My Warm Welcome to South Africa

Greetings from South Africa!

Getting Here
Yesterday I caught a 6:15 flight from Geneva to Zurich and the Zurich to South Africa. While the shorter flight was relatively uneventful, the 10 hour flight to South Africa was a little bit hectic. When I arrived at the airport in Geneva I collected my boarding passes and noticed that rather than a seat on the flight to SA it said Standby. When I asked why that was there they explained to me they had overbooked the flight but there would be room for me. There was, unfortunately it was the worst possible seat on the plane, the very back row, where there were no windows and I was next to both of the lavatories. This meant of course that I barely slept, which was quite unfortunate. There was also fairly frequent "Light" turbulence not fun. But other than that it was relatively uneventful, although I did have a bit of trouble explaining in French that I wanted to have my bags wrapped in plastic.

Arriving
When we touched down in SA I felt a bit of trepidation getting off the plane as I had heard that the OR Tambo airport could be hard to navigate and was rife with pickpockets. As opposed to a confusing mess I found a recently refurbished airport which is actually the equivalent if not nicer than Pearson Airport in Toronto, although the arrivals gate was more awash with people.
When I arrived I was meant to be picked up by a cab driver who had been recommended me by the ISS. Unfortunately, he did not call when he was meant to. Fortunately I had made friends with a fellow from England who recently made the life changing decision to drop everything he was doing and pick up a safari guiding course in a remote area of South Africa. He had told me he would be driving through Pretoria to get to where he was going so upon realizing things were not going to work with Victor I conferred with Rob and after some hmming and haaing he decided it was still possible. This was also a lucky find as it cost me significantly less than taking a cab which was great! Then came the first of one of many coincidences today which was that while driving he and I discovered that we share a Birthday, although he is 4 years older than me. In any case it was a very nice drive.
When we pulled up on Mackenzie street, we were met by one of the people who work at Friends Accomodations where I was staying who informed me I was at the wrong house, which was no problem since the right house was just 3 houses down. So he showed me to my room and then we sat down and talked. He asked what I was doing here and I explained my research and that I would be working with the ISS. When I said this he told me that his sister worked at the ISS and when I inquired who she was turned out that her name was Gugu who was mentioned to me by an intern at the Small Arms Survey from the ISS who had told me all about the staff of the arms management unit I will be working with who is apparently a lovely person. So then imagine my surprise when I logged on to my dalhousie email account and found two emails from the ladies who were mentioned to me by the intern at SAS including Mzi's sister Gugu welcoming me to the country and inviting me to spend time with them.
the people Im living with are also very friendly and international. There are two dutch interns, a Spanish grad student and apparently a french intern who is also at the ISS. For lunch I was taken out by the couple who own the house along with Mzi and Sylvia, the Italian student which was very lovely.

So now I have a problem as I have 2 invitations out tomorrow night, one from the people I live with and one from my new friends at the ISS. Hard decision.

What Pleasant Surprise! the weather is nice, people are friendly and the landscape is beautiful. I like it!