Landed in Africa! (Don't be fooled by the '!'... This post is quite monotonous)

The fifteen-hour plane was not too bad.

Before the flight, I had resigned to the fact that I would have to forgo my usual movie and Ambien filled plane ride in order to do one of our assigned readings. The book was 'Beyond the Miracle" by Allister Sparks. I was quite skeptical of it, mostly because one of the other readings had been an unbelievably dry and boring history of South Africa. Fearing the same mind-numbingly insipid experience, there is a tiny possibility that I procrastinated starting the book (a hitherto unheard of thing for me to do!).

But there was an unforeseen roadblock. The Lion King was one of the available movies! It seemed ridiculous to pass up such an excellent piece of cinema, so I ignored my reading and watched 88 minutes of Disney bliss.

Once the movie was over, I realized my eye's were tired, and decided to take a quick power-nap.

When I woke up, four hours later, I turned my attention to Sparks. It turned out to be really interesting read with a large focus on journalism in South Africa, so my fears proved to be baseless.

After I was done, there were only four hours left of the journey. I really wanted to take a nap because we were going to be getting in at 8 AM local time and I didn't want to spend the rest of the day in a sleepless daze. But I couldn't fall asleep, so with three and a half hour left, I popped an Ambien. I watched X-Men as the drug started to kick in, then got so engrossed in the movie that I couldn't fall asleep.

Once the plane landed, the six of us who were part of the Durban program spent some time in limbo because we had received an email giving us directions meant for the Cape Town program students. Once we realized what was going on, we migrated to a KFC (which will be announcing it's world domination any day now), and settled down into some cushy couches, expecting to be there for the next seven hours. The whole situation was quite frustrating, but on the bright side, the Joberg airport seemed to have a huge shopping mall attached to it, for anyone in the group who was not planning to sleep (my personal goal). Fifteen minutes later we got a call from the lodge owner, who we had contacted earlier, who was dealing with the Cape Town students. He had taken pity on our situation and invited us to come stay at his establishment for the afternoon.

He very kindly drove us to his lodge, which was only a few minutes away from the airport and we settled down there, mostly relaxing in the sun out in the spacious back-yard.

A few more people tricked in over the next few hours, and we met some of the Cape Town SIT students.

After several hours, one of our group leaders arrived to take the Durban students to our accommodations for the weekend. As he drove us over, he played some rap music (I think in Zulu... ?) which I really enjoyed, and I have resolved to learn more about.

We got the lodge that we were saying at, which is right on the outskirts of the city and found gazelle and ostriches in the backyard. I spent the late afternoon reading the fourth installment of Eragon and taking occasional naps.

Mostly everyone arrived by 7 PM and we went to dinner, which was a simple and tasty salad and pasta affair. Then finally we went to a conference room in the lodge were we did basic introductions and got a few informational packets.
I woke up at 4 this morning (yeah jetlag!) and wrote this, so if you actually read this entire entry, I am really sorry. I know it’s quite boring and monotonous, but I promise to be way more interesting once I get a bit more involved in the program. We’re going to the apartheid museum today, which sounded really cool after the brief introduction they gave us last night!