Well, I have finally arrived in South Africa (on Tuesday, actually). I managed to get some intermittent sleep on the 11-hour flight from London (thank goodness) and arrived in Cape Town at 10:00 AM (GMT). My first glimpse of Africa was the small area of landscape that showed through a single plane window (minus the area which was kept from my view by the wing of the plane). There, outside the window, were the foothills of Table Mountain, dotted with its typically African shrubbery. I suspect it will be an excellent hiking destination, and I believe we’ll conquer this task sooner than later. We have to wait for the perfect conditions to make the two hour trek up the mountain. The wind has been horrendous. The weather has been gorgeous – hot and breezy during the day and cool during the nights. The locals say it is quite cold for this time of year.

[Here I pause to offer some pieces of advice to other infrequent travelers like myself, should you dare to venture on your own: 1) Always, always, always call the airport on the day of your flight to make sure that your flight is on time, regardless of how nice the weather is. 2) When planning flight routes, allow for at least two hours between connecting flights. 3) Do not volunteer to take a window seat on flights lasting longer than six hours.]

Upon arriving at the airport I was greeted by an enthusiastic group of individuals working with the CIEE program, as well as some of the other students who I will be studying with for the next nearly five months. It was comforting to know that everything was well-planned upon our arrival. Also that morning we had our first taste of the reliability of the transportation here in South Africa. The minibus that was supposed to transport us from the airport to the hotel had broken down. So we went back inside and got our hands on some plastic instruments, called voovoozelas (sp?). Interesting story behind these instruments (you can Google it). On Saturday we will take them with us to the opening game at the World Cup stadium in Cape Town.
After leaving the airport and checking into the hotel on Tuesday, we went to "the mall" on the water front. Here we exchanged our money for the local currency, the rand (ZAR). [Note: It is better to exchange US dollars (USD) than traveler’s cheques; you are charged a fee to cash the cheques.] Then we had a bite to eat, and I regret to admit that my first meal in South Africa was none other than Subway. I felt this decision was legitimized by the fact that my system was still recovering from past day-and-a-half of traveling and airplane meals. Once my body better adjusts, perhaps I will give the ostrich meat a try, but right now is just too soon. For dinner we went to the Fish Market restaurant where I enjoyed fried calamari and the best lightest, richest hot chocolate I’ve ever tasted.

I have purchased a cell phone here. I have no idea how much it costs in USD, but I am told it is the best plan I will be able to get, so I trust this advice. I am tempted to keep a calculator on my person at all times for when I need to know conversions, but I know this is ridiculous and that I should instead work on my estimation skills. I must also familiarize myself with the Centigrade scale, because that conversion (˚C + 17.98 x 1.8) is just too complicated for my brain to handle.