Made it Safe and Sound! 

But boy is that plane ride brutal.

 

So I am safely in Johannesburg, with the rest of my group.  We all rolled in at various times yesterday.  I and quite a few others were in before 11 AM and so when we got back we hung out for a bit and then walked a few blocks to China Town, no joke! It was pretty much just like any American China Town, we had some good food and then walked back home.  At which, we tried to stay awake, which was insanely hard, but we did it.  We had a delicious dinner at the hostel which was potatoes, chicken legs, veggies, rice and gravy.  Then we all pretty much went to our room (which is a room of 8 bunk beds) and slept. 

This morning was our first full day in Johannesburg and we saw lots! We went to Nelson Mandela house, the Apartheid Museum, Hector Peterson Museum, and stopped at various other places.  We also drove through Soweto which is a town outside of Johannesburg which is very improvised.  We also stopped at the stadium for the World Cup in 2010! It was a long site seeing day but worth it. 

They drive on the opposite side of the road here.  Stop lights are called robots.  The exchange rate of Rand to Dollars is currently around 8.5 rand to the dollar.  This makes pricing very weird because something like a sandwich will cost around 30 rand so you think you are spending quite a bit of money when in reality 1000 rand is around 120 dollars.  Other than that things here are going awesome! It is nice and sunny during the day and at night it gets COLD! But currently we are a ways above sea level and when we are in Kurland we will be at sea level so it will not be quite as cold. 

Tomorrow we will go to one last museum and then we will go straight to the airport to fly to Port Elizabeth and from there we will drive a few hours to Rocky Road.  

Cheers,

Erin Fitz