Tag: South Africa

It’s ‘plane’ and simple. Traveling is easy…

Published on by sarahsouthafricaLeave a comment
He said.  That’s what my dad told me on the way to the airport.  “Traveling is easy, you’ll be fine.”  While my trip wasn’t that bad, “easy” isn’t the word I would have used.  First of all, my dad hadn’t been spending the last five months preparing for this trip, doing chores for DU, UKZN, Interstudy, and Daniels Fund.  I had to email people like crazy and go to so many places.  The to-do list was crazy, and that’s not normal for simple traveling (although it is normal for study abroad students).  So, let’s just take a run through of my travels, shall we?
DIA:
July 12th 2012:  11pm
Goodbye: United States of America.
Hello: South Africa.
I am currently sitting in DIA.  To my right is a cute young man, in a white polo, a few years younger than me on his phone.  In front of me there is a couple, both silent and on their computers (ouch).  A different couple on their phones, eating McDonalds (at least they’re talking).  And a woman with a carry-on bigger than I knew was allowed.  I found that I still fear airports.  Everything went smoothly, it took under fifteen minutes to get to my gate from the time I left my family.  But my soul is crinched sitting here.  I’m not sure why.  Maybe it’s because it feels like limbo.  I know where my past was and where my future lies.  The airplane takes me to my future, but then there is this place.  The place where you just sit and wait.  It’s like limbo; and I don’t like it.
Everyone keeps asking if it has hit me yet.  I mean, I’m going to Africa for goodness sake.  In theory, it should be hitting me about now.   It’s not.   It just feels like another step to take.  Change happens and it’s happening now.  That’s all.  I wonder if it’ll ever hit me.
Flight 1:
July 13th 2012: 1am
I’m awake.  I’m on a plane, and I’m awake, and I will remember it this time, unlike any other plane ride I’ve been on.  It’s really pretty.  It’s dark and the lights are out.  Jet Blue is has nice planes.  It has decent legroom and plenty of snacks and water coming around.  Plus a personal TV, which is always nice.
The landing is fun.  As the sun was comes up in New York I get to see the city from above while watching the sun rise.  =)
JFK Airport:
I’ve spent five hours in this airport and have nothing to say.   It’s not very ‘New York’ ish.  I went straight to the gate and stayed there.
Flight 2:
 
