I’ve arrived!

Well, we’ve finally made it to our home base after a loooooong two days of flying. I’ll start at the beginning. Our first flight to London was not so bad. It was fairly smooth but very uncomfortable. We had our own personal tvs which was great but I wasn’t able to sleep at all. Time change stole 5 hours from us and just as I was falling asleep, the lights came on and they started serving breakfast! Anyway, we landed in London safely.

We spent the day in London yesterday, though neither Lyndsay nor I slept at all on the plane the night before. We had some issues at the airport because Northwest did NOT take care of our luggage and pass it on to the next carrier as we had been told. Instead, by some stroke of luck I see some woman strolling along with my suitcase. Apparently, she thought it was hers. Nope, sorry the one with the obnoxious huge gold luggage tag and colorful ribbon is certainly mine. So yeah, that’s how we figured out that NW did not pass along our luggage. Nice, right? We were sleep deprived and admittedly, I was crabby and not feeling emotionally up for all of this. After we found our luggage and figured out how to get to London, we set off for the city. We had a nice (but again, looong) walking tour of the city. We even got good use out of our one-day subway “tube” passes. I saw Big Ben, Buckingham Palace at which by the way, we saw the changing of the guards, Kensington Palace (where Princess Di lived) and the Globe theatre. Overall, a pretty good day but after our 7 hour adventure in London, we were exhausted.



We had high hopes for sleeping on last night’s flight since we fit all of the qualifications for actually falling asleep on a plane(note: we were desperate!). To our dismay, we had turbulence for about the last 5 hours of our flight. It was nerve wrenching and stressful. I think I may have slept for an hour or two with the aid of AdvilPM but it was so uncomfortable and I was anxious most the night, so it wasn’t so grand. We landed in the rain/fog of Cape Town, and our driver Kimie got us safely to homebase 2. We got a brief look at the squatter camps and some of the housing developments where people are living in poverty. It’s sad because from afar, Cape Town is gorgeous with Table Mountain to top off its view. Yet, driving through the city, we get a good look at the way that people (note: mostly blacks and coloureds) are living. We’ll learn more tomorrow and Monday with orientation.
This all sounds pretty negative so far, but I promise I am excited to be here lol. I cannot wait to learn all that I can and experience everything, good and bad. I’m placed at Blossom Street Primary School with Lyndsay and two other girls I believe. We’ll be working with kids age 5-14 and could be doing anything from physical education, computers, or working on reading and literacy (obviously, the latter is what I’m hoping for!). I’ll definitely have more to say later, after our orientations and our placements. I smell lunch cooking right now, and it smells wonderful. It’s pretty chilly right now, since it is only like 50 degrees outside and it’s been rainy. We left Michigan summer for Cape Town’s winter—but it’s alright. I think I’ve packed plenty of cold weather clothes (SO glad I threw in my jacket at the last minute) and I’m sure our experience will be well worth a little bit of clouds and rain. Anyway, the internet situation is a little sticky and in fact, as I am writing this I am not even connected. I’m planning on copying and pasting to the blog once I get the connection worked out. I signed up for the service and everything, but it says that this is an inactive hotspot. Oh well, I’ll have to talk to Latifa ( the admin person) when she gets back later.

EDIT: Internet is all good. :)

Love you all. Expect more from me later!

Homebase: