20 hour plane ride later

After a whirlwind last week in the U.S., I got on a plane headed for Amsterdam last night and arrived in Cape Town about 20 hours later.  

Expecting a long, boring plane ride where I’d be charged for everything I did, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the movies in the back of the seat in front of me were all free and they even passed out free headsets.  However, trying to be nice on the second flight, I traded seats with a husband so he could sit next to his wife…turns out the TV screens in the row I traded into weren’t working for the whole flight.  I ended up sleeping most of the way anyway and was able to get a little bit of pre-internship reading and writing done.  

Also prepared to avoid the $8 plane food, my mom packed me about 10 pounds of food and it turns out, every time I woke up from a nap, they were handing me more free food (on the second flight, we even got ice cream!).  Just when I thought I’d have an opportunity to squeeze in a snack from my own bag, they’d show up with another meal!

For some reason I expected people to be speaking English in their conversations here but people only speak English when they’re talking to me…which makes me feel bad since I’m used to traveling to countries where I can communicate in the local language.  I thought it would be easy coming here since I have no anxiety going to Guatemala anymore.  It’s quite a bit different than I expected though I’ve only seen it in the dark so far. 

Staying at the Green Elephant Backpackers tonight.  The staff are friendly and they use grey water from the washer to power two of the toilets so I like that already.

http://www.capestay.co.za/greenelephant

Headed off to Cross Cultural Solutions in the morning where I can settle in for the next 12 weeks.

Will post more once I know more!