Come to South Africa!!

 Yep, I am finally in South Africa!  It has been an exciting couple of days for me.  About eight of us left from Los Angeles to start our internship in South Africa on Tuesday night.  Our first stop was London (which is cool—I have never been to London before!)  It was a short four hour layover, but it was much needed!  Our total flight time to South Africa was over 20 hours.  That’s right—20 HRS!!!  But is was worth it! 🙂   We got to Cape Town at 7 am on Thursday.  Our travel guide, Terry Bingley, picked us up from the airport and took us for a short tour around Cape Town.  It is amazing to see the difference in terms of living conditions.  On the way to Cape Town, you get to see the townships where people live in homemade shacks basically.  Then you come to the Waterfront Marina and Cape Town, and it seems like you have entered Paradise!

We got to our hotel and most of us crashed instantly.  I slept over 14 hours the first night!!  Amazing!!! 🙂  The time difference from LA to Cape Town is nine hours.  For the first couple of nights, I was waking up at 3 in the morning ready to go, but then I would be dragging my feet around 1 pm.  It’s getting better, so I am glad about that! 🙂

In each place that my family and I have been to, we have tried to experience the food of the country.  Kristin got to eat a bat in Palau and Mom and Dad have been adventurous in their eating as well.  I went with my roommate Stephaney to a Grill restaurant at the Waterfront Marina, and I noticed that they featured some African cuisine meals.  They had a variety of things like warthog, snake, kudo, alligator (sorry Gator fans!), and ostrich.  Well—I have had alligator before, and I wasn’t yet ready for snake, so I wanted to get ostrich.  I also got ostrich because Dad was telling me that instead of a turducken in South Africa, they have an ostriducken!!!  I have to say, it was REALLY good!  Another thing that I noticed is that South Africans put ketchup (or Tomato Sauce as they call it) on everything!!  When I mean everything—I mean everything!  One of the side dishes that I had with my ostrich were mashed potatoes with tomato sauce.  These were the best that I have EVER had!!!

Karen Freberg 🙂