Finally on the Internet!!!

HELLO!!! We arrived safe in Cape Town on Thursday night at around 4:30. The flight was not as bad as I thought. I slept a lot, read, listened to music, and watched really corny movies. The stop in Dakar was not nearly as rough as I anticipated. People came on the plane to clean up and check out the carry on bags. I pretty much slept the whole time, no worries at all.

It was great to see Corvell, our leader of the trip who was born and raised in Cape Town and now works at MSU. We ride around in 2 vans and his son and brother-in-law drive us around wherever we go, so we are completely safe at all times. There are 17 girls on the trip and believe it or not, we are all getting along wonderfully! No cliques, talking behind each other's backs or any other typical female drama :) We are all pretty laid back and excited to share this experience together. Not only will this experience benefit my career as a teacher, it will enhance my social skills and my ability to meet new people as well as work with one another.

OK, so now for some stories!!! Our guest house is awesome. I feel so spoiled and we all have a hard time believing we are in Africa. I have three roommates who I have become pretty close with. We have a huge room (the biggest one in the house) that has a kitchen, dining room table, bath and shower and toilet. Our room is the hang out room :) We usually wake up at 7:30 am which is 1:30 am in Michigan and then have breakfast. Breakfast usually is bread, yogurt, cereal, fresh fruit, fresh squeezed orange juice and guava juice, and coffee.

On the first night we ate dinner at the mall and then went to bed because we were all pretty tired. The sun usually sets at around 6:30 so it gets dark pretty early here. The weather so far has been pretty much like Michigan. One minute it rains, the next it is windy, then the sun comes out. It is a cycle.

It feels so great to finally be here, I still can't believe I am here. We haven't been able to get the internet, so I am writing the next couple of blogs at an internet cafe. I am considering getting a phone here (it's pretty cheap) because I don't know how much internet use I will get and it will be nice to have when I am with my host family so I can keep in touch with my group during the week and make the occasional call home :)