Finally here!

Hi! I made it to Mossel Bay! I made it yesterday, actually, but it's been busy! So I flew into George, and just because my travel wasn't difficult enough, they lost my bag. Like my big one. Like the important one. So... that happened, and they didn't even have any record of it. They kept calling for a description and all, which is terrifying. Anyway, decided not to worry about it. Ryan came to pick me up (Ryan Johnson is the head researcher here, not to be confused with my Ryan) and we came back to the house. The house is great, in a really nice part of town, and is really big. There are four bedrooms-- two for girls, one for the boys, and then Stefan, one of the scientists, lives upstairs part time. I haven't met him yet; he's in Cape Town this week. So there are 10 interns total, 4 Americans, 4 British, and 2 Italians. Everyone is probably in their 20s, maybe a little older. We can see the ocean from upstairs, which is cool, and there's a big balcony. I have one roommate, also an American. Let's see, what else. So today we were supposed to be doing a 24 hour seal survey (like the one on the SAMPLA blog at www.sampla.org) but the wind picked up tonight so we're waiting until Friday. I was supposed to be out from midnight until seven on the boat, so I'm not too sad about missing it tonight. Although the night part of the survey apparently involves night-vision goggles, which is pretty sweet. We did do a few hours of daytime seal watch today, where we sat on a balcony on the top floor of a hotel and watched seals coming to and leaving from an island for a couple hours. Sorry, we're watching a movie, so I'm a little distracted. So what else. Tomorrow we are going out chumming, which means I should actually get to see the sharks! I kind of have an idea of what happens, but I'll save the details until I can tell you first hand. I'm pretty excited. The weather here is pretty cold, not too bad but definitely sweatshirts and stuff. It's crazy that the cold southern breezes are coming up pretty much straight from Antarctica. Then again, the hole in the ozone layer makes the sun stronger, too, which I guess makes it warmer. What else... we had a barbecue last night (which is apparently called a braai in Afrikaans), then six of us went out last night to a bar, which was fun. Everyone seems really great. Oh, and my bag came today while I was on seal watch! So that was very exciting. I'm all unpacked and settled in. It feels like I've been here way more than a day and a half. Okay, totally distracted, so I'm going to watch the movie. I will definitely let you guys know all about the sharks tomorrow! I can't wait.

19 hours later...

Well, that worked better the second time around. My passport made it back to Atlanta by seven on Friday morning. By the way, if you're ever in a passport/visa-related pinch, I definitely recommend Texas Tower. Seriously, it was about a thirty-six hour turnover (Wednesday afternoon to Friday morning) to get the extra pages in my passport. It wasn't cheap, but it was amazingly fast, and they totally put up with Mom and me asking them to call when they got it, call again when they sent it, etc. I was impressed.

So I flew from Atlanta to Dakar, Senegal (didn't even get off the plane) to Johannesburg. The flight was as easy as it could have been, I had my own TV with on-demand, so that was cool. 27 Dresses was better than I thought, Horton Hears a Who was pretty awful. I did some knitting (I'm making a hat) and slept for a good chunk of the flight (yay for Ambien). Now I'm at my hotel, which was like 2 minutes from the airport and is pretty nice. I worked out, took a shower, and now I'm watching Discovery Channel (sadly, I don't think it's shark week here). All in all, it went as well as it could have. And I should be in Mossel Bay tomorrow afternoon!

Off to a terrible start.

So, in theory, I'm flying right now on my way to Dakar, Senegal, then to South Africa, where I will spend the night in Johannesburg, and then fly to George, where someone from the SAMPLA lab will pick me up to start my internship on Friday. In theory. But clearly, I am not flying to Senegal right now. Which means I won't be in Johannesburg tomorrow night. And I definitely won't start playing with Great Whites on Friday.

We got to the Atlanta airport today with more than enough time to spare, and I went to check in while Mom parked. My bags were tagged, my tickets printed, and the guy was checking my passport when he realized there was a problem. Remember how I had to bribe the customs official in Cambodia last year? (Okay, I just looked, and I never wrote about that. Nevermind.) Basically, there are no empty pages in my passport anymore. Well, there is one, but it's not a specified "visa" page. And in Cambodia, for $20 (shockingly, didn't get a receipt for that one), they will just put your visa over existing stamps. Guess what? You can't do that in America. So as the Delta guy was checking me in, he realized that my passport is completely full, and it turns out I will be issued a full-page visa upon arrival in South Africa. Which means they won't let me on the plane without an empty page. The guy thought that the non-visa-specific page would be fine, but he figured we should go check with George. So we cruise upstairs, where George tells us that if I arrive in South Africa with no blank pages, Delta gets fined $2000. So obviously, they were not about to let that happen.

So I was sent to the Denied Boarding Desk, which totally sounds like I would be surrounded by terrorists and war criminals. Turns out, it's just a division of the visa service. They were nice but not that helpful, so Mom and I hopped on our respective phones and started calling everyone we could think of. (Okay, I'll be honest. Mom hopped on her phone. I sobbed for a while because OH MY GOD THE WORLD WAS ENDING. Then I tried to call my dad. Then I sobbed for a while. Then I texted Ryan, sobbed some more... you see where this is going.) So after talking to four different visa services, Mom realized that there was no way I was getting on my flight, which was in like an hour and a half at this point. In order to get extra pages in your passport, the US Passport Agency has to physically sew them in for you. And there is not a passport agency in Atlanta. Awesome.

So now my passport is on it's way overnight to Texas, where someone is taking it for me to the Houston Passport Agency tomorrow and will overnight it back to me (or courier it on a plane and meet me at the aiport, if necessary). I rebooked my flight for Friday, booked a new hotel for Saturday night, and scheduled a new flight to George, where (presumably) someone can pick me up and I will start playing with the sharks on Sunday.

So, I suppose, the world is not ending. I was just so ready to get there and start this. I've been anticipating it for so long and putting it off for two more days is just pretty heartbreaking. I guess, on the bright side, finding this out upon landing in South Africa after a 19 hour flight would have been worse... especially if I got deported or whatever. The guy at the Denied Boarding Desk was telling us about three people who had just been sent back from India for a similar thing. So it could have been worse, but hearing all this in the airport as I've got everything prepared for this trip was pretty crushing. Hopefully now it is all sorted out, and we will try again on Friday, I suppose. I'll keep y'all posted.