Arrival

Hey Everybody,

The first night is in the books.  After travelling for 25 hours and losing 8 to the time difference, I arrived with much of the group in Port Elizabeth 33 hours later worn out.  We were very excited, and the airport in PE had a stairway for us to walk off the plane.  The picture below is the plane as I was walking away.  It kind of made me feel like a rock star since I have never done that before.  Unfortunately, my luggage did not make the flight with me, so I was left with only my carry-on.  My bag did make it on the next flight, and was delivered to the flat this morning.

It was a somewhat surreal feeling driving from the airport to the flat last night.  At last, I am finally in South Africa thousands of miles from home.  Something that I have been planning for so long and it was a reality.  I did not have anything to unpack last night, but my excitement was enough to keep me going.  I had a nice Skype session with my mom for a bit last night at midnight here.  She was still at work.  My Skype name for anyone who would like to chat sometime is bobby.fish.5 . 

As for today, the roommates and I walked to a nearby grocery store/ mall and got some groceries.  Most everyone got up early today, so the jet-lag may not have completely set in yet.  Tonight will be a good indication of that.  We live in a nice part of town.  It is pretty commercialized, and there are quite a few nice cars that drive around.  There are of course some things that jump out right away like the kombi’s similar to taxis in the US.  They drive around yelling out the window with packed vans of people.  Stop lights are called robots.  I thought that was really weird.  The thing that has been the most eye-popping is the amount of protection and security for the houses.  There are electric barb wire fencing on most of the apartments and houses.  They at least have fences with pointed arrows at the top.

This evening will be more getting familiar with the city.  The South African Rand is the currency, and the exchange rate is about $7.  All of the prices are way higher because of that, and I was shocked with some of the prices at first until I thought about it.  I had meal for lunch for about R 37 about 5 plus dollars or so, a good deal for a sit down place.  Tomorrow we head to bush camp for the weekend with all the international students at NMMU.  I am really looking forward to this as we will be camping and being able to really enjoy some different views of Africa.

Thanks for reading.

Cheers,

Bobby