Entry No. 1: Closer to Cape Town than Providence

What’s up world? If you’re reading this, you may or may not know that I’m going to be in South Africa this summer, working at Tygerberg hospital in Cape Town, as well as travelling to a few World Cup games. I thought this blog would be a good way to keep people posted on what I’m up to (mainly my parents so they don’t call me every day...yes I’m talking to you mother). My main goals are to just provide you with a perspective of SA, as well as what the world cup scene is like here. Hopefully I can keep you entertained for a couple minutes here and there throughout the summer.

Right now I’m posted up at the Millennium Airport Hotel in Dubai, courtesy of Emirates Airlines. Having already travelled 12 hours from JFK to Dubai, I still have a 9-hour flight from here to Cape Town to look forward to tomorrow morning, which would honestly suck if I weren’t flying on Emirates.

So what makes Emirates so incredible to fly on? It’s mainly just their on-flight entertainment system, which has over 100 movies including recent ones such as Avatar and Invictus, plus every TV show imaginable...all of which you can watch on your own personal screen about the size of an iPad. Sounds pretty sweet, right? Well it is until your screen stops working 2 hours into your flight and when you’re also sitting next to a woman who I will officially call Mrs. Rhino from this point on. That’s exactly what happened to me.

I boarded my flight in JFK being pretty pumped that I had an aisle seat, but my mood quickly went south when I saw Mrs. Rhino in the middle seat next to me. I don’t really know how to describe her, except for the fact that she was huge and had the airplane blanket over her face when I got to my seat. The highlights of my flight sitting next to her included the following: being ordered around to grab her various bags (she had 3) from the overhead areas, having my tray filled with her beverages (red wine) since she didn’t have enough space in her area, and also having her take my disposable toothbrush out of the pack the flight attendants give you and using it, since she couldn’t find her own pack. Lets just say, I was the soccer ball and she was the foot. I also was pretty much sitting in the aisle for most of the flight since she took up half of my seat as well. This allowed me to get steamrolled by the food and beverage carts a few times, which was pretty fun...PSYCH. The only admirable thing about Mrs. Rhino was her ability to guzzle red wine, of which she had 3 bottles with dinner and 2 bottles with breakfast. Oh she’s also a diabetic, which made it even more interesting as her diabetic meal of rice cakes and yogurt would be accompanied by her throwing down the airplane bottles of red wine like she was shotgunning them. The woman has certainly never heard of sipping in her life.

Anyways, that’s pretty much how my first flight went. There was also a couple with a baby sitting in front of me that wouldn’t stop crying, which would have probably annoyed me if I wasn’t so worried that Mrs. Rhino was going to eat it as a snack. I’m hoping I can bang out a few movies on my flight tomorrow including Avatar which I’ve never seen and Paranormal Activity, which is ridiculous and what I was watching when my screen stopped working on my last flight (hopefully not some sort of sign). I’m staying one night at a guesthouse in Cape Town before I officially move into my apartment on June 1st, so I’ll probably write something after that happens. If Mrs. Rhino somehow ends up being on my flight tomorrow, I’ll probably kill myself but let’s hope that’s not the case.

Oh yeah and also...Beat LA! Beat LA! Beat LA!

Peace.