FINALLY

WOW. what. a. beginning. i apologize now if i leave out some details. it has been a crazy past few days and this has been my first chance to do anything remotely close to posting on the blog so it is all jumbled together in my mind. i know my adoring fans have had their hopes crushed logging in again and again only to find that one dinky post from joburg. i will hopefully never leave you feeling so empty ever again. 

travel…

so lets just say it was a looong day+ of traveling. first, jetblue had the longest line i’d ever seen thanks to the 1000 ft of snow that postponed many a traveler. we finally made it to the front and the machine that gives the bags their tracking numbers is broken so it had to be done manually (which will come into play later).  our flight to new york was a little delayed but fine. we get to the gate of our next flight (the big one) and upon rechecking in discover that jetblue gave me 4 bags and kate 0.  so they attempted to sort that out as we waited an extra 30 minutes as this flight was casually delayed as well. the next 15 hours i was in a stupor thanks to the nyquil that unfortunately only made me sleepy and failed to knock me out. that flight however seemed not as long as it should have felt, most likely because i knew i was flying into AFRICA. now, this is where the “fun” begins. we land and have to go recollect our bags and go through customs, which turned out to be moving our bags from one conveyer belt to another one farther away. the point? no clue. not a single bag was opened. dumb. anyway my two bags are literally the first two off the belt and im feelin good. one of kates isn’t far behind…and that was it. the other one never showed. we stood there for probably half an hour (mind you our flight to port elizabeth is currently boarding at this time). we talked to baggage people to let them know about the missing bag and rushed to load the bags that we did have on the next belt. by the time we got there the gate had closed because our flight was leaving in 5 minutes.  they said we might be able to make it. i knew 100% we were not making it. they said run. what did we do? well kate just took off running and i then was left to chase her.  i happened to be in jeggings (def recommend for traveling) and boots and a long sweater. and i have more carryon luggage than her so i was unable to run up the stairs. this was probably the BIGGEST joke moment of my life. i knew we weren’t making the plane. i knew. why did i keep running? the world will never know. well we get to security and go through (didn’t have to take off shoes or empty water bottlesßwe didn’t know this at the time) only to find out that yes, in fact, the plane had already left.  awesome. we were sent back to get tickets for the next flight. those who saw my first reactions might have thought i was about to die or break down or just give up. that lasted all of .2 seconds. i had this strange feeling of entitlement rush over me and i was not going to stop until i had that ticket in my had. we were first told that we would have to buy a new ticket. we were then told that there were no more seats on any of the flights to pe. i then argued the point (mom you would have been so proud) that we missed the flight for two reasons that we had no control over: both our previous flights were delayed, giving us minimal time to catch our third; and kates bag was lost. it worked. we got two seats on the next flight out, which happened to be with another bc girl in our program. i got to vidchat with my mama and relax for a bit, which was actually a very nice break from flying. the pe flight was short but i experienced the worst turbulence i have ever encountered. im talking the rollercoaster-feelin, frame-shakin, im-gonna-end-up-on-a-magical-island-and-never-find-out-why-its-magical type of turbulence.  but the views were beautiful.  it was really interesting to pass over these amazing estates with pools and trees and land and then to notice the houses getting smaller and closer together and finally see slum dog millionaire-status shacks, just row after row after row.  after landing we went to collect our bags and…drumroll please…kates bag beat us there. missed flight for nothing. oh well, i think it actually worked out for the best. we then took a bus to rhodes with a ton of students from zimbabwe.  once we got to the school and unloaded our bags, the staff person took one look at us and told us we could register tomorrow because we were obviously hot tired messes.

that was ridiculously long. i will post more about rhodes itself and what its like being here tomorrow!