17 hours.  I have to be on a plane for 17 hours.
I fell asleep during the take off.  Now they’re feeding us a full meal.   The food is wonderful.  Their TV’s have over forty movie choices and most musical artists I can think of.
Seriously, every single time my stomach says “mommy, I’m hungry…” the flight attendants come around with food.  It’s like South Africa Airways understands the way the human stomach operates on a plane.  And all of their food is really good.  I’ve also slept through basically the entire flight.
My favorite feature on the plane is the flight map.  It shows us the temperature outside at our landing destination, the time at our landing destination, how much time we have left on the plane, and how fast we’re traveling.  Also, it has a nifty map that shows us the world, our travel path, and where we’re located on that path.  So you always know where in the world you are.  And it has what I call “the black whale.”  It’s really just showing where the sun is up and where it is down throughout the world… but it looks like a whale.
Never again.  I never want to sit through a 17 hour flight again.  I’ll walk and boat back to the US.  I am so bored the entire time.  Just sitting there drives me insane.  I never even watch a movie.  Although flying above the clouds and going through them is pretty.
Joburg Airport:
Welcome to South Africa, may we have your passport?
Dear US government… you can’t issue me a passport in 2015 when it’s only 2012.  And thanks to your little mistake they red flagged me, sent me through security, and scared the crap out of me.  One of my biggest fears through out the last few weeks have been airports.  For no reason I can explain, I have nightmares about them.  Needless to say, this little endeavor put me into tears.  The men in the room kept saying, “You shouldn’t cry.  It’s okay.”   It was cute (and also the only thing I could understand because their accents are so strong), but it just made me cry more.  I knew I had no reason to cry and I couldn’t stop.  I feared not being allowed into the country and losing my scholarship and not knowing what to do with the rest of my life.  And on top of it all, I couldn’t understand them, so I just looked like an idiot.  They just passed it off as a human error, and I have to find someway to fix it soon, before someone else official needs my passport.
At this point, it hit me.  Mainly because I really wanted to call my friends and family and have them support me.  I wanted to tell them the VISA story.  And I realized that they’d be reading it somewhere or they’d hear it in four months.  It took a while for the tears to stop. =(
I bought myself an ice cream treat after that.  And coffee.  The ice cream was good, and the chocolate bar in it was really good.  The coffee was crap.  No amount of creamers or sugar could make it taste better.  Oh, and they have coins that are 2 Rand.  The currency here is fun.
I fell asleep waiting by my gate.  I know I said I didn’t want to fly again, but I just want out of this airport so bad that I really want to be on this next flight.
Flight 3:
Short is an understatement.  By the time we’re seated and SAA hands out a full meal and cleaning up, we’ve landed.  I tried the plane’s coffee.  It’s just as bad as the airport’s coffee.  Maybe South African coffee is just bad.
Durban Airport:
Seven hour wait.  The rest of the Americans will show up and then we have an hour trip to the school.  Then my traveling here is over.
I went to the ‘toilet’ (they don’t call them restrooms) and hit my head really hard on the door.  Ouch.  I made a friend though!  He also goes to UKZN, but on a different campus.  He was picking up people for a conference.  After a little while I started understanding his accent.  He says it’s hard to understand American accents because they’re fast.
I slept during most of this lay over.  I just slept sitting down, laying my head on my luggage, which was sitting in front of me.
Interstudy finally showed up.  I was worried when they weren’t there at 8:10 and the American I knew coming here hadn’t gotten off the plane yet.  They were there a few minutes later.  And we were on our way!  Let the adventures begin.
Sarah Caulkins, DUSA Blogger

The Ultimate Decision

Published on by sarahsouthafrica3 Comments

On a chilly November morning a young woman was spotted crossing the street at Evans and University.  She was flustered, in a rush, and multi tasking (as most young people in this time period do).  The noticeable thing about this common situation were the papers in her hand.  Multi-colored and large in quantity, it was clear that the papers had been acquired from a Study Abroad 101 session.  They were brochures for different schools in different countries.  While most students leave their 101 session with a few flyers, Sarah left hers with 89.  When she was spotted, she was in the process of arranging the flyers by color, into different regions.  Sorting the schools by color was the only way Sarah knew how to start.

As a mathematics major at the University of Denver, Sarah only knew one thing about her academics abroad: she didn’t need to take any math.  Maybe she’d take a few theater classes to fulfill some of her minor requirements, but theater was offered everywhere.  She didin’t have a particular interest in a certain language, she didn’t have to go anywhere for scholastic reasons, and she didn’t have an interest in a certain area.  That is why she walked out the 101 session with every flyer that didn’t have a language requirement or other prerequisite that she didn’t have.  That was why she was sorting flyers by color because it was the only way she knew how to start.  Because she didn’t have a single preference on where to go.  Actually, she didn’t even want to go.

Sarah is a master of the idea, “Don’t wait for the rain to pass, learn to dance in it instead.”  A life in poverty and tragedy teaches some to rebel, be angry, and do things they think they ‘deserve’ after all of the crap they’ve been through.  It teaches others to be happy with what they’re given, work hard, and change whatever they can.  As a Daniels Fund recipient, Sarah fell into category two.  The Daniels Fund is a supplemental scholarship to any University in the United States.  This includes financial coverage of study abroad.  As someone who had never left their hometown and who had only been on a plane twice, it’s more than unfathomable that she got to study in a different country for almost no cost.  So much more unfathomable was that she didn’t want to go.  She was happy at DU. She’d found a home, friends who she loved, and a place she belonged.  She was more than blessed, and couldn’t think of a good reason to leave it except the fact that everyone told her she should.  Deep down she knew she should too, but knowing and feeling are two different things.

