22nd/23rd January 2012

Today is the day I head off to the beautiful country of South Africa. My parents dropped me off at Logan Airport in Boston around 3pm; there I met David, Meghan, and Melissa. We chatted excitedly and watched the Patriots game before boarding our flight to Amsterdam. Our flight was about 6 ½ hours but it seemed a lot longer, because I could not fall asleep.

When we arrived at Amsterdam we were walking in a row and some German guy yelled at us for not walking in a straight line and that we took up space. When we got to our next terminal, all of the rest of the AIFS students were waiting. It was extremely overwhelming at first, because you were trying to get to know everyone’s names, and it seems that people who flew out of the same airport had already formed good bonds with one another. After introductions we boarded our flight from Amsterdam to Cape Town, and this flight was almost 12 hours! But, surprisingly it went a lot faster because I slept for about 7-8 hours of the 12, and I was sitting next to a Dutch couple who were very affectionate to each other, which was a little uncomfortable. The funny thing with them is that the one time I got up to use the bathroom they scrambled to go to the bathroom too, because they were either too timid or too polite to awake me to ask for me to let them through.            

So anyways we arrived at South Africa at about 10:30pm and it was very nice, about 70̊ F which was a welcome surprise. We quickly departed for Stellenbosch and on the bus ride; I could see the hundreds of shantytowns that lay amongst the Cape Town outlying area. Also, there were many vineyards lit up on the drive down, because Stellenbosch is huge for their wine lands. We arrived at Concordia where Hestea De Wet, our RD, introduced us to our rooms, which are very cozy, we each have our own bedroom and bathroom, and we share a kitchen/common room area. My roomies are Dara, Melissa, and Lindsay and they’re all very sweet! We also got phone minutes to be able to contact our parent with news of our arrival, which made me very teary, because I am a little homesick which isn’t surprising. Then, we all unpacked and showered, because I was really stinky from being on an airplane for about 24 hours in the same wardrobe. Then, we went to bed as soon as we could, because we had to get up bright and early for the first day of orientation that awaited us!