“Stranded” in South Africa

On Sept. 30th, the 19 other Madagascar Volunteers and myself were put on a bus and driven from our hotel in Philadelphia to JFK airport in New York. One volunteer was holding onto our passports and we had tickets to get us to Jo’burg, South Africa. (Our Madagascar Air tickets were electronic tickets that we would get at the airport on Oct. 2). When we arrived at the airport we gathered all of our luggage from the bus (I was carrying a 35 lb. pack on my back, my 20 lb. backpack on my front, and dragging a 42 lb bag behind me) and realized that we were at the wrong terminal!

So the 20 of us, carrying our weight in crap, waddled over to the shuttle and took it the wrong direction to our terminal. After 30 minutes of confusion we finally found the right direction and made it to check in! YAY!! step one complete!

On the flight we enjoyed terrible food and wonderful movies (I got to travel to Narnia and back!) and the fabulous vivid, creepy dreams that accompany our Malaria pills. Half way through the flight someone noticed their feet were a little swollen…and all of us realized we had tree trunks for ankles! Oh no! We tried sitting so our feet were elevated, or sticking over the seats…but the other passengers didn’t seem to appreciate our smelly feet in the air.

Finally we arrived in Jo’burg and made it to our BEAUTIFUL hotel where we were greeted with complementary South African Wine and cheese; all the while a sweet south african musician played beatles songs on his guitar. I was so overwhelmed I began to tear-up! Then we saw our rooms! OH my! The beds were large white fluffy clouds and the rooms had the sexiest showers we had ever seen! What a way to start Peace Corps! The food there was wonderful; they even had a chocolate fountain for desert.

The next morning we had breakfast and headed to the airport EXTRA early to be sure we caught our flight (we arrived at 1130 am, and our flight was at 3pm). We couldnt find the check-in counter, so we assumed it wouldnt be set-up until our flight time. Around 1pm we realized that we were booked on the 9:25 am flight, NOT the 3pm flight! Peace corps mixed up the times when they switched us from paper tickets to electronic tickets and didn’t tell the people in Philadelphia! So we ran around the airport, exchanging money, buying calling cards, calling PC Madagascar, PC Headquarters, SATO travel, and the hotel. Finally it looked like they were going to book us on the 3pm flight in time! We started to run to the terminal, but it was too late. We were ‘stranded’ in south africa for another night! By 5pm we booked ourselves on a flight for tomorrow morning and got PC to put us up in the beautiful hotel again! Oh well, one more night in heaven