Today, we began our journey to South Africa! Before we left Dulles for South Africa, we gathered at Eastern. We all said goodbye to family and friends. It felt great, to be surrounded by family as we prepared for our 16-day trip around the world. I was excited and curious to travel with my friends because I have never traveled to Africa before.
This will not be my first trip overseas, but is my first trip to the African continent. The plane ride was almost 17 hours long!!! We boarded the plane at about 5:20 pm Eastern Time. Once we got on the plane, everybody tried to get comfortable, because we knew that we were about to take a long flight. At around 8:00pm Eastern Time, the flight attendants served us dinner which was actually pretty tasty (pasta with meatballs). After we ate, we continued to play digital games, listen to music, try to sleep, or watch movies to stop us from being bored. At about 1:00 am Eastern Time, we landed in the city of Dakar in Senegal which is located at the tip of Western Africa. Even though we were still about 10 hours away from our final destination, everybody was so excited to be in Africa that they started recording videos of our group and saying: “We’re in Africa”! “We’re in the motherland”!! “We made it”! At that time, it was almost 2:00am Eastern Time, and close to 6:00am in Senegal, so the sun was just rising. We were so excited to be in Africa, because we had never been here before. I believe that Africa is not what TV shows and commercials portray it to be and I could feel that our eyes were beginning to open to all the great experiences to come.
At about 11am Eastern Time, 3pm Senegalese Time, and 5:00pm South African time, we finally landed in Johannesburg, South Africa. Everybody was so thrilled that we landed at our destination, because we had access to Wi-Fi and were able to contact our family and friends. As we left the plane, immediately we could tell we were no longer home. The accent that people spoke with was different. We changed our dollars into the South African “Rand” and man was that different! We started taking pictures of the South African rand, because we had never seen a black man on a U.S dollar before so it was interesting and satisfying to see Nelson Mandela right in our hands! We then rode a bus to where we would be staying for the week, a backpackers hotel called “Curiosity.” When we arrived to the backpackers location, we were shocked to see that all 14 of us would be staying in one massive room. All of us were upset at the fact that our trip advisors refused to give us the password to the Wi-Fi, so we stayed up until 2:00 am bonding, eating snacks, and complaining too each other about not having the Wi-Fi password. I never realized how important social media was to my generation until it was taken away! Social media is a way for us to communicate with our fellow peers, but I also see how it can be negative by using it too much. I look forward to getting to know each of my classmates more during this trip and getting to explore the streets of South Africa.
Zacchaeus I.