We Made It!

It was a long, harrowing journey through 3 airports, but all of our flights left on time, and we arrived safely last night around 8 pm.  The worst flight, of course, was from Washington D.C. to Johannesburg - a flight that lasted 15 1/2 hours.  The idea is that people were supposed to sleep for a majority of the flight - a nice theory anyway.  We were seated in a row behind, not one, but two babies who were not happy travelers.  I slept for maybe 2 hours total, but I did watch 3 movies and 1 episode of Dr. Who.

The trickiest part of the whole journey was when we had to pick up our bags in Johannesburg, go through customs, and then re-check in again for the flight to Cape Town.  Our luggage took over half an hour to come off the carousel, which meant we had 40 minutes to go a LONG way to the domestic flight counters.  A porter in an orange uniform grabbed our bags and started running toward the domestic counters when we told him our flight left at 5:30.  We ran after him, and when we arrived at the gate, they told us our flight was "closed."  After a few moments of panic, we found out that our bags would make it on the plane, but we had to "run" to the gate to make the flight.  There's nothing quite so much fun as being in a new country and running through the airport after a very long flight. They had a bus you had to take to the plane, as it was not parked at the terminal (something that has happened on several of our flights).  I tipped the porter $5 for helping us make the flight.  It looked like only 4 of our 12 group members would make the flight, but they waited for the rest of our group, and we all arrived together.

I want to confess right now that, even though this is an immersion trip with a purpose of learning about the struggles of South Africans, we are not struggling at all in our accommodations.  We are staying in a beautiful and historic Bed and Breakfast called Sunny Cove Manor in Fish Hoek, a little town on the Indian Ocean side of Cape Town.  As I write this, I can look out the window at the ocean, with a lovely garden down below.  Of course, the fact that it's summer here and 75 degrees with a nice breeze isn't too hard to take, either.

Thank you to everyone who pulled together at Living Water yesterday in my absence.  We missed being with you, but we heard you had a great time of worship!