Days 1-4

Thursday, July 17, 2008
Good news guys, in case you haven’t heard, we made it to South Africa. Our trip was, in a word, LOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG. Coming from Erika, who can barely sit still for an hour and a half in church, the 26 hour trip almost made me go crazy. We left Grand Rapids at 1:05 in the afternoon on Tuesday. We had a 2 hour flight from there to Minneapolis. We had choice seats…last row of the plane, right across from the bathroom. It was super loud, but we managed to talk through most of the flight, so it went pretty quickly.

In Minneapolis, we found our gate easily. We ate the “gross sandwiches” that John had made, which turned out to be REALLY good. Maybe we were just hungry. We boarded the plane to Paris about an hour before take-off, found our seats, and settled in for the nine hour flight. We both had our own DVD screens, so we watched movies together by pressing play at the EXACT same time, so as not to be ahead of each other. We watched 21 together, and then John started like, 3 more movies, before settling on Phone Booth, while I watched Tarzan (Sarah and Maggie, I had our Disney movie day alone:-( ). We both read for awhile, as well. They served us what was supposed to be breakfast, but since our body clocks were still on Grand Rapids time, eating airplane egg McMuffins at 11 p.m. seemed a little funny.

We landed in Paris at about 12:30 in the morning our time, and faced a four hour layover. We waited in a line that zig-zagged back and forth SEVEN times, and got pointed to a much faster one on the 6th zag…it figures. Once we finally got through there, we promptly forgot the gate number that had taken us forever to find when we had gotten off the plane. We crossed our fingers and headed left, and luckily we were correct. We set up camp on the bright orange chairs at E-37, and promptly fell asleep. John couldn’t get comfortable in the chairs, so he lay down on the beautiful red-striped carpet. Yes, orange chairs and red carpet…I know. We slept for about an hour, and shortly after I woke up and we both made trips to the bathroom that I had a terrible time following signs for, which may have just been my own fault, it was time to get in line to board. By this time it was about 4:30 a.m., and my hour of sleep was not NEARLY enough. I was so tired I was having trouble standing up straight in line…I was kind of doing a weird sway thing that I’m sure wasn’t healthy.

We boarded the plane, and I stole the window again. As a punishment, according to John, my movie screen thingie refused to work properly, no many how many times I smacked it. We were just hoping that we had our three person row to ourselves when some lady who, according to John didn’t smell so pleasant, sat down on the end. I was so tired, I fell asleep almost right away, despite the 4,000 very LOUD students from London or somewhere, who were making the trip with us. I slept on and off for the next 3 hours or so, stopping when they fed us lunch. Apparently, French people are notoriously rude, and airplane food is notoriously bad. We found the former to be mostly false, and the latter to be mostly true. John was a big fan of the stewardess’s French accent, even when I was getting frustrated because they kept babbling over the loudspeaker in French, and then following it in English too rapid and accented to really understand. The lunch food wasn’t so bad, except the mango-something chocolate fruitcake and cold chicken with cold vegetables. Supper, however, was less than palatable, including Creole-style salad that I almost spit out and John consequently refused to try, and chicken that was a little green. The apple crumble, however, was excellent. John supplemented his food with about 300 starbursts (the smoothie kind), which he managed to drop at some point on all three flights. We tried to watch P.S. I Love You…John succeeded, but my player kept going back to menu every two minutes, and I eventually got so frustrated that I went back to sleep. The loud English kids woke us both up with about three hours to go. John started about 5 more movies, and, in honor of Disney movie day, I watched Mulan (Let’s get down to business to defeat the Huns…). The last half hour draaaaaaagged by, but around 3 in the afternoon our time, and 9 p.m. theirs, we landed and got off our last plane for a MONTH!! The passport line was super long again, and it took forever to get our luggage, but we finally found it and headed to the front of the airport.

Morgan was the first Miskin we saw, and it was so nice to see a familiar face. Gordon was the one who drove to get us, and seeing him for the first time in a year and a half was amazing. Linz, he was wearing a scarf…actually, I’ve seen lots of scarves lately, so I guess you were right:-). On the ride home, we learned that apples don’t fall far from the tree, that all roads lead to Rome, and when in Rome, one should do as the Romans do. We also decided to follow Pat’s advice, which was confirmed by Gordon, that we needed to just “take it all in”. Anyway, we got to their house around 11, and Mrs. Miskin fed us REAL food while we got acclimated. John, who had been pumped at the airport and ready to do sit ups, finally got tired, and we all went to bed pretty quickly.

The plan was for us to just sleep as long as we wanted on Thursday. I slept until noon, which pretty much caught me up on the sleep I’d missed, as well as Wednesday night’s. I got up and showered, and, Mrs. Sikma, used SCARLETT’S blow-dryer. John was still sleeping, so Mrs. Miskin made me some lunch, and then went out with Gordon to John’s room, which is in a separate little cottage thingie to catch up for awhile. The rest of the day was spent touring the house and yard, both of which are amazing, and just hanging out and talking with Gordon, Scarlett, and Morgan. Tomorrow, Friday, we might go to school with Scarlett and Morgan. Other than that, we plan to take it easy for the rest of the week, and starting on Monday, we’ll be doing things with Mrs. Miskin.

