Safari Gear, Zulu Dances, and Shongalolos

I’m finally here.  I left at 7:30 am Wednesday morning, and arrived at 9:50 pm Thursday night.  I last left you at the Washington Dulles airport, after which the interesting part of my trip began.  Reaching my gate about an hour before the boarding was scheduled to begin was like entering into a South African mecca: almost everyone around me was speaking in that familiar accent, the largest group of South Africans I’ve been around in years.  And then the “American tourists” converged.  There’s nothing wrong with being a tourist, or being American, given that I’m pretty much both of those myself.  BUT there’s no need to wear your safari gear at the airport.  Unless you’re planning on resorting to your zip-off pants and vented shirt to combat the wild and unpredictable climate that one often runs into on airplanes.  And yes, one man was wearing a safari hat.  It was raining outside.  I feel it’s even a little ridiculous to wear “safari gear” while driving around a wild animal reserve (you spend pretty much the entire time inside your air conditioned car, and hiking is NOT encouraged) but I suppose it’s appropriate in that situation.  But please, not at the airport.  Although it is entertaining, it really doesn’t help to improve our image in the eyes of the bemused natives.

After missing a connection, and luckily making the next flight, I finally made it to my destination.  South Africa seems the same as the last time I was here 4 years ago.  Coming from America, and LA at that, it’s definitely an eye-opener to be back.  It’s not every day that you see a photo of the president doing a traditional Zulu dance in the local newspaper, wearing traditional tribal gear with a pair of blindingly-white tennis shoes.  This set off a discussion on how much money the government is spending on Zuma (the president) and his “7 or 8 wives” and their residences.  Culture shock! 

Other than the glaring differences in our political and cultural systems, everything from the cars, the food, the heightened security, to even the doorknobs would seem strange and new to someone who was visiting for the first time.  I was trying to explain to Alex how the houses here are surrounded by high walls, gates, electric fences, etc, and how that is completely normal.  Since my description skills failed to communicate what I was trying to convey, here is a picture for those of you who are curious!  But of course, also note the pretty flowers to complement the fence.  Durban does have beautiful tropical foliage.

I had a run in today with something else you wouldn’t come across in America.  I was on my grandparents’ back porch and they casually said, “Oh look, there’s a shongalolo.”  I was carrying a plate to the table or something, and casually peered around the chair to find out what the hell a “shongalolo” was.  A species of bird?  A cute native butterfly?  NO.  I discovered a black, twizzler-sized centipede/millipede (who knows the difference anyway) creature slithering towards the door.  It was the creepy crawliest thing I’ve ever seen in my life!  I took a picture because I had never seen anything like it before.  Talking about it the far smaller American shongalolo-equivalent later, my uncle said that not everything’s bigger in Texas.  Guess he’s right.  Here’s a picture so you all can be as creeped-out as I was. 

Don't let the lack of reference point fool you, this thing was big.

At dinner tonight, we evaluated my trip and highlighted the three “firsts” I’ve had so far:

1.      Eating “canned” salmon which turned out to include skin and bones (I found a vertebrae).  Actually, I wouldn’t say eating, I would say “trying a tiny bite”

2.      My new BFF shongalolos

3.      Overhearing gunfire/fireworks.  Michael thought gunfire, Sally Ann and I thought we heard fireworks.  I’m going to go with fireworks

But not to worry, a little excitement is good for me!  What’s a trip if you can’t try new things.  Except, I think I could have done without the Shongalolo encounter…

Bye for now J 

Chillin' at the Airport

Hello, since I have an extremely long layover in Washington DC, I thought I'd take advantage of my enjoyable 5 hour stay to write another post.  To update you about the pleasures of airports, that is.  Because I'm sure you all really want to hear about it.  But I'm bored, so I apologize!

The flight from Raleigh to Dulles was uneventful, we literally took off and then 10 minutes later started the descent, now that's my kind of flight!  I know that when I'm sitting on my next flight struggling through the 7th hour, and knowing that I'm not even halfway there...I'll look back and be very jealous of my previous self.  There were absolutely no interesting (and by interesting, I mean crazy) passengers on my flight unfortunately.  Nobody yelling obnoxiously to their blackberry while waiting on the runway, no overheard wildly inappropriate conversations, nobody dressed up in any bizarre hats.  That one's not too far off, believe it or not, last year I saw a guy at LAX wearing a turkey hat on his head.  I mean, thankfully it was around Thanksgiving, but it's still a sighting one should take advantage of.  By texting multiple friends a picture taken on the sly, of course.  I'm sorry that I have nothing that comes close to that level of interest to inform you about.  But believe me, if there was something juicy, worth sharing, I wouldn't hold back!

