Getting Here

Getting the internet to work is a rather lengthy process here so I decided to start writing anyway so I don’t forget anything in the meantime…

After about 19 hours of traveling from DC to Johannesburg to Port Elizabeth, our little group arrived at the hotel in Port Elizabeth around 10:00 at night on Friday. Too tired to walk over to the beach we sat in the little courtyard, dipped our feet in the pool, and tried to take in the fact that we were sitting under palm trees in 60 degree weather, in Africa. Saturday morning we walked across the street to the beach, which was absolutely beautiful. We played on the rocks and I had to agree with everyone, I could have just stayed there the whole five months. But instead we only had an hour and then Ashwin, the resident helper and guide for WAC students came to bring us to Grahamstown and Rhodes University.

South Africa is not a country of huge SUVs and minivans, mostly compact little white vans are seen on the roads and quite a few old style hippie VW vans. So when Ashwin came he came in a teeny tiny van with a teeny tiny cart/trailer thing hooked behind it. Now everyone had done a fairly good job of packing light (even me!) but 5 months is a long time and of course all our luggage did not fit in the teeny tiny cart Despite the awesome tetris like attempts of the hotel porters to make it all fit, one of my bag’s one of Katie’s and one of Scott’s had to stay behind. Everything was dropped off though, and I was impressed that not one piece of our luggage got lost.

We were quickly registered and placed in our separate residences. I am in Hobson Hall, room 38. It is a single and kind of adorable. There is a large desk, a bookshelf, a bedside table, a very roomy closet with shelves, and one side of the top of the dresser lifts up into a mirror making a little vanity. And in the corner across from the bed, a SINK! Whoever thought of putting sinks in dorm rooms was a genius. My large shuttered widow faces the front of the building and looks out onto one of the many streets running through campus, it’s a useful spot for friends still without cell phones to shout up at.

After getting settled a little we met Ashwin for dinner at a strange little restaurant decorated to look like an Italian bistro with huge black and white photos of mostly American movie icons on one wall. The food however, was buffet style and mostly South African, which from what I can tell consists of a lot of meat and cheese. It was Scott’s 21^st birthday so we stopped by the most popular student hangout called the Rat and Parrot, a constantly crowded English-style pub, to celebrate and get a feel for Grahamstown nightlife, which with the drinking age at 18 and alcohol incredibly cheap, is definitely a little livelier then Chestertown.