Some things we’ve noticed:
-There are sliding bar thingies, like security gates, on some of the doors to the outside, and locks on pretty much every door inside and out, except for the bathrooms, which we found ironic.
-Along those lines, John found out that the faucets in his shower are switched, so the cold is hot and hot is cold. He discovered this unfortunate mix up while waiting and waiting for the water to get hot, and even trying to take a freezing cold shower, before trying the other faucet and getting warm water.
-Rather than grilling, they braai (rhymes with sigh)
-The water is too acidic here to be of much use. In fact, they don’t even shower with it, but use apple juice instead.
-I almost certainly should have gotten every single vaccination available due to the five pound mosquitoes we’ve been killing with baseball bats.
-The plugs do, in fact, require adaptors, so it’s a good thing I brought mine
-Making grilled cheeses at 1:30 a.m. makes the dogs bark and wakes the whole house…but we were HUNGRY because it was supper time for us.


Friday, July 19, 2008
For the record, we ARE keeping you updated; it’s just that you can’t always see the updates. I heard that everyone is waiting for our blog to start, so we’re sorry it’s taken so long, and we’ll try to do better from now on. We didn’t end up making it to the girl’s school on Friday due to vehicle issues. Gordon went to pick up the girls, bringing them along with two of Scarlett’s piano students. We hung around the house for most of the day, wandering between Gordon’s little house place and the living room, stopping occasionally in the kitchen for some food. I was super tired, so I kept dozing off at random intervals. I had to charge my computer in Gordon’s room, where he has a voltage converter, since mine had unfortunately decided to blow the night before. I need to go get another soon, I think. Scarlett showed John and me a bunch of pictures on Gordon’s computer, and he took over my computer to see what I’ve been up to for the last year and a half, as well. Scarlett’s friend Lydia and Gordon’s friend Nathan stopped by in the afternoon to meet us, which was nice.

I went with Gordon to the grocery store to get hamburgers and buns for supper, my first time out of the house since we had arrived. Gordon had made plans for us to go to some church opening thing that Nathan invited him to, but at the last minute, due to my extreme tiredness and more vehicle issues, he and John ended up going alone. The girls and I cleaned up, and then settled down on the couch for a girl’s night of Grey’s Anatomy. I brought the first two seasons, and was delighted to find that Scarlett and Morgan are as addicted as I am. We watched what may have been an unhealthy number of episodes before being interrupted by two more Miskin friends, Danielle and Handsome. They had tea and we all talked for awhile. Handsome says he’s going to take us rock climbing, which sounds like it might be fun…if I don’t fall out of the harness or something.

I had been pretty sleepy before they arrived, but by the time they left I was wide awake. Gordon is house sitting, so he left to go take care of the dog, but the girls, John, and I sat up talking awhile more. I decided I really need to get on some regular time here, though, so I said good night and told myself I was GOING to sleep. It kind of worked…I was sleeping by 1:30, which is a pretty regular time to go to sleep on a Friday night, so I suppose the jet lag is getting better. Six hours is a lot of difference when you think about it!!

Today, Morgan woke me up at 9:30…when we were supposed to eat breakfast. Since anyone who knows me at ALL knows that I’m not at all fit for human contact right when I wake up, I opted out of breakfast and grabbed a shower and got ready before I ate my pancakes. I’m far more civil after a shower. By that time, Gordon and Nathan had arrived at the house. Mrs. Miskin told them that they had to take John and me to Cullinan, so that’s what we did today. Cullinan is a former diamond mining town that now kind of reminds me of a small, quiet Grand Haven. It has several little shops and restaurants on one of the streets, which is where we went. We ate at a place called The Lemon Tree. It was lunch time, but for some reason it was decided that we weren’t going to actually eat lunch, but rather just kind of get whatever. There isn’t very much sugary food here, which is very different than at home, so I decided to go for the cheesecake. It was the same color as the cheesecake at home, but that’s where the similarity ended. It was much more gelatinous, less sweet, and wasn’t very cream-cheesey. None the less, it was pretty good, and the piece was HUGE.

We stayed at the restaurant for quite some time, before leaving for home. Rather than taking the highway as we did on the way to Cullinan, Nathan drove us home on the back roads, so we went over about a million speed bumps and got stuck behind a very slow truck. The scenery was absolutely gorgeous, though. We were on a road that was cut right through the hills. On one side of us were these red rocks that made me think of Mr. DeVries. I’ll have to get him a sampleJ. Farther up on that side, and on the other were more hills with pretty red-roofed houses and such. The whole scene reminded me a lot of the desert in Arizona, actually; I loved it.

We had to make a pit stop for Gordon at the house, before we headed back out to the Pretoria Government Buildings, about 10 minutes away. It was gorgeous there, as well. The street the buildings were on overlooked the whole city of Pretoria. The buildings were long and brown…think like, the Parliament building in England, except a lot smaller and without the guys in the tall, fuzzy hats. In front were stairs with gardens on either side…kind of terraced down the hill. The sun was out and it was about 70 degrees. We camped out in the grass for awhile in the sunshine, playing the Indian War Game and cards and taking pictures and just hanging out. It was just beautiful; I didn’t want to leave.

When we got back home, I had a missed call from my mom, who misses me:-). It was really good to talk to her and hear how everything is going at home. I hadn’t called since right when I got to the airport, so we had a lot to talk about. Unfortunately, we couldn’t talk long because, as Matt so helpfully likes to tell me, South Africa is a long way away, so it’s expensive. It made me miss being able to just call whoever, whenever I want. She told me that everyone is clamoring for blog updates though, especially you, Grandpa Meyers, haha, so here you go. I hope it’s not boring, but you guys said you wanted to know EXACTLY what’s going on. Plus, it’s John’s turn next, so that will keep you entertained, I’m sure. I’m writing this in the afternoon, so hopefully I’ll be able to post it tonight. I also hope to check Facebook, because I miss TALKING to some of you guys!!