30 hours, 7000 miles, and 1 lost bag

I'm jumping on the bandwagon. Not sure how long this will last, but I figured that possibly the best way to document and share my trip to South Africa this summer may be the whole blogging thing. I'll be out here for 8 weeks. I have 3 basic priorities: research, running, and seeing as much of the area as I can. I'm feeling pretty motivated now to write, and if things continue to happen at the current pace I will not run out of stories anytime soon. Either way, here I am.

I'm sitting in my "apartment" in Durban right now, still trying to completely settle in to life here and get myself on the right time zone. I left Providence on Tuesday afternoon. After a great time eating and meeting up with some good friends for dinner, I headed over to Ivy's parents' house to spend a quick night before flying out the next morning.

Ivy's a senior undergrad at Brown flying out to Durban to work on some education and HIV stuff through the RHRU, the same organization I'll be working at. We booked our flights to and Durban together and are staying at the same bed and breakfast, so we're hoping we can explore the area together and maintain our sanity (or what's left) to some degree. We haven't killed each other yet and we're almost 3 days in, so I'd say we've been pretty successful so far.

Our trip to Durban was slated for about 25 and a half hours. Door to door, the trip ended up being just over 30 hours. The flights were uneventful with the exception of a 2+ hour delay in Johannesberg during which our gate was switched twice and there was exactly one announcement over the PA system about a delay. Needless to say, by the time we reached Durban we were pretty beat.

Fortunately, the weather here in Durban turned out to be a huge pick-me-up after our long flights. It was in the 50s and raining in Johannesberg, but was mid-70s and perfectly sunny when we arrived in Durban. The weather is almost exactly what I'd expect if I was going home to San Diego. Even the freeways and the drive to our bed and breakfast reminded me of southern California-lots of rolling hills, houses set back above the freeway, and really smooth, wide roads. There's really no way to mistake it for SoCal though, since every pickup truck has a minimum of 2 guys sitting in the back as it speeds along at 60mph and strings of people were walking home from work on the shoulders and median of the road.

Ivy and I are staying in ridiculously nice single apartments at a bed and breakfast here. For just short of $600/month, I have a huge room with a microwave, full size fridge, toaster, plenty of cookware, and washing machine. There are at least 4 chairs inside, a TV with a DVD player, full size bed, and patio outside. There's also a small grill on the patio, in addition to a small bar with stools. It's pretty boss.

The whole running thing will have to take a side seat temporarily, since I'm desperately trying to get over a cold I've had for the last 2 1/2 weeks. Once that happens I'm pumped to have some quality time to focus on the simple things.