A Boring Entry as Suits a Plane Ride (6-15)

I woke up around 3:30 am June 15. I couldn’t sleep any more. I’d only been asleep about two hours before waking up and knowing I couldn’t get another wink; I was about to leave for Africa.
I got up, showered, ate breakfast, and we left for the airport.
After luggin’ my luggage into the car and into the airport I awkwardly got my plane tickets; I was clueless since I’m new to this, but luckily Janette helped me out.
After just a few minutes I said goodbye to my family and made my way towards my gate.
Unfortunately the sitting area was rather full when I got there, so I just made my way back down the hallway back the way I came. However, about halfway down the hallway, I stopped; the sun was rising.
I’m a sucker for sunrises and sunsets¬- especially when I’m in the midst of saying goodbye to the town I grew up in. It’s odd to think that after leaving this airport, I’ll only be back to this place for a short time before going off to college and only coming back to visit occasionally. I never would’ve thought I’d have such a dramatic exit from my home town: most people just go a few hundred miles away to begin with, I’m going halfway around the world.
I’d hate to bore you with the details of the flights since they went so well they left me nothing to talk about. Essentially though, I flew from Sioux Falls to Denver, then Denver to D.C. It took around 4 hours flying time to get there so several hours more than that in total, but I don’t rightly know how much exactly.
Sadly the most exciting thing that happened on the way to D.C. was just that I sat by a lady about my age that I got to talk to a while; I was rather starved for conversation. It was a relief to finally have someone to talk to after several hours more or less alone- especially someone relatively interesting. It’s not often I get to talk to a Russian American who’s going home to visit family.
Once departing from the plane and my new Russian friend’s company I had a few minutes of “Oh crap, where am I and what am I doing here?” I’d never been to the Washington Dulles airport, heck the farthest I’d flown alone was right where I was right then. After about 15 seconds of mild panic, I heard a voice: “Ben?”
Some of my fellow intern friends who I hadn’t met yet were meeting the people at their gates to make sure they found the group. Again, it was such a relief to have some people to talk to. Even more so, it was a relief to have someone to ask where to go.
From there on, I was part of the group, so things went even easier. Whenever I had a question, all I had to do was ask. Plus I had some people to sit by for the next 17 hours on a plane.
The flight from D.C. went to Dakar, Senegal for a refueling stop then on to Johannesburg, South Africa. Again, things were pretty boring: nothing went wrong and nothing was too exciting. The most exciting part was the turbulence. Weird as it is, I enjoy turbulence. However, there always seemed to be turbulence RIGHT as we were starting to eat, so it rather ruined my enjoyment. After a few meals and movies and about two hours of sleep we arrived in Jo-burg.
After making our way through customs we met up with Charlene, our director for the summer interns. By then, we were all kind of in a daze from a serious lack of sleep so we pretty muchly just concentrated on getting into the cars and to get on our way once again. Also, we got our first intro to South African money called rand (which greatly confused me when Charlene mentioned something like 20 rand in passing since I thought she’d said grand).
The ride to Eagle Mountain, as the base is called, was rather boring but got more interesting the closer we got: the last about 10 kilometers is a gravel road. The interesting part, however, isn’t that it’s a gravel road so much as that it appears to be entirely unkempt what with the monstrous potholes that occupied more of the road than the “flat” parts. Yet we still drove at a good clip all those 10 kilometers.
At last, we were home. Charlene kept pointing and telling us where the mountains supposedly were and what their names are despite how we couldn’t see a thing and hardly knew where to put one foot in front of the other in the darkness.
Luckily the cabins, while simple, are still plenty cozy. Of all the buildings, being the smallest, they heat up the best. PLUS the water can be unbearably hot or cold depending on how precisely you fail to turn the knobs. Honestly, we feel rather pampered what with the HOT water and warm beds, yet we know that this is just the beginning of the winter here so it has yet to get as cold as it shall.
Altogether, it was an odd experience flying alone for the first time as well as meeting 23 people I’ll be spending the summer with and just immediately having long conversations and spending a lot of time with immediately after stepping off the plane to D.C.
And so concludes the insane travel to AFRICA!