It's Official...

Well, it's official - I have finally taken my first ride on an airplane! Actually, make that three rides. It took three planes and approximately 20+ hours to make it Cape Town, South Africa. I arrived Monday morning at 11am, SA time (4am US time). Surprisingly, the jetlag wasn't too bad. I think I'm still trying to adjust to the fact I'm in South Africa. Part of me doesn't think it's real...

We spent the first day (Monday) touring the lower part of the University of Cape Town. It was absolutely beautiful despite the clouds and sunless sky. The beautiful Table Mountain can be seen throughout Cape Town and UCT is seated at the base of it with the campus running down the hill. Our Interstudy mentors, Tanishe and Richard, are super cool and definitely are able to give us the low down on the city and college life at UCT.

The rest of the afternoon was spent relaxing. I guess everyone was right when they said we'd have jetlag - I passed out for at least 2 hours and definitely could have slept more! We later met up with Christen, our teacher, and her husband Mark for dinner and then the rest of the group arrived. It was an early night for the girls - the boys are definite troopers going out to the bar after a flight like that!

Already, I can tell you this trip isn't going to be a typical vacation. As we traveled into the city from the airport, we drove past a township called Khayelitsha. Small shacks in rows packed tightly went on for miles. Over a million people occupy these homes, alone. As I walked into my 6-bedroom, 4-bathroom, fully furnished house I was going to be living in for the next 2 out of 3 weeks, I continued to flash back to the homes the people lived in in Khayelitsha. It's an eye opener which makes me hate myself for cringing when I think about the cockroach my roommate found in the bathroom as soon as we arrived. Sometimes we really have no idea how good we have it...