Flying...many miles from anything familiar

First and most important...we are all here...and safe...and all of our luggage came...well except for Kate but she came from Vietnam...so for the most part..it all went well! Really..the flight wasnt nearly as bad as it sounded. Oour flight to JFK was quite quick...I think most if not all of us slept for atleast part of it. Once we got into JFK we had roughly 7 hours to burn and again...it really wasnt so bad...15 other amazing people...its pretty easy to burn some time! This was really the point where it all started to set it...well kind of...mabye one of many time that the experience has become more real...also while sitting at JFK we met Chad..oh Chad..he was a college student from Michigan that was going to Cape Town to do mission work with a church for a little over 2 months...he knew no body there and was flying alone so we kind of adopted him into our group since we should have about 20 hours of flight time with him! I was was really impressed with his ability to go to a place where he knows nobody or really what he was doing and be fine with it! The flight from JFK to Dakar and then Dakar to Johannesburg was a very long flight but we did have our own touch screen TV's in the seats and I think we were fed 3 times or something rediculous so it went pretty well...or as well as a flight that long could possibly go! I slept almost the entire way to Dakar so my plan was to try and stay awake for the second half of the flight to try and get on SA time....but of COURSE the lights went off and there was no way I was going to be able to stay up for 8 hours in the dark. Next...our Jberg-Cape Town connect...to quote Aaron..we need to "HAUL ASS" to get our luggage, through customs, check our bags and then back through security in order to make our Cape Town fligh an hour and a half after we arrived into Johannesburg. I think we were all quite nervous about getting through everything and making sure we made our flight but as usual...it was all okay and we made our flight! However, in Johannesburg airport there is alot of construction going on....thus its very confusing to find where to go! So these 2 men aka the porters helped us find our way and with our luggage...in the end I think they made quite a taking off the "dumb americans"....roughly $50 american for each of them! Atleast we got that done right away! Finally...Jberg to cape town...quick and easy...and of course we got another meal :) Once we all got off in cape town, collected our luggage, we were all soooo ready to get home...shower and clean up! Kate, Aaron, Nikki, Sephimo, Ouma, Diane, and Agith all met us for intros and to take us to our houses we'll be staying in...by the time I finally got off the plane I was just ready to get home..un pack and finally crash...but first we had to get there. Of course we all had a crazy amount of luggage so we packed it all into a trailer and into one of our vans and then tried to pack people where ever we could...most people went in another van...a few went with Aaron and a few went with Sephimo but I ended up riding with one of the drivers in the van with our luggage...he was quite a funny guy and a great first person to have a convo with in cape town.....first impression of housing...amazing...our houses were right across the street from each other so that was/is really nice since we are all right near each other! The first night interstudy got us all pizza and pop and we really just showerd (first and most important), ate, unpacked and hung out. Jesse and I went out and played a little frisbee in the street because it was soooo nice out...its "winter" here but its still 60-70degrees out...nice huh? Then a few more people came out and we all just sat on the ground and realized how surreal this all was still...we were in Africa...thousands of miles away from home...unreal