I woke up this morning about two hours ago, thinking I was still in Africa. Not the case. I'm in the Seattle-area, in Shoreline with Chelsea's family. They picked Devin, Chels, and me up from the airport last night and we drove to get some really good pizza dinner in us before we scrambled for bed. Devin just about fell asleep standing up.
The first flight out of Jo'burg to London was the quickest 9-hour flight I've ever taken! Once up in the air, with a bit of pressure to the fluid-filled ears, I could only stay awake for an hour or so before I stretched out and konked out on the guy next to me. I awoke to breakfast being served 6 hours later! I've never slept so hard on a plane before. Thank God, since I was sick! The descent was painful, and left me nearly deaf, and talking on low volume for the duration of the layover in London. I decided it would not be wise to go out into the sub-freezing weather in London whist I was sick, and so I opted to stay in the airport and catch up on journal-writing and some other things that had to get done.
In London, our 8-hour layover turned into 9, since we had to undergo a most-thorough carry-on luggage search and full-body tap-down before we could get on the bus and be bussed across the airport to climb aboard our plane for the next long flight. Security measures were intense after some dude apparently tried to blow up a plane headed for the US three or four days ago, strapped up with bombs all over his body. So the extra security precautions were necessary, apparently. But all of us girls came to the concensus that getting our ridiculouly-sunburned bodies patted down and searched was not fun on the irritated skin. Some of us resorted to lifting up our shirts to the airport employees in a plea for hands-off searching of our tummies, backs, and upper thighs especially, haha. A bit extreme, but let's just say that certain members of the trip had trouble sitting in an airplane seat for the duration of the trip!
The second flight was not as fun. Going up was worse than the first time, and then we all got pretty antsy about 2-3 hours into the flight, and I'm pretty sure we annoyed the living daylights out of most of the other people flying coach around us. 20 students all up and moving around the cabin, socializing, taking advantage of the complimentary (free!!) alcohol and such, haha. I barely slept on this flight, which was what we were instructed to do, since we were flying back in time, so to speak, gaining 10 hours in comparison to South African time we'd been on for the last month. For the duration of this flight, we took advantage of our last hours together. The descent was probably the most excruciatingly painful single thing I have experienced to date in my 21 years of life... I think. My ears screamed at me, and my friend sitting next to me rubbed my back as I held my ears and rocked back and forth for the last 10 minutes and touchdown back in SeaTac. Grrr. Painful, fluid-filled head! I couldn't hear for the next 5 hours, and once again had to ask people to alert me about my volume levels and help me maintain some control over how loud I was getting, or more often than not, if I was speaking in too hushed of voices. (All I can hear is the sound of my own voice reverberating in my head, amongst the dull roar of sounds around me. The loudest voice or noise going on around me is usually what is most amplified in my head, so during my time on safari at the game reserve, and for the travel back Stateside, all I could hear was that one shrill whistle, the seemingly-obnoxious laugh of that one person, or the thumping, thudding din of my friends' voices. It is pretty much awful.)
We flew in just after 5pm (Seattle time) last night, spent the next hour going through the US border/customs and getting our luggage, and then around 6, Chelsea's parents picked us up and took us out for carbs, er, pizza! Yay! By the time we got home around 8:30, we were ready to sleep and crashed, after watching the very exciting end of the Gonzaga game (first loss after a 22-game winning streak! shame, shame!).
I slept for 9 pretty solid hours. It was lovely. After I get a shower for the first time since Friday morning (that was South African time, 10 hours ahead of time here in the US, mind you!), in a couple hours, Eric will pick me up (he has all my winter stuff that I stored at his house before leaving for SA) and we'll take a 5-hour drive back to Spokane, good old home sweet Whitworth! What's another 5 hours in a car, after spending a month driving all over South Africa?!
Anyway, I just wanted to give a little update. Hopefully I'll be posting some more pictures of mine soon, and getting all the photos from other friendlies from the trip, so that we can share memories! I already miss seeing the whole group. After being sick for that one day in Jo'burg, and feeling like I had missed all 30 of those people in the rest of our traveling group for ages, now it seems extremely odd that we left our drivers, Zama, Steph, and Tyler W. in South Africa 48 hours ago. And I feel a loneliness in my heart for everyone else that I've been apart from for just over 14 hours now. Sad. I'm so thankful I'm with Chels and Devin right now. It eases the sting a bit. And I'll have a drive with Eric and Peter on the way back to school this afternoon, so that won't be too bad. I can't wait for the first T.I.A. (This Is Africa!) group reunion!!!
Signing out on the lara-in-sa.blogspot.com entries. Thanks for the readership! Stay tuned for Jamaica in a couple months (possibly; it's just for a week at the end of March)!
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