Our Long Journey There (12/5/14-12/6/14)

All of the months of planning for this Independent study and finally were on our way around the world. Jamie, Brent, and myself have experienced a lot together and we are a wonderful team. These are two people that I throughly trust and am able to spend large amounts of time with them. They are both ambitious and am lucky to call them my friends as well as colleagues. If anyone knows us in our Master's program, they know we are close. This trip was just another adventure and learning journey for the three of us!

After a lovely meal at the Showerman’s house, we were at the airport and boarding a plane to London. I thoroughly dislike flying, but I love South Africa so I put up with the plane rides. After a 7-hour flight was filled with movies and not sleep, we arrived in London.

Every airport has positives and negatives, but Heathrow in London has more cons than pros. I am happy that we had such a long layover because we would have missed our next flight otherwise. It took a few hours to get to the right place. We then got our professor settled in the airport because she was gracious enough to watch our luggage while the three of us went out exploring in London.

My dear fiancé Maxwell will be mentioned many times throughout this blog. Without him I would have no connection to South Africa and would have missed out on life-changing experiences. During his time in Cape Town during the year prior (2013) he made strong friendships. One of his closest friends, Christian, was now living in London. Because Maxwell is wonderful and he attracts wonderful people, Christian was welcoming and patient as he gave us a brief London tour.

In America, when you meet a new person and you both agree it was a decent time, there is a typical mention of a potential coffee date that will probably never happen. In South Africa and the other International people I have met during my time in South Africa, ALWAYS are sincere in their desire to meet up again. In this case, I had never met Christian but he felt a loyalty to me and went way out of his way to make sure we spent time together. I cannot say how thankful I am that Maxwell made amazing friends and they are willing to spend time with me. They will play a role in almost all of my time in Cape Town.

After a short 4-hour London excursion, we headed back to the airport to board our final plane to Cape Town. Only 12 hours over the continent of Africa.