Luckily the story doesn’t end with a confused girl with 89 flyers.  I know this because I am that girl and I know that I’m going to the University of KwaZulu-Natal Pietermaritzburg.  It’s a beautiful school in South Africa. (see below)  The thing is, the process of choosing UKZN wasn’t simple.

After organizing the schools by region, I realized how pointless that was.  I’ve never dreamt of going anywhere.  I’m not even sure if I understood that I could.  So I didn’t have a place I really wanted to visit or didn’t want to visit.  Who cares what part of the world the school’s in?  So then I prayed a lot.  I read through all of my flyers again and again.  I tried asking myself questions to narrow the search.  Do I want strong culture shock?  Do I want to live on campus, with other international students, or in a home of a native?  Do I want a lot of other Americans around?  Do I want beauty and places that have lots of adventure?

The more I questioned myself, the more I didn’t know the answer.  I’d be happy anywhere, and probably happiest right here at DU. I got rid of the schools that required me to take a language while I was abroad because I stink at foreign languages.  I got rid of the flyers that told me I had to present a ‘portfolio’ to get in because I didn’t have one and didn’t have time to make one good enough to get accepted.  I got rid of the schools that didn’t offer theatre classes and the ones that specialized in an area that I’m not good at.  I had about 41 flyers left.

“The heart can be deceptive, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t listen to its suggestions.”

I had spent so much time of weeding out schools based on facts about them, and I felt like I was getting nowhere.  So I tried a different technique.  I let my heart decide.  I just started reading flyers (for about the 30th time) and placed them in piles.  The ones I was sick of looking at and reading I placed into the ‘no’ pile.  The ones that made my heart excited got placed into the ‘maybe’ pile.  The maybe pile only had 13 flyers in it.  This process was more successful than I thought it would be.

With only thirteen schools to look at, I felt more equipped to make a decision.  I looked up the schools online.  I looked up information about where they were located, climate, culture, ect.  I looked at pictures and imagined myself in each place.  Then I let it go.  I didn’t look at those thirteen flyers for about two weeks.  I didn’t think about abroad.  I went on with life and gave my brain, heart, and soul a break.

When I went back two weeks later, I played the heart game again.  They all still excited my heart.  I was still interested in all thirteen, but there were five that I lingered on just a little bit longer. There was Canterbuy in New Zeland, Cork in Ireland, Tasmania in Australia, Ulster in Northern Ireland, and KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg in South Africa. With in a day I had chosen UKZN.

A mini story is that I knew that I was leaning towards this school since my study abroad 101 session.  My 101 leader, Christina, went the UKZN three years ago and she spoke about how she got into a class where she got credit for working with kids who have AIDS in a children’s hospital.  Afterwards she and I had a long talk about me not wanting to go abroad and she prayed with me about it.  Through the entire process UKNZ lingered towards the top, but I didn’t want to choose it just because it was the first interesting school I heard about.  I wanted to go to the best place for me.

Once I started talking about the schools to different people, the answer became clear.  First of all, I received an email that day that told me that two schools weren’t offered for the Fall of 2012 anymore.  They both happened to be on my list. Then I was telling my pro and con list of the three schools to one of my best friends, Adam, and when I was done he gave me ‘the look’ and said, “I already know where you’re going and you do to.  Why is it even a question?” I knew he was talking about South Africa, but I asked him just to make sure.  He was.  Then I was explaining the options to one of my adult role models and he just politely listened.   After a leadership meeting, where I shared that he has a way of saying things that don’t relate to anything I’m going through, but some saying exactly what I need to hear, he looks me in the eyes and says “South Africa”.  When I woke up the next morning, I knew what I wanted.

I went through the motions, just in case.  I knew deep down that I wanted to stay here.  It took a lot to find my fire.  I talked to a lot of people, I prayed a lot; I did a lot of research.  I found reasons that I needed to go, besides just ‘ not losing an opportunity.’  I reached a point where it was my reality, and an exciting reality at that.

Sarah Caulkins, DUSA blogger