Travel, Arrival and First Impressions

I am happy to say I made it to South Africa safely.

The flight to South Africa

The 17 hour flight from D.C. to Johannesburg was long, but bearable since there were about 20 of us on the plane enduring it together. I sat next to a man who was born in South Africa and lived there for 30 years, served in the South African military during Apartheid, and now lives in Denver where he is married with three kids. He is a well traveled and educated man who was very comfortable talking about his home country and why he chose to move to the United States. The main three reasons he had were: he doesn't need to lock up his house at night, his kids can play outside comfortably, and his children don't have to grow up seeing the racial inequality that still persists in the post-Apartheid era. He said that as an American, for the most part, you don't worry about things like that. I readily admitted to it.  I should mention that every single individual in South Africa is categorized into one of four racial categories: Black 79.4%, White 9.2%, Coloured 8.8%, or Indian/Asian 2.6% which he said ultimately effects South African life in many different ways, including job opportunities. He was not shy about sharing the negatives about South Africa and the "anti-americanism" we may encounter during our time here. To my surprise, for example, many South Africans are very bitter about the United States' involvement in Libya due to South Africa's close ties with Colonel Gaddafi. So far, we haven't experienced any bitter South Africans and actually the people have been very welcoming, friendly, and helpful. Towards the end of our conversation he seemed happy to see that we chose to study South Africa because of its cultural and social complexity, and was also very adamant about me "digging deeper" in my classes to understand the underlying reasons about how and why South Africa arrived where it is today. To say the least, he was a wealth of information and gave me a great introduction to what I should expect during my stay. It was my first realization of what I had really gotten myself into and where I was going. I thanked him and we parted ways in Johannesburg while our group continued to PE.

Arrival in Port Elizabeth

We arrived in Port Elizabeth at 9:20pm where we were welcomed by Jim, our program director who is also a professor at St. John's. Besides Bob''s luggage getting left behind in the JoBurg airport,  travel was smooth. He got his luggage this morning.

Last night, Langerry Holiday Flats was full of 24 CSB|SJU students running around carrying luggage and unpacking. The other 6 had already moved in the other day. Some of us went down the block to get some South African Rand from the ATM, while the rest continued to unpack and rest. The air was warm, humid, and refreshing after the long flight. Eventually everyone settled in and fell asleep. Because of the eight hour time difference, everyone's sleep schedule was completely different. People were falling asleep anywhere from 12:00am and 6:00am local time. We were up and active around 7:30 this morning after going to bed around 1:00am.

Today we strolled down Beach Road a few kilometers  to find the grocery, cell phone store, and a bank for currency exchange in the local mall. We walked along the sidewalk that was right along the ocean. Just off the beach no more than 50 meters, was a pod of several hundred dolphins, which is apparently normal.

View of Beach Road from Langerry Flat 11

On the way we asked a few security guards who were very willing to help, but unable to understand what we meant by "stoplight" (called a robot) or "grocery store"(still have no idea what they call it). We figured it out eventually and bought our groceries for the next few days. Immediately after getting groceries, everyone went straight to get beer from the liquor store immediately across the street. We tossed it in the fridge and met the other half of the crew on the beach to swim and play catch with a frisbee. Today has been overcast and slightly rainy but the ocean was still relatively... I say relatively warm as we were the only ones on the entire beach.

Inside Langerry Flat 11

As I'm typing this, there are several flats gathered in ours to talk, drink beer, and play board games left behind by some of the previous groups. Now if any previous SAers are reading this, I think you'd be pleased to know that Captain's is on the agenda tonight. It's karaoke night. Tonight we had a group dinner at "The Mediterranean" where Dummer and I had an enormous seafood platter with squid heads, mussels, kingklip, and prawns.

We had a group meeting tonight and tomorrow we will begin "Bush Camp," a camp-out kind of orientation for international students at NMMU. We'll be taking off for Tsitsikamma National Park and will be there for the weekend. I'll have another post up sometime next week, if anything cool or exciting happens. Otherwise, school starts in a couple weeks. I'll have to post about that.

Cheers,
Isaak