Arrival

I arrived safely in Cape Town late last night, after a day and a half of flights--Detroit to Amsterdam, Amsterdam to Cape Town. On my flight to Amsterdam my seatmate barfed, and I awoke to find her holding a leaking paper bag of her own vomit! The poor girl had no idea what to do, so I handed the bag off to a passing flight attendant, dribbling some disgustingness onto my pants in the process. Which I still had to wear for another 16 hours or so...

Karma was restored on my flight to Cape Town. When I gave them my boarding pass, the flight attendants told me that my seat had been changed. At first I was disgruntled--I had chosen an aisle seat!--but when I went to my new seat, I realized that I had been bumped up to first class. Wow, what a difference. They fed us gourmet food about every 2 hours for the entire flight (crab cakes in pesto sauce, braised salmon on a bed of wilted greens, caramel cake, hot couscous, veggie crudites, ice cream...). After the 5th or 6th glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice and red wine, I felt a little better about the obscene amount of money I had to spend on the flight to follow Fulbright's "American Air Carriers" rule.

I found Jessica waiting at the airport without any trouble, and she drove us to her house. Jess lives in one of my favorite residential neighborhoods in Cape Town, called Observatory. Although I love her neighborhood, it's not the best place to be staying. It's a drive away from the city centre (I'm giving South African spelling a shot...), and she's living in a house with 10 other people who are constantly filtering in and out. I slept like a log on their living room couch last night, but I think that's mostly because I was so tired from my flights that I could have slept through an earthquake; several people asked me this morning if they had woken me up when they came home last night/got up this morning. I also feel a bit strange couch-surfing on what's essentially a communal couch. So I think that I'm going to try to get a room in a hostel called Daddy Long Legs on Long Street. I stayed there 2 years ago for a night or two after my study abroad program had ended, and it's a pretty nice place that's walking distance away from almost everything.

I finally dragged myself out of "bed" at about 11:30 this morning and Jess gave me a ride into the city centre to meet up with Jean and John Comaroff (my former professors from the Cape Town study abroad program). I felt about 1,000,000 times better about having emigrated halfway around the world after having lunch with the two of them. They both seemed eager to take me back under their wing and help get me started with my research, which was a huge relief. And after lunch, Jean walked me down to the big mall in CT to buy a cell phone, and she showed me where to catch the minibus back to Obs. (There's not much of a public transportation system in South Africa. Instead, non-drivers pay about a dollar to cram into a van full of people and get driven to their destination. It's sort of like splitting a taxi with 6 or 7 (or 10, or 12...) strangers).

I'm starting to put together a list of things that I want to get done in CT before I head for Port Elizabeth (in addition to sunning, going to the beach, drinking espresso, visiting my old haunts, etc.). I'm going to try to find a violin to buy or rent while I'm in CT, although Jean seemed to think that this would be difficult to do. I still need to meet with the South African Cultural Affairs Office as part of my Fulbright obligation. Most importantly, I'd like to buy a car while in CT: From what people have told me about PE, I think that I'll definitely need one to get around, and the selection in Cape Town is obviously much better than in PE. Plus, if I buy a car here, then I can road-trip along the scenic Garden Route to Port Elizabeth, saving myself the cost of the plane ticket AND squeezing in an extra vacation (how long do you think I can put off actually beginning my research?). The only hitch: every car in South Africa other than the super high-end new cars is a stick shift! God, I am really wishing that I had learned to drive stick while in the US. Jean assures me that it will only take "5 minutes" for me to figure it out. Of course, she's also never driven anything other than a stick shift...

I was terribly homesick last night, and fell asleep thinking about the people that I've left behind in Chicago. But when I walked out the door this morning, my mood immediately lifted. It's shockingly sunny and a breezy 80 degrees outside, and it was an incredibly feeling to be able to simply walk straight out of an open front door into the sunlight.

One very small hitch: I think my foot may still be broken...