The House and Car

Hello hello,

So our house is sweet. We have 2 huge bedrooms, a big living room, a full kitchen, 2 bathrooms, a TV, and a huge yard. Also, we are living on the grounds of the place that Sarah and I will be working, so I literally just have to roll out of bed and walk 100 ft. to work. The only downfall to the whole place is that the grass is crawling with biting ants. But still, it is a good deal for sure.

On top of the house, the sisters also gave us a car. Sarah and I just got back from our first driving lesson in a big parking lot near the house. Sister Kay (our primary host right now) was our teacher, which we were a little worried about at first because we did not want to kill her, but in the end it was like taking a little kid on a roller coaster. She was just having the time of her life when the car would shake and die. Both of us did pretty ok for the first time out. The driver sits on the right here and they drive on the left, just in case having to deal with a clutch wasn't enough. I really like going from first to second gear, everything else is too hard to like. We at least made the afternoon for some local security guards more interesting.

So my computer lasted about 0.2 seconds before dying here. This is a bit annoying considering it has many things I need on it and Gateways are not too popular around here so it might be a little tricky to fix. Sucky, I am getting an HP next time around, which may be sooner than I anticipated.

I think I will have Skype here, so everyone should download it and add me to your people. My screen name is Majikbird. I will probably only be able to do it during the weekends, which is mainly when I will have internet. Our house doesn't have internet so I have to go to the Sister's house to use theirs. I will have to schedule talking times, but this system will not be established for at least a week or two so in the meantime, just getting the program is a good first step. I will also be getting a cell phone in case people would rather pay money to talk to me.

My address here is:

Sisters of Notre Dame: Kelly McKone
P.O. Box 476
Kroonstad
South Africa
9500

Please send me things! In the mean time, e-mails are good too!

Later,

Kelly

The Tale of a Bucket of Gatorade

My journey started at 5 am on the 22nd of March. I know my luck traveling and did not expect this to be a graceful adventure, especially since I had to travel through O'Hare Airport, a place that gives me never-ending problems when traveling. First, I was tricked by the passengers on the shuttle-ride over to the airport into thinking that I was traveling on Delta. The driver asked where everyone was going and everyone said Delta, so naturally I assumed I was doing what everyone else was doing. After standing in a long line, the Kiosk told me I did not exist, I realized my mistake, and tried again in the United line. Then came the dreaded weighing of the suitcases. I knew they were both overweight. I knew my big backpack did not fully fit on the scale so even when that is overweight no one ever knows it but me. I was banking on the tires of the other suitcase touching outside of the scale, unfortunately I was not so lucky the second time around: 70 pounds! I was not about to pay the $150 fine and the woman behind the counter was a stickler for following the rules so I could not even pull the "but my violin isn't really a carry-on item" bit. That 20 pounds went straight into my backpack and violin case, making walking a much bigger pain. During the lightening process all the woman kept telling me was that she was doing me a big favor and that I would be better off listening to her, this was completely not true, but made her feel better about making my load heavier. I had to carry one of my buckets of gatorade powder with me because that was a good 4 pounds and I could not bare parting with it.

I got to Chicago just fine, made my tight connection, was on the take-off pad, when the pilot announces that something on the wing was not latching correctly and we had to go back for a mechanical check. They let people off the plane and said they would announce in an hour whether we were leaving or whether the flight was cancelled. Of course it was cancelled and I got in a line behind the 300 other people on the plane who beat me there. This is when I started calling United Airlines like mad. I thought seriously about dumping the gatorade after getting disconnected 3 times, but then I finally got ahold of a helpful agent. She told me I had 20 minutes to get to a new gate to take a flight to North Carolina that would then go on to Washington. I booked it over there, feeling a little bad for kind of cutting in line via phone, but not bad enough not to do it.

I got to Washington in time, saw Sarah's (one of the other volunteers) face as soon as I walked through the door and almost died I was so happy. On top of that, she offered to help me carry things and immediately took the gatorade off of my hands. 16 hours later, we happily arrived in Johannesburg. Unfortunately, due to my sporadic change of flights, my luggage did not come. They told me it was on its way to be delivered to me tonight, but that never happened. Hopefully tomorrow.

We are staying with the sisters currently, we move into our house tomorrow. Everyone is really nice and are so happy to have us here. It is a pretty cool place. It is not the city I thought it would be, it is more like a really big town. Very green, the days are warm (like 70) and the nights are cold, just how I like it. Sarah slept for about 15 hours last night, I only made it about 12 because I randomly woke up at 4:30 am and was wide awake, then around 7:30 I decided I was tired again and that lasted til about 2:30 in the afternoon. The nuns probably thought we were dead. But alas, we are not, we are healthy and happy and I am pleased to report that the gatorade is too.