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Published: August 30th 2019
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Home sweet home!
It was a 22 hour event to get from our beautiful AirBNB in Plettenberg Bay (thank you Leslie!) to our much missed house in Rehovot.
It included our last, on the wrong side, drive in "the bus" packed to the gills with luggage. Getting to the George airport way too early (thanks to me, who didn't want to be there late or stressed). Little did I know (although I should've known by this point) that it is a tiny airport with nothing to do and nowhere to go. We sat at the cafe drinking cappuccinos and hot chocolate for TWO HOURS before checking in. It was a small plane (but not the smallest we've been on this trip) and a short 1.5 hour flight to Johannesburg. There we had to wait for over FOUR hours to check in. Adam and Shaya went into town to bring us food from Burgers and Brew, and I did last minute shopping 😊. We checked in, they took all our luggage to saran wrap (very odd indeed), and then the flight was delayed by an hour. We literally sat in the Johannesburg airport from around 2:30pm until 9:00pm. We were
in the Johannesburg airport FOUR times! We know it back and forth.
Shaya was not on our flight home and stayed in Johannesburg. He will be returning on Monday. (He'll be in the airport 5 times.)
The flight home was with El Al and we were packed in like sardines with all of Am Yisrael and their babies. The seats were so narrow and without leg room, it was ridiculous.
At 7:10am this morning we landed. אין לי ארץ אחרת. It's wonderful to travel and see the beautiful and fascinating wonders of the world, but it's always best coming home. Prince was so so so happy to see us. Roni put milk in the fridge for us (and in my mom's fridge). Alex, who watched Prince the whole trip, prepared a welcome home sign for us. Being that we arrived home on a Friday morning, friends reached out offering to host us for meals so we don't have to worry about cooking. Thank you to all of you!
Some slang/songs/terms we said, made up, repeated over and over throughout the trip:
1 - Dig a tunnel, dig dig a tunnel (x3), What's that? click click
click (of the tongue), Quick before the hyenas come. - From Lion King. Sung many many many times throughout the trip.
2 - Ahhhhh, Impala (must draw out the word impala). - From our safari in Kruger. We saw SO MANY impalas. At some point, it was all we were seeing and a bit disappointed. Rotem would say (in a bored voice) ah, impala, each time we encountered one. Then the others turned it into what it became.
3 - O-lee-phant - A way to say elephant.
4 - Le-O-pord - A way to say leopard.
5 - Lionest (Instead of Lioness) - I think that Emunah or Rotem said it that way by accident once and one of the boys picked up on it and it stuck.
6 - AWAIIIIII - What the guides screamed to each other on the zip-line before one of us would go zip.
7 - Um kalay la, a chicki chicki kama, a mooshi a mooshi, e-aw e-aw, e-aw e-aw e-aw. - The song MD taught us on our rafting trip in one of the African dialects he knows. The leader says one part and then the rest
repeat it, then the leader says the next part, etc. A mooshi means a Rasta man.
8 - If you can't breathe, you can't die! - Also from our rafting trip. MD tightened our life vests so tight it was hard to breathe. He said, if you can't breathe because the vest is on good and tight, then when you fall into the water the vest won't be pushed by the water over your face. If it did do that, then you would have a greater chance of drowning.
9 - Aloe Vera? - So many aloe vera plants and TREES all over Africa.
10 - Arrive alive! - The sign on the highway driving from Johannesburg to Sabie.
11 - Jew-Bungee
12 - Bon Jewvie
13 - Noam is has Jew radar - every single place we went, even in Monkeyland which is in the middle of nowhere, we ran into fellow Jews or Israelis and Noam went over to each one to chat.
14 - Shaya has poop radar - every animal Shaya passed would poop.
15 - KFC - Kruger Fried Chicken
16 - Viagra Falls - Noam
tried to say Victoria Falls and got confused with Niagra Falls - ended up with Viagra Falls.
17 - Meayanteresting - a mixture of the Hebrew word, מעיין (Me-ayen, interesting in Hebrew) with the word interesting.
18 - Mayo-naisse - Have to say it with the emphasis on the Mayo. Shaya is a big fan of Mayo and got very excited when finally there was a sandwich with mayo (hard to find in Zimbabwe/Kruger).
19 - Malaria, (clap, clap) Malaria. Malaria, (clap, clap) Malariaaaa! - Sing it to the tune of Aquarius from Hair. - We had to take Malaria pills from the day before we left until the last day of the trip. Somewhere along the way this tune came about.
20 - If you speed, you're a killer. - Sign on the highway in Johannesburg.
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