This terminal is pretty fancy, by the way, on top of the wireless internet, there's even a Chipotle!  However, it's not at the top of my airport list because the Starbucks is located inside the "News Connection" magazine place.  What blasphemy.  My last Starbucks experience for at least 5 months wasn't even a real one at that.  Instead of relaxing on a purple plush armchair and gazing at framed posters with scenic farms and coffee beans, I'm sitting at a small table right next to the travel neck pillows, "NObama" shirts, and the $10 Pashmina scarf stand.  Although I am in the prime location to people watch the passerby's, and if someone particularly interesting walks by I don't look too creepy because if caught staring I can just pretend that I'm really concentrating on my laptop screen.  It's working out pretty well so far.  The only noteworthy sighting was a little Asian toddler with spiky pigtails that was making her dad jump over the tile lines on the floor.  He was a good sport, poor guy!  But that's about it so far.  I still have 4 more hours, so there's still hope.

Yesterday I was thinking that I should have goals for this trip, or at least a few things that I should make sure to do while I'm away.  One that I came up with was to interject "y'all" sporadically into conversations, which I figure will have 3 purposes. 1) to conduct a social experiment to see how many people actually understand what I said, 2) to entertain myself while noting confused/polite facial expressions, and 3) to educate people about the convenience of merging two very long words: "you", and "all" into 1 easy-to-say package.  I personally really enjoy saying "y'all" and I think that I want to try start a trend.  That was the only goal I've come up with so far, but I'm sure I'll discover other noteworthy aspirations along the way.  Normally I'm a very serious, goal-oriented person, but now that I think about it maybe my 2nd goal should be to have non-serious goals for the next 7 months.  I'll work on it.

Well I will stop rambling, because my stream of consciousness/verbal diarrhea is stemming from my boredom, and not really because I have anything particularly interesting to say.  I'll post again when I get to South Africa and manage to MacGyver some wireless internet for my laptop!  

<3  

      

Hello Goodbye

It's a few days before the big departure date, and it still hasn't hit me that I'm about to leave the good ol' U.S. of A. for a long long looong time.  What am I going to miss about America?  Truth is, I'm not too worried about it because even though there are things about home I'm going to miss, for every one aspect of America that I'll leave behind, I know I'll discover at least two new perks that I wouldn't have otherwise experienced along the way.

For example, I know I'm dearly going to miss automatic cars that drive on the right side of the road.  But, to look on the bright side, in South Africa I'll not only get to improve my motion-sickness tolerance to rival that of a jet fighter pilot, but my trip will have an added element of risky adventure when I accidentally look the wrong way for traffic while crossing the street.  I need to be more daring anyway.  Just because something isn't familiar, doesn't mean that it's any worse than what I'm used to- or at least that's what I'm telling myself.

Now that writing this blog has got me thinking about it, I suppose it's unavoidable that in a day or two I'll enter that mental phase that creeps up on you before you have to say goodbye to something or someone, where you start to think in terms of "lasts."  As in "this is the third-to-last time I'm going to brush my teeth at this sink," or "this is the last time I'm going to help my cousin with his math homework", or my personal tragedy, "this is the last time I'm going to get to sit on this sofa and watch Toddlers and Tiaras while browsing facebook" (yes, that's me).   I mean, it's no fun to walk around with a depressing commentary bouncing around one's head, but maybe I'll have a step-up on the "last" syndrome anyway, because I'm expecting it.  Who knows...I'll keep you posted.

Regardless of the goodbyes I'll be saying in the next few days, there's always the hope of hellos on the horizon.  Where there's a goodbye to soft, gooey chocolate chip cookies (no, they don't have these in South Africa, and when I introduce people to them, they all like them crispy) there's a hello to rusks.  Goodbye dryer, hello sun-kissed clothes.  Goodbye stupid stupid squirrels, hello pesky pesky monkeys.  Goodbye football, hello rugby.  Goodbye dollars, hello rands.  Goodbye crappy American chocolate, hello delicious BarOne's, PS's, Crunchies, and Smarties (see, I bet you've never heard of these...you're missing out!)  Goodbye Spanish, hello Afrikaans.  Goodbye winter, hello summer!  That one I'm excited about.  Goodbye texting, hello emailing.  That one, not so excited about.  The best one of all: goodbye grad school applications, hello vacation!

My hope is that this blog will be a good way for my friends and family to keep up to date with what's going on in my life during my travels.  I can't promise that my day-to-day life is always going to be interesting, but I'll try my best to give you a good look into what it's like to be a 22-year-old recent college graduate who's embarking on a (hopefully) life-changing journey for 7 months, after being in school for a short 17 years.

As for me, I think after all of this dwelling and introspection, it's time for a healthy dose of Real Housewives.  I won't say goodbye. 

P.S. A big thanks to the wonderful Alex Murphy for coming up with the name for this blog...ingenious!