Arrival

For everyone who was wondering, yes I did survive for almost 24 hours without the internet.

I have arrived to Gaborone, Botswana safely, on time, and with all of my luggage!  Those were my goals and all were achieved, though I had some doubts along the way.

7:47am EST Monday, I flew out of CLE to Newark Liberty with no problems other than being told I would have to go in and out of security in Johannesburg to move my luggage on to my flight to Gaborone.

Arriving in Newark 9:30am EST-ish, I then had a long layover until my flight to Dulles at 2pm EST.  Yes, I did lie in the last post by mistakenly telling you that I was going from Newark to JNB.  Anyways, my flight to Dulles was slightly delayed due to overbooking, which I find is such a silly problem to have.  We left close to a half hour late, making me very nervous for making my connection in Washington.

Got to Dulles in time and settled down in my seat next to an App State professor on her way to Dakar to do research.  Definitely a good row partner to have.  The flight from Dulles left at  5:40pm EST Monday and flew to Dakar, Senegal first to change crews, refuel, and pickup and drop off some travelers.  When we landed, it was dark and there were some city lights, but nothing like flying over a major US city.  It took about an hour to refuel.  By then the sun was up and we could see some of the surrounding city when we taxied to take off.  That was pretty eye opening.  Every building was gray, white, or cream color concrete and all were pretty open, as in no windows or doors, just rectangular cut outs.

I think my favorite part of the long flight was my Coke can.  Clearly I am a nerd because the first thing I thought of was, "SI units!! YAY!" (kJ not Cal and mL... so great!) Mainly, I just slept and ate on the plane after getting myself in the African mood by watching "We Bought a Zoo."  We arrived in Johannesburg at ~4:30pm CAT Tuesday giving me about 2 hours until the next flight.

I had to run around the Johannesburg airport going through immigration after deboarding and again after claiming my bag, checking my bag, and going through security.  I wish all airlines would play nice and just move everyone's bags.  Would have saved me and a few of my other Botswana mates on the flight the hassle.  Though I wouldn't have had a nice conversation with an IBM marketing agent while waiting in one of my many lines.

Anyways, I boarded my final flight for the "day" and had a quick hop over to Gaborone, Botswana where we met one of the Case Western professors in charge of the program, Dr. Lacks.  It was ~9pm CAT Tuesday by the time we arrived at the University of Botswana, so we haven't done too much other than become acquainted with our rooms.  There are 22 CWRU students here for the engineering class, and 8 US students (myself included) here for the research program.

Weather's great here--a nice 15*C and  the stars are amazingly clear.  I will have to say, I've already been messed up by the British influence by almost going down the up escalators in JNB! Hopefully I can  manage the whole crossing the street thing...

Ok that is all. Time for sleep.  More to come soon!
M.e.