Traveling Dayssss

       Well we finally made it to South Africa. After a grueling 17-hour flight just to get us to Johannesburg and then another flight that was only an hour we are here. It was quite an experience.  Our first flight landed in Segal a country that when you look at a map might be the most western country in all of Africa. We landed there and some people got off because that was their final destination. However, those of us who were continuing onto South Africa/Johannesburg, we were not allowed to get off the plane.  We were allowed to stand up, walk around and do some stretching after sitting down for a little over 7 hours. That first “leg” of the ride was actually not bad at all.  The movie selection on the plane was amazing. We could pick whatever movie we wanted to watch, anything from Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows to the Lorax (both of which I watched) and then Hunger Games Breaking Dawn, the Truman Show, MIB the original, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Madagascar and even some “African Picks.” I can’t remember any of those, I didn’t recognize any of them but that’s what the menu option was called on the screen. And, as if the movie choices weren’t enough, we also had a couple episodes of TV series we could watch too! Like the Brittany/Britney episode from Glee? Yep, it was there BUT they cut out the snake dance Brittany does while under anesthesia. So after that, I turned it off and moved onto Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother and even started the pilot episode of Alcatraz but I fell asleep shortly after starting it.  The screens also had playlists of music for you to listen to and games to play. It was very high tech and kept us all entertained. Oh and I forgot to mention 21 Jump Street was one of the choices for movies and there were sisters sitting in front of Alyson and I who decided to hit play at the same time on both their screens so they could watch it together. Now mind you, these ladies are over 30 okay? It’s about 11:30pm when they start, lots of people are sleeping the cabin lights are off in the plane and it’s pretty quiet. These ladies are watching 21 Jump Street CACKLING, literally, at everything. And to make everything worse, they had reclined their seats ALL THE WAY so my knees were already in pain pushed up against her seat and every time she laughed she would throw herself back into the chair digging the chair into my knees. Now, I will admit that I did push back because how annoying can you be right? Finally, one of our chaperones who was sitting two rows behind Alyson and I and 3 behind the sisters got up and asked them to quiet down because it was now almost 1:00am and they were cackling like 13 year old girls.  HIGHLY unnecessary.  However, once that stopped the rest of the plane ride to Segal was lovely. Once we got to Segal it was 3:00am on the time we were on, but 6:00am in Segal (or was it 7:00) I’m not sure. We stretched and walked around trying to get feeling back in our bootys after sitting down for so long. More people got on the plane and then tadaaaaaa on to South Africa we go! We were instructed to keep the shutters on the windows closed so people could sleep so that was helpful, but it was so hard to get comfy.  Finally we made it to South Africa, where we had to run through customs and grab our bags and recheck them and then try and get to our next flight in time. We did make it in time though! And we got on a bus which took us to our tiny airplane, which ended up having more leg room than the previous plane we were on. Go figure. 

            After a quick one hour flight, on which they gave us cheese, crackers, some chicken, pasta salad and a chocolate raspberry cake thing, we made it to Bloemfontein. When we got there and picked up our luggage, Patrick’s luggage wasn’t on the belt. It’s okay to laugh now because it ended up coming back to him, but at the time it was NOT funny. At all. We were picked up at the airport by a nice gentleman from the university and then 20 minutes later we were pulling into the University of the Free State. We were one of the last groups to arrive and we even missed the welcome session, but we were quickly fed, given our keys to our rooms and let loose. We saw two of the guys that came to visit us last year and they helped us check in and things which was really nice! After that, we just tried and tried accessing the internet on our computers. We had emailed our parents already from the girl’s computer that I’m staying with.  Alyson got hers to work right away, mine wouldn’t work for the life of me. Eventually it did and I gave my mom a quick shout out in my Facebook status to know I’m alive and then it was off to bed. Even though it was 9:45pm here and only 3:45 back home we were exhausted and we had a 6:00am wake up time just waiting for us the next morning. Tooooo early.