31 Mar 2009 – Back in the Swing of Things

Saturday morning was a blur of fitful sleeping on the three-hour ride from the Drakensberg Mountains back to the airport in Durban. We dragged ourselves from our beds at 4:30, nibbled on prepackaged breakfasts while the drivers loaded our suitcases into the trailer, and then did our best to fall back to sleep on the bumpy ride east. The lack of shocks in the big van meant that the three of us in the back seat were launched toward the ceiling at every minor bump, but at least our sleeplessness served some purpose: we got to see the sun rise over the African plains – an eerily dull, red plate pasted against a murky morning sky.

After checking in at the airport, we said our woeful goodbyes to Ben, who will be staying in Durban an extra week to help his organization present at a conference on HIV/AIDS. (We collectively began lamenting his absence within minutes of his departure.) We had almost three hours to kill before our boarding time, so some people grabbed food or scanned the shelves of the bookstores and souvenir shops in the terminal. I found an electrical outlet and plugged in my computer to work on a compilation video of our hike in the Drakensbergs.

The flight home to Cape Town was unremarkable except for the astounding number of infants and toddlers on the plane with us. Their chorus of wails and screeches reached such a pitch that it prompted the man sitting adjacent to me to raise his arms and wave them about like a wild orchestra conductor. Once we’d collected our luggage on the ground, again, we met Parks at our usual van with big grins and warm hugs, and when we rolled up to the front gate of 10 Loch Rd fifteen minutes later, everyone was relieved to be home .

Most of us spent the rest of Saturday afternoon unpacking, napping, doing laundry, and grocery shopping to fill the empty pantries. We began working on assignments due later in the week and watched movies in the evening. On Sunday, most people had left the day open for academic work and relaxation before the return to our internships the next day, so I split the day between laundry, running, homework, and watching Chicago in the common room before bed. I also made up for a week of no guitar by playing my fingers raw in the afternoon. Overall, Sunday was a pleasant buffer between the excitement of the excursion week and the down-to-business energy of the next.

Monday and Tuesday have been back to the usual pace of life in Cape Town. We’ve spent our mornings and afternoons at our internships and our evenings being as productive as possible (though the scale of productivity is highly subjective at 10 Loch Rd) with our papers and other assignments due over the next few weeks. With under a month left of our study abroad, our weekly academic work has accelerated into the final stretch and we’ve begun scrambling to plan out all of the extracurricular things we’ve yet to see and do in Cape Town. Looking forward, Thursday’s class day will be a bit different than usual, this week, but more on that as it happens.