Day ONE

So… I made it to Cape Town in one piece and I survived my first day! Sounds like a success to me… My flight from Detroit to Amsterdam was definitely interesting. We were over the ocean and then someone came over the intercom and said that if anyone was a doctor, they should go to row 10. Well, craziness ensued and then they told us we would be making an emergency stop in Shannon, Ireland, wherever that is… So we stayed there, on the plane, with the lights on, not really able to do anything, for about two hours… We finally left and then I had to sit around in Amsterdam with this guy from my flight for the longest time because we were apparently the only ones from that flight that were going to Amsterdam and basically everyone else came on a second flight. Eventually I made it to Cape Town, and at first, there was no one outside waiting from my program. I freaked out because I was the first one, and CIEE was pretty huge and loud. Finally someone came and asked me if I was in IES and it turned out that she was from my program. I feel really great that I only have one underweight bag by the way because people here are insane and pretty much all of them brought two bags. Many of them even went over and paid extra… So eventually everyone from our program made it (somehow we waited for forever while CIEE left really soon, even though they were picking up about 90 people and we only needed about 20 or so…), and we went and put all of our stuff on an incredibly small bus and during the whole drive things were flying off everywhere. They dropped us off at our houses and apartments, and when I got out at my house, a whole lot of people got out. Well… it turned out that my entire house somehow got an e-mail saying we were in the wrong house. We all ended up at Alma Road, which is all single rooms, but were actually supposed to be at Walgegensomething I don’t know how to spell it, it’s crazy. Long story short, we all went to the right house and were pretty disappointed to leave, only to find that our house was even more awesome because it actually has color, an awesome backyard, a laundry building type thing, and a garage that they made into a lounge and everyone thinks it’s going to become the party house or something to that effect but I kind of hope not. Today we toured the townships and it was ridiculously long so I am really exhausted and all of them want to go out, but I’m definitely not going, especially since it’s 11 pm now and we have to be somewhere at 8.30 AM… yeah I don’t think so…