Tuesday, September 30, 2008

I'm here and I'm safe!

What a gorgeous GORGEOUS country! I feel so lucky to be here. You can't believe this place. It's just simply gorgeous. Beautiful. Wonderful.

I'm staying in a place called Hout Bay. Mineska is house sitting a freaking MANSION and we have the whole 4 bedroom place to ourselves. The view from the balcony is incredible. I'm looking right out at table mountain.

Ok...I need to start at the beginning.
In Minneapolis when I was waiting for the flight, a very southern lady was talking very loud about her nose job and so I couldn't help but eavesdrop. Then she was telling this story about church (you have to say this in a southern accent or it won't work.) "I brought my husband to church the other day. It was his first time...and this woman, you know she was speaking in tongues...well, my husband hadn't seen anything like that before. When she fell down, he started to get up to help her, because you know he thought she was having a heart attack...Well, I dug my fingernails so deep into his knee! I said, 'you SIT your butt DOWN! She's got the spirit!!!' "

I got to fly first class to New York City and to Cape Town. It was so so so so so nice to have such space to stretch out. My chair reclined completely. They put a drink in your hand before you even take off. How can anybody go back to coach after experiencing first class? I guess technically it was "business class" but who's counting?
Also, they gave me a whole actual blanket and pillow. Not a crappy tiny thing but an actual pillow. I was very anxious about it touching anything gross on the plane and stuff but it went OK.
From NYC to Cape town it is a 17 hour flight. 8 hours into it, we stopped in Dakar, Senegal to gas up. There was a guy on the first leg of that part who's dad had just died and he was flying home to see his family. His name was Chekh. Super nice guy. He couldn't eat until 6:45 though because he was observing Ramadan. I tried to convince him to eat something at 5:45 because technically we were crossing time zones and traveling into the future, but he wouldn't bite. Pun intended. I don't want to be rude, because Chekh was super nice and everything, but I think he farted about 637 times on the flight. In his sleep and everything. Let me tell you it was kind of weird because when we were both reclined out, it was like we're sleeping together in this big bed. Anyway, Farty McFarterson got off in Dakar and then I had the area to myself the rest of the flight to Cape Town.
So when you stop in Dakar, people get on the flight to clean up and to search you and stuff. Well it's 91 degrees there at 4:30 in the morning, so these guys were RIPE. Stinky stinky stinky. It was bad. Oh, and I got off the plane even though you're not supposed to because I had to be able to say that I had been to Senegal. Duh.
Oh, my TV on the plane had episodes from TV, from HBO, and all kinds of movies. I watched an episode of the Office, and episode of Flight of the Choncords and three movies. And I read my book. But the rest of the time I slept.

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