle as most of us were already exhausted and the airport is very larger. Our 7.5 layover in London turned into 40 min. that we had to look forward to another 12 hour flight to Cape Town. Regardless, it was all worth it!
As interstudy picked us up from the airport and we were transported to our home for the next 3 weeks. The scenery here is something that can't be described. It is extremely beautiful and is certain to take anyone's breathe away. Our house is located right next to Devil's Peak, so that is a view to look forward to seeing every morning. Interstudy provided us with a bbq the day of our arrival, and they treated us right. After eating airplane food for two straight days I would have eaten anything, but we had delicious foods that filled me up. We then went out and got a brief tour of the University of Cape Town, after that we went grocery shopping. That was an experience; I don't like grocery shopping in the states. I'm very much an eat and go kind of girl so grocery shopping in Cape Town was not my forte. Needless to say eating out is looking good to me.
Today we went down and explored the city we live in a little more. I got my American dollars converted into rands, and made my first purchase by buying a strawberry smoothie. The infrastructure here in Cape Town is very similar to that in the States, it was something I was very unaware of and surprised. We then had our first train experience as we went to Muizenberg to see the Indian Ocean and explore the city. On our ride there we experienced a real life jazz band that would play on throughout the train for money. Let me say they played some really good music. The Indian Ocean was beautiful and very cold. I wore a tank top and shorts and froze my butt off. We tried to go into stores, but most were closed due to the New Year, and just the fact that most stores close after 5. I think we should covert this way of working into the United States right?
This experience thus far has been absolutely amazing. I couldn't have asked for a better group of people to go through this with. I am looking forward to the beginning of our coursework, and volunteering my time at the orphanage.
