The Day of Travel

Blog #1

I have arrived! After an full day of travel (leaving at 1 PM on Friday and arriving at 3:45 PM (St. Paul Time (lotta parenthesis)) Saturday) I am finally here in my house in Cape Town. The day did not go as smoothly as planned though; there were a few minor hiccups. After breezing through my first flight to Atlanta, I took a 16 hour flight from there to Johannesburg. I watched four movies total on the flight: Michael Jackson’s “This Is It”, “9”, “Paranormal Activity,” and “The Informant,” so it was a good eclectic mix of entertainment.

I got to Johannesburg easily enough, but when I landed I only had about an hour to connect to my flight to Cape Town. Apparently in South Africa this is not long enough, because there was literally one woman working at the desk for re-checking in my baggage. I waited in line for a while, completely oblivious to the time, because apparently they haven’t discovered wall clocks here either. Finally, I asked a worker there what time it was and what I should do to speed through and catch my flight. He told me I had about 9 minutes to make the flight, which was clearly not enough time (with my luggage still unchecked) but he tried anyway. He took my bag and brought me to the front of the line, budging a bunch of people. When we got up there they pretty much just said, “Look, your flight hasn’t taken off, but you aren’t going to catch it, we will put you on the next one.” So really, this “nice” worker guy was unable to help me at all. But he still asked for “20.” I took this to mean 20 Rand (about $3) so I didn’t mind and gave him the money. But then he insisted, “No, $20!” He had literally helped me for maybe five total minutes, and I missed my flight anyway, so I would have been in the same position with or without him. But he insisted on his $20 anyway, so I gave him some more Rand, totaling about $15. I felt a little swindled, but I was in decent spirits anyway, as I had just had my first real South African experience. They got me on a flight leaving for Cape Town at 8:45, so I had a couple hours to wait at the gate (enough time to test my new found freedom at an airport pub…)

            On the flight to Cape Town I sat next to a very nice German man named Chris, who has lived in Cape Town for five years with his African wife. He explained how he was a born again Christian, and how Christ has helped him to live an enlightened life free of his old habits of smoking and drinking. I talked to him at length about my views as a biology major/ somewhat agnostic, half-Jewish boy from St. Paul. I tried to explain evolution and carbon-dating and other scientific jibberijoo to him, while he tried to explain how all of that can be disproven by the Bible and by Christianity. It was a very cordial talk, with no hostility or coercion, but we had very different views to say the least. I think I ended up on the winning side of the argument, but he might disagree. 

            Once in Cape Town I was happy to see that Lynne and Kate, the women who were sent to pick me up, were still waiting there for me, about three hours after the  expected arrival time of my first flight (which if you remember from earlier, I had missed…) While that was good news, the bad news is my baggage somehow did not quite make it from Johannesburg to Cape Town, which was pretty annoying, oh well. Lynne and Kate brought me to my house, arriving last night at about 11:30 Cape Town time. I had very little expectations for my housing before arriving, but when I got here I was shocked, and very impressed to find a colonial-English-magistrate-type mansion… There was a large iron gate, with a guard posted in a little guard hut type thing, a portcullis of sorts that we had to open to get to the main wooden door, a swimming pool, a veranda (whatever that is), satellite TV (little known fact: a lot of English magistrates were ahead of there time, and in fact had satellite TV), a bathroom in my bedroom, yadda yadda yadda, it is awesome and I’m living the good life. I feel like this house could definitely be used for “Real World: Cape Town,” and that is kind of what I expect for the upcoming semester (I’m going to win every challenge, these clowns don’t stand a chance.)

            This morning at about 5:30 some tropical sounding birds started chirping extremely loudly outside my window, and my internal clock is still all messed up from yesterday’s travels, so I couldn’t go back to sleep, and that is where I’m at right now, typing at my desk at about 7:30 local time. It was an eventful first day, I’m glad the travel is over; now the adventure actually starts. I’ll try and blog again soon, but I may be on a week long trip somewhere at some point in the next two weeks, so don’t necessarily wait by your computer tapping your foot for the next one. Over and out from Cape Town