I’m in South Africa and Writing Again
I realize I haven’t written a blog post in over a month, but I’m coming back at you with one of the most exciting travel post series yet.
I could go on about how busy I was and how hard writing blog posts can be when you’re also studying for finals, but honestly, all of that is over, therefore boring to write about. Instead, let’s jump to present day!
The last 24+ hours have been INSANE, to say the least. Myself, as well as a whole gaggle of Kelley kids, have traveled to South Africa to study about how business overlaps with human rights. Our amazing professor, Kelly Eskew, has been leading us in class discussions and intellectual conversations about these topics for the past 9 weeks, and I know I wasn’t the only one more than excited to see this country and meet the people in person.
Our journey to South Africa started in the good ole state of Indiana, where we were taking a relatively short flight to Atlanta from Indianapolis. From Atlanta, we were taking a direct flight (15 hours!) to Johannesburg, South Africa!
Sounds easy, right?
Lmao, nope.
Everything was going quite smoothly until we boarded our flight to South Africa. At this point, I think everyone was getting a bit antsy to get rolling, since we all knew the flight was going to last like a billion years.
But as luck would have it, by the time everyone had boarded the plane, the crew announced that there was something wrong with the cockpit(?). Honestly, I still don’t understand what the issue was. Thankfully, one of my classmates who had a dad who just happened to be an ex-private pilot said that everything would be fine, so I trusted that judgement.
Everything her dad had told us was basically right, but the part he probably didn’t know was that there would be a three hour delay. A whole THREE HOUR DELAY. That’s ridiculous.
Once our class found that out, we were instantly like .... what. The flight alone was already going to be a good 15 hours, and now, a three hour delay? Great.
But, we made the most of our time together on the ground in Atlanta, bonding and making a Snapchat group that mostly consisted of pictures of other people on our flight looking annoyed at us for congregating across the aisles.
By the time we were ready to take off, I was ready to just chill, watch some movies, and eat food. Once we were in the air, I started watching “Mary, Queen of Scots” and honestly, I could not get into it. I tried really hard because I knew it was supposed to be a really good film, but it just didn’t do it for me. Maybe I should try again when there are less distractions around? Someone lmk, okay thank you!
I was mostly excited for food to show up because at this point, I had only eaten a fat burger at noon in Indianapolis and a caramel Frappuccino thing from Caribou Coffee. It was almost 11 pm Eastern time, and I was ready to SMASH.
The flight attendant came around and I chose butter chicken to eat for dinner! Surprisingly, not bad. Shout out to Delta for making edible food that I could actually taste on the plane!
The rest of my flight consisted of me dozing on and off for a bit until I hit a solid stretch of sleep for five hours. When I woke up, I was super disoriented, and I thought that for sure we were almost there. I asked one of my classmates sitting next to me how much time was left and her answer was a good 8 hours LMAO.
With that in mind, I was like great, what am I supposed to do for the next ten hours? I started to scroll through all of the movie choices, but nothing really caught my eye. I watched the wedding scene in “Crazy Rich Asians” and then an episode of “Chopped,” but nothing was really holding my attention. And then I stumbled onto “The Fault in Our Stars.”
The good old classic coming-of-age story by Indiana’s own John Green. Honestly, I was obsessed with the book back in middle school, but after the movie came out, my interest fizzled out pretty quickly. I hadn’t rewatched the movie since probably the first time I had seen it, so I was like great, let’s do this!
Thank god everyone around was straight up slumped because let me tell you girl, I had a MOMENT on that plane. I forgot how sad that movie actually was LOL. It was about 3 am home time, and I was straight up just crying in the middle of this airplane because of this movie. Honestly, I’m kind of glad I cried because my face was starting to feel a little dry from that plane and I needed some moisture HAHA.
The rest of the flight seemed pretty uneventful until myself and my classmate sitting next to me, Becca, realized we were flying over the Namib Desert in Africa. Neither of us had a window seat since we were stuck smack-dab in the middle of the plane, so we both rushed to the back window near the bathrooms and just stared out as our plane flew over.
In that moment it really hit me that I was going to Africa. I mean I know we’ve been studying it for 9 weeks, but it’s so different once you get on that plane and start making that journey all the way to the bottom of the southern hemisphere.
Not long after that, we FINALLY touched down in Johannesburg and everyone was more than ready to get off that plane. The first thing I noticed when I walked into the Johannesburg International Airport was that the air felt stuffy and stagnant, as if no one had moved through the airport in a while.
It was only about 9 pm when we landed, but for some reason the airport just seemed super quiet! Even the line through customs was so short.
Speaking of customs, right before we entered there was an airport employee just scanning people’s foreheads and it looked like something out of Star Wars? Like it looked like some sort of zapper. After texting my family about it, it turns out that the scanner was to check your body temperature, which I thought was pretty interesting.
Customs was super fast, and my customs person didn’t even talk to me lol. All she did was scan my passport, look at me once, and I was good to go! We stan a short customs line tbh.
After that, our class quickly made our way to baggage claim where we scooped up all of our bags and tried to get out of there as quickly as possible. My teacher had arranged for us to meet up with our guide, Cindy, on the giant shuttle bus that would bring us to our hotel.
Everyone was moving quickly because I’m pretty sure we were all exhausted and ready to just lay down or eat food. We drove through Johannesburg and for the first time I got to look and see the world of South Africa.
It was dark, but I could still make out the images of palm trees, strange trees whose branches curled up, and the many fences that lined the streets. I knew I loved Johannesburg even in the dark.
Once we got to our hotel, it was fast moving. They shuffled us all up to the dining room where I had a bomb burger with fries. It instantly put me into a food coma, so by the time we were all done eating, I was ready to get to my room and take a shower.
Our class got super lucky, and it turned out that they had ran out of doubles and they had upgraded a ton of us for free to king size beds and single rooms! I was like YES, I NEED this. Because honestly, I love my class but sometimes it’s nice to just chill by yourself, you know?
I got to my room and was instantly like wow, this is amazing. The bed was huge and the bathroom had a huge shower and bathtub! Honestly, when I saw that I knew that I was truly living my best life.
Also this is a side note but the hotel supplied all of us with some wifi and I literally used it all up in the first two hours that we were in South Africa LMAOOO. Very on brand.
Anyway, I can’t remember much after that because I crashed big time. After over 24 hours of just travelling, I was ready to just go to bed, and my body really felt that.
That’s probably the most accurate recap I could write and it’s getting to the point where my body is ready to go to bed again. Goodnight (or good morning wherever you are), and I’ll write again soon!
All the Best, Sabrina
P.S. There are zero pictures in this blog post because honestly no one wants to see a picture of me after a 15 hour flight LOL.