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Published: January 13th 2010
Well, I’m in my 3rd full day in South Africa. The trip went smoothly - there was the kid who pooed his diaper sitting behind me on the plane from Cincinnati to Atlanta, but that’s just my luck. The 15 hour flight from Atlanta to Johannesburg was longer than it sounds. The man sitting next to me was very nice and showed me how to work the tv screen and stuff like that. Thank goodness for those! I watched several movies and shows because I could not sleep more than an hour or two. It was nice to land and be able to walk around again.
The first night was hard. The first full day was very hard. My initial reaction was that I was stupid for wanting to do this program and would leave within the week. I remember that feeling from my first year of college. There is one other girl here so far from Ohio. We spent a couple hours talking my first night and that helped a lot. We were up late since we hadn’t adjusted to the time change - Port Elizabeth is 7 hours ahead. Nicola’s mom, Lesley has been a huge help and I’m so glad she lives here. I spent the first day with her. She helped me get a phone (by the way my cell phone does not work at all here) and took me to lunch and to buy shampoo and stuff. It was nice to go to her flat and have someone to talk to me.
I haven’t unpacked yet because the host family is still trying to arrange rooms. There will be 7 of us staying and the guest flat will have 5 and 2 people will be in the guest rooms in the main house. They told me I might end up in the main house because they want responsible quiet people in their house and I guess they figure since I’m married I fit that description. That’s fine. The house and family take a bit getting used to, but I spent some time with them yesterday and they’re warming up a bit.
My school is in walking distance from the house and easy to find. Thank goodness! I start on Monday and still don’t know what subject/grade I’ll be teaching. They don’t really have “social studies” here, but they do have history, so I’m guessing I’ll need to study like crazy to learn my African history as it’s not really covered in history classes in America.
Listening to all the different dialects and languages is interesting. There are so many different kinds of people here! I hope I can keep up.
I’ve already been to the beach and it was beautiful, but very windy. So windy that it keeps you cool under the hot sun and I’m already sunburned like the typical American tourist.
Sorry this is a long post, but I had a lot to cover. The internet is extremely limited here and I’ve felt so disconnected until today. One girl bought a usb, air card kind of thing and we have to prepay for internet by the gig which is strange to us. You can’t just buy internet usage by how long you’re going to be on it unless you’re at an internet café. So, that being said. I have very limited internet usage. I won’t be able to upload pictures very often because it uses up too much space, but I will try to go to the internet café and get some posted every so often. They are not as concerned with the internet as we are and we’re already realizing how much we rely on it but how little we really need it. For example, we’re trying to ration out our time and gig usage, so instead of sitting on facebook all day we check it for a minute and then log out. Also, all our emails and things we would type (like this blog) we are doing offline in a word document and then copy/pasting it into email so we’re not online eating up our gigs. It takes some getting used to and will be a challenge for school and classes, but we’ll figure it out. I’ve already warned my instructors about it.
I miss Brad and my family a lot, but I’m trying not to think about it. Yesterday was my first good day - I spent some time with Ally, the other girl here, and the host family and one of Nicola’s friends who was kind enough to invite me over for a while to chat. Other than the sunburn, it was a really good day. I know the first week is the hardest, but it’s improving more quickly than I thought. I’m getting my appetite back - I could hardly eat the first 2 days and on my trip and if you know me, you know that’s saying something.
I hope to hear from everyone soon. I’ll reply as I can, so please be patient.
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Jeanette
non-member comment
I understand
Do you know the reason that the GIG usage is important is that if you run over a certain allottment you pay dearly even with a normally connected internet site. Perhaps the other instructors need to know that. We also talked about sunburned people being the "fresh ones" in other words they had just arrived recently. Do you like fish? I think the seafood in S. Africa is awesome.