Back from South Africa

I'm back in the States and dealing with some crazy crazy jet/time/season change lags. I am utterly exhausted by 8 or so and wake up at 3ish in the morning. I also recently went from getting a sunburn sitting out in my tank top to getting frostbite on my toes.

The trip to South Africa was a bit of mind bender to me. I flew straight to Jo-burg (as South Africans lovingly call Johannesburg) and then another 2 to Cape Town. On the flight to Cape Town, a really really drunk French man sat in front of me. For two hours, he attempted to hit on every female within arms distance. The poor woman who sat in his row was cornered into the window seat by this man. Being French didn't really matter except that he seemed even more lecherous with a drunken French accent. He was really giving French men a really bad name.

When I arrive, it was evening but warm and lovely. To top it off, my friend (the groom) who was getting married happened to meet me at the airport. Whoo hoo! That made up for the crazy drunken French man.

Since the wedding was about seven days away and I had no wedding responsibilities other than the honor of making the toast to the groom's parents (I succeeded in my goal of keeping it short and sweet), I got to play the tourist for the next 7 days. This was by far the most stereotypical touristy trip I have done in a very long time. Each day was fairly packed with sightseeing and doing of fairly touristy stuff. All in all did not much interact with the locals and wondered every so often as to whether or not I am really in a different continent. We had been warned time and again that South Africa was very dangerous and I should avoid all contact with locals that either hadn't been vouched for or I didn't know. I am not used to NOT interacting with people I don't know. When at home, I am quite happy to talk to strangers at bus stops.

I had tried to upload some photos and descriptions but was having trouble with blogger. So I will post more in the upcoming days.