Bonjour de Paris

One flight down, two to go.

As the title says, I'm in Paris - yet doing no sight-seeing. I'm in the Charles de Gaulle Airport waiting to catch my next flight to Maritius, a tiny island near Madagascar. From there, it's only a one-hour flight to Durban. Yes! Ha, but I have another few hours before my next flight.

I think travel, particularly international travel, is so exciting. New places, new people, new languages. The thing is though, it is a little scary. Perhaps scary isn't the right word. It's just near mind-blowing how interesting the path to growing up is.

I was thinking today as I got off my first plane and entered the terminal for my second flight that it was only about two and a half years ago when my parents wouldn't even let me take a day trip, a DAY trip, to Tampa with friends over Spring Break of my senior year in high school. And here I am, less than three years later, in Paris and on my way to South Africa all on my own. Wow.

(Note: I don't know how to look at time-zones. My last flight is actually 4 hours long. Still the shortest of the three flights!)

Goodbye UNC! See you in August 2009!

It still astounds me how fast the semester has come to an end.

I'm half-way through my junior year of college and about to embark on a 6-month adventure. It will be the longest I've ever been out of the country and one of the longest times that I have ever been away from home.

The last post I wrote was quite a while ago and I only wish I had kept up better with it. To say the least however, our trip through South Africa and later Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe was literally something that I will never forget. Something that left an impression on me and somewhere that I plan to return to.

In less than two weeks I will be back in Durban, South Africa! I've been working three jobs all semester to save up the money to buy a roundtrip ticket back and I did it! I will be living there for a month with Morgan and his family. My plane leaves Miami on December 15th and I return January 13th. I definitely plan to visit the family I lived with in Cato Manor, too. I'm sure they'll love some of the pictures I took over the summer and a few extra Christmas presents. It's funny, but with these upcoming travels I feel so grown up. I must admit, I am a little nervous. I'll be in South Africa through Christmas, New Years and my 21st birthday (on January 5th). I know I've never spent all three occasions away from home. Yet my nervousness pales in comparison to my sheer excitement and I cannot wait to go!

Once I come back from South Africa, I have about three days at home in South Florida before I leave to study abroad in Havana, Cuba. The semester-long program is from January 17 through May 16th. I've been dreaming about this opportunity since I enrolled at UNC and it's finally becoming a reality. My Cuban grandparents were actually much more receptive to me going than I thought they would be. While still not thrilled, I know they're excited too. I'll be meeting family that I've always had, but never met.

So for now, I have one more final exam to go and then my drive back to Florida begins. I'm excited to spend at least a few days with my family before my globetrotting continues.

South Africa Post #1

So my first post is a little late - we've been here for about two and a half weeks. Nonetheless, my tardiness is due to the fact that we've been going non-stop, so I don't feel bad at all.

South Africa is AMAZING! We started out flying into Johannesburg after being on a plane for almost 20 hours. We stayed the night in Joburg at a backpacker's lodge and did a lot of tourist activities for the day that we spent there including going to Soweto, a museum of the Soweto massacre, the Mandela house (that sadly, was under reconstruction) and then grabbed some authentic South African grub before flying down to Cape Town in the evening.
Cape Town was everything one could imagine it to be - and more. I still can't believe we went to the Cape of Good Hope. It was amazing just to stand on the top of this mountain, bordering a mountain range and the ocean and it was simply breathtaking. We were in Cape Town for a few days and managed to get out a bit on our own, which was a nice change of pace.

*Also important to note: the group of kids that I am here with is phenomenal. Period. The funny thing is that we are all VERY different and you probably would not guess that we get along as well as we do, but we make it work easily. Our great group dynamics is a huge part of our trip's success, at least in my opinion.

So flash forward from a few days in Cape Town and we landed in Durban, where we will spend the next 5-6 weeks of our trip. Our first two weeks were spent in the Windemere Beachside Apartments, which were beyond amazing. Right on the beach of the Indian Ocean. Every morning I would wake up and either go for a run (often with Jacky) or simply sit out on the balcony of the apartment and look out onto the ocean and watch all of the early-morning surfers catch their waves. It was like a dream. One weekend Jacky, Bernard, Winn, Andrew Z. and I went surfing, too! I must say, I've never been in waves like that; very intense, but so much fun.

As for my job placement at eTV (eNews) in Durban, I really can't begin to describe how crazy it's been. Every day is really a new adventure and while I'm sure there is a lot of paperwork that I am not seeing, I enjoy it immensely. My first day I got to the office and within 30 minutes I got to "shadow" the senior news reporter when we went to cover the xenophobic attacks that have been taking place throughout the country as of late. Sadly, we were covering Mozambicans and Zimbabweans being shipped back to their respective countries, trying to cram their life's belongings on a little bus seat with them. Some situations were more complicated, with parents being natives of other countries but their children having South African citizenship and so many parents decided to stay in the country with their children and risk persecution. The ANC government really hasn't been stepping up to the plate.
To lighten the mood a bit, I didn't exactly bring a lot of professional clothes with me to South Africa so I wore the nicest outfit I had brought to my first day of work. Unfortunately, my pants were too long for me (even with heels) and as a result, my heels kept getting caught in the cuff of my pants and I had been stumbling over myself before I had even gotten to work. Then, when we were at the refugee camp covering the story, Morgan (the senior reporter and I) were running after the camerman to get a shot and before I realized what was happening, my heel got caught in my pant cuff and I landed face first on the cement platform. Not only that, but I literally flipped out of my shoes and landed barefoot with the huge camerabag still strapped on my back. Talk about embarrassing! I quickly got up, realized I had ripped my pants even further so much that there was no longer even a hem to them, and I just laughed. I've always been a clumsy person/accident prone, so I figured my first broadcast internship would be no different. :)