don't get it twisted.

after what feels like about a million days/hours/whatever, i am in. south. africa. cape town, to be specific. and i am jetlagged. this website probably eats up about all of the wireless internet credits i bought, so i'm going to try and be concise. in south africa/cape town, some company has a monopoly on wireless and you also have to pay for credits, and depending on how many megabytes the site uses up (webmail/gmail don't use too many, but gone are my days of facebook stalking and reading jezebel) that's how many credits get deducted from your account.

so after THE MOST ABSURD SATURDAY/SUNDAY LEAVING KENYON SEQUENCES OF EVENTS and then the smallest airplane i have ever been on and THEN a great night of eating whole foods hors d'oeuvres and watching the office and the amazing race with scarter followed by a morning of eating, buying dinosaur coloring books, and watching america's next top model sarah and her dad dropped me off at jfk around 2 p.m. so i could get my flight at 5:20 p.m. to dakar, senegal and then johannesburg and then finally cape town. we ended up sitting on the runway at jfk for an hour and a half while they loaded "cargo" (which was probably by 70 pound suitcase) and added extra fuel to accommodate for said suitcase/cargo. the flight to dakar seemed endless, but i watched into the wild, talked to the girl sitting next to me from my program, slept a little, and tried to avoid the whispered advances from the overly friendly 40 year old man sitting next to me. then in dakar (it was now 6 a.m.) we sat on the runway while more people boarded, i switched to safer territory aka an aisle seat in my same row. i slept the entire way from dakar to joburg, which explains why i'm up at 2:17 a.m. writing instead of sleeping even though orientation is at 9 a.m. tomorrow.

once we got to cape town, we got all of our stuff and then were put onto two busses to go to our apartments in rosebank, which is a neighborhood in cape town right off main rd. and near the university of cape town campus. i live in 4 helena ct. (which has eight apartments total, all with people in my program) with one girl named maddie. we each have our own single, and then we have a kitchen, a common room with a couch, tv, and inexplicably another bed and dresser/closet thing, and a bathroom with a bathtub but no shower. this should be interesting. there's a shower next door though where leah, charlie, and amy live and they said we could use theirs, so that should be fine. i was under the impression that i'd have a towel here (they said they provided linens, which apparently means bedding only, stupid oversight on my part), but i unfortunately don't, as exemplified by the fact that i just had to make a decision between drying my face after washing it with toilet paper or on the bathroom curtains. i have to buy my own food and cook in the apartment or go out to eat, and we have to clean ourselves and buy toilet paper and stuff. i have to be so independent, it's weird. i need to make a list of all the stuff i have to buy tomorrow, mainly shampoo, conditioner, a towel, a mirror for my room, PLUG ADAPTERS, and a better pillow because mine is the flattest thing in existence.

i was feeling really weird and disconcerted earlier, but i feel more calm now. this is just very strange, and despite having unpacked and moved into my apartment and met everyone from my program, it just has not sunk in that i live in an apartment compound enclosed by a gate, another gate, metal door, wooden door, padlock, and deadbolt and that i live in south africa now. we'll see how orientation goes tomorrow and the next few days, apparently they have freshman orientation for uct starting in february (classes start the 18th, ahhh, so much TIME) that international/abroad students get to go to. i'm going to try and upload pictures once i start taking them. askljdfh.