Hello all!
I’ve been in Cape Town for almost three weeks now and it’s high time I start to share some of my experiences. My posts thus far have been for the official UConn Cape Town blog- so they’ve been more formal, thought-out, etc. This post will be none of those things! So read on and check out the accompanying pictures!
Jan 13th
My lovely mother drove me to JFK nice and early for my fifteen-hour flight to Johannesburg. I feel like I said goodbye twelve times and kept looking back over my shoulder as I entered the terminal. I realized I’ve never been this far away from home for this amount of time, ever, period. Even at UConn home is only 90 minutes away (via Ragnhild).
I was sitting next to Tina, one of my study abroad mates. We got along amiably; though I think we were both pretty strategic about expending energy over niceties. It was going to be a long-ass flight. Since then, it’s been my pleasure to get to know Tina, who revealed herself to be one hell of a sharp wit and really good company. On board the flight, they had us shut all the windows only about 2-3 hours into the trip, when it was still blazingly sunny outside. I think I fell asleep.
Imagine my surprise when, about 5 hours into the trip, I wake up from my nap and open the window to see that it’s dark, inky black outside. Here it is 3pm Connecticut time, we’ve only been on the plane a few hours, and outside the plane we’re flying over what looks like a realm of perpetual darkness and clouds, way up somewhere over the Atlantic. It was very surreal. Watched the movie Elysium. Found it pretty meh. Wrote some. Then went back to sleep for a short amount of time.
Jan 14th
Imagine my surprise again when I wake up at like 10pm Connecticut time and I realize it’s blazingly bright and sunny outside the window. Thus followed a prolonged period of time that registered as one of the most bizarre mindfucks I’ve ever experienced. Breakfast was served around 12am Connecticut time, around two hours before we were set to land. Now, though I said I slept a few times, it probably didn’t amount to more than four hours total. It was a very weird midnight breakfast- though there were complete meals!
We touched down and Joburg and despite racing to the customs area with Tina, we found ourselves at the back of a giant line. Even though we ended up jumping to the front, we missed our connection to Cape Town by a long shot. Like, we had about 30 minutes from the time we disembarked the first flight- and we still would have had to go through customs, pick up our luggage at the baggage claim, negotiate our way to the domestic terminal, re-check our baggage, go through security again, and reach our gate. No way in hell.
The flight to Cape Town was brief and pleasant. I slept for most of it- and guess what- alcohol is complementary on South African Airways flights! What hospitality. We arrived in Cape Town like champions, albeit physically disgusting, disoriented, sleep deprived, and profoundly awkward. We met the wonderful team of Marita, Vernon, Ben and Liz, and then went out for our first group dinner at Chai Yo, a thai restaurant in Mowbray. Unlike in the states, meals in South Africa are leisurely, highly social affairs. We probably spent around 3 hours at dinner, and I had at least that many glasses of wine (at R25 each, or $2.50).
One of my funniest early memories occurred at this restaurant. The truth is, of the 26 people on this trip, 21 are beautiful young American women, and the remaining 5 are semi-beautiful but largely irrelevant American dudes. The first repercussions of this were on display at the restaurant. We all dined together in a private room on the 2nd floor of the restaurant, accessible by a narrow staircase. When we left the restaurant, all 26 participants plus 4 staff exited single file down this staircase and out through the restaurant proper. I was perhaps the 6th person out of the stairwell, when I passed a white family sitting at a nearby table and heard someone remark, “There was a pretty large party up there, hmm?” or something like that. Cue 19 beautiful women in sundresses walking one-by-one out of the stairwell, forming what must have been a hell of an impressive line. I wish I could have seen the looks on those folks’ faces. I guess we’re pretty unmistakable.
What David Does 