Laying on my bed in a hotel in Johannesburg South Africa with my mind spinning in circles and wondering what tomorrow will bring.
We managed to get safely from Alexandria, MN to Johannesburg South Africa in the past two days.
This feels significant.
I was on the hotel shuttle earlier this evening listening to the conversations around me and its obvious I am not in the Upper Midwest anymore. Many thick accents and many unfamiliar languages and my very white skin is definitely in the minority here.
There are things to be said for wide body jets that you fly over the ocean. They have slightly more room then small planes in the economy seating area, they have seat back entertainment systems to distract you from the amount of time you are spending in the same seat. They feed and hydrate you pretty regularly. Particularly enjoyed the banana and oreo cookie bar I got sometime in the middle of the night my home time and early morning local time in South Africa, can't say a lot about the other food. It was edible and filled the void in my tummy.
So getting off our plane today I was feeling like a very accomplished traveler and blessed by God. That feeling quickly hit a few bumps. The Johannesburg airport is the nicest airport I have been though in Africa. It has tiled floor and lots of signs. We had been provided information about how our hotel stay here would work. However that was not correct. Expedia is not my friend at the moment. I reserved a hotel room in Johannesburg through there service over a month ago. Then said hotel sent me a note through Expedia that they were flooded and transferring me to a hotel quite a long distance from the airport. So what do you really do about this. After a lot of long phone calls we cancelled the first reservation and made a new one. However they didn't tell me I needed to guarantee it with a credit card to hold the room past 2. They did tell me it was right in the airport. So we first went to the in airport hotel and then had to back track and catch a shuttle to the right hotel. Then arrived to find they had no reservation. End of story is that with a little time spent trying to figure things out we got a room at the second hotel.
There are some comments I can make about people in South Africa around the airport. The hotel desk clerks we dealt with are well trained and were kind and patient, to an amazing degree. We got into a situation with what I believe was a man posing as airport staff who really wasn't supposed to be in the airport at all. He was directing us to the hotel shuttle area and was very polite however it became obvious once we got to the location that he had taken us on a long and round about route to procure a tip and left us at the edge of the area to avoid being found out. As one who has been through a number of international airports and been warned of this I should probably have known better. I got a lot of steps on my fitbit to make up for the time sitting on the plane. I think between going to the wrong hotel and then trekking back through the airport and the round about trip to the hotel shuttle I made over 2.5 miles, hauling our hand luggage. There is a bright side.
I should also note that I had made an effort to book a hotel that had a pool. I thought it would be refreshing after the lengthy plane ride. We got here, I settled a few things and got ready to swim. Out door pool, not lighting, no heat. My feet went in which was okay but with water about the temperature of iced tea I did not go further.
When we were at training in Cambridge Ontario we did skits about stages of being in a new culture. One groups skit dealt with trying to accomplish things. Our experiences after landing today were frustrating and I know I will have more frustrations here but We are safe, God is good and he has brought us this far surely he will see us though.
We managed to get safely from Alexandria, MN to Johannesburg South Africa in the past two days.
This feels significant.
I was on the hotel shuttle earlier this evening listening to the conversations around me and its obvious I am not in the Upper Midwest anymore. Many thick accents and many unfamiliar languages and my very white skin is definitely in the minority here.
There are things to be said for wide body jets that you fly over the ocean. They have slightly more room then small planes in the economy seating area, they have seat back entertainment systems to distract you from the amount of time you are spending in the same seat. They feed and hydrate you pretty regularly. Particularly enjoyed the banana and oreo cookie bar I got sometime in the middle of the night my home time and early morning local time in South Africa, can't say a lot about the other food. It was edible and filled the void in my tummy.
So getting off our plane today I was feeling like a very accomplished traveler and blessed by God. That feeling quickly hit a few bumps. The Johannesburg airport is the nicest airport I have been though in Africa. It has tiled floor and lots of signs. We had been provided information about how our hotel stay here would work. However that was not correct. Expedia is not my friend at the moment. I reserved a hotel room in Johannesburg through there service over a month ago. Then said hotel sent me a note through Expedia that they were flooded and transferring me to a hotel quite a long distance from the airport. So what do you really do about this. After a lot of long phone calls we cancelled the first reservation and made a new one. However they didn't tell me I needed to guarantee it with a credit card to hold the room past 2. They did tell me it was right in the airport. So we first went to the in airport hotel and then had to back track and catch a shuttle to the right hotel. Then arrived to find they had no reservation. End of story is that with a little time spent trying to figure things out we got a room at the second hotel.
There are some comments I can make about people in South Africa around the airport. The hotel desk clerks we dealt with are well trained and were kind and patient, to an amazing degree. We got into a situation with what I believe was a man posing as airport staff who really wasn't supposed to be in the airport at all. He was directing us to the hotel shuttle area and was very polite however it became obvious once we got to the location that he had taken us on a long and round about route to procure a tip and left us at the edge of the area to avoid being found out. As one who has been through a number of international airports and been warned of this I should probably have known better. I got a lot of steps on my fitbit to make up for the time sitting on the plane. I think between going to the wrong hotel and then trekking back through the airport and the round about trip to the hotel shuttle I made over 2.5 miles, hauling our hand luggage. There is a bright side.
I should also note that I had made an effort to book a hotel that had a pool. I thought it would be refreshing after the lengthy plane ride. We got here, I settled a few things and got ready to swim. Out door pool, not lighting, no heat. My feet went in which was okay but with water about the temperature of iced tea I did not go further.
When we were at training in Cambridge Ontario we did skits about stages of being in a new culture. One groups skit dealt with trying to accomplish things. Our experiences after landing today were frustrating and I know I will have more frustrations here but We are safe, God is good and he has brought us this far surely he will see us though.
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