So, it all began on Saturday, 27 Sept, at OR Tambo International airport. Prean and (a very teary eyed) I got on the plane headed for Dakar, Senegal for the first leg of our trip. Prean tried to sleep while i disturbed him every so often to ask if we did the right thing by deciding to leave SA and go live in the US. I mean - how crazy are we? Everything's so nice and comfortable and familiar in SA. My biggest fear is that Mishka is going to forget me :-(
At the airport Caleb looked at me really strangely when he hugged me and saw that I was crying - I think he understood the whole thing alot better than Mishka. I'm gonna miss them both so much. I still get a lump in my throat when I think of her...
OK, so about 2 hours on the plane in Dakar, while they refueled. Security came on board and checked everyone's stuff to make sure there was no unidentified baggage - American airlines are serious about safety. So leg two of the trip - 9 hours to Atlanta. I still couldn't sleep.
Finally we land in the US and all our excitement is squashed by the two hours we spent at the US border/passport control. We even got to go to the little room reserved especially for the "Asians" Once that was done we hopped straight onto the plane to Chicago. Finally - no more plane rides - we were soooo beat by then. Of course - this was not the end of the travelling yet. We still had to get our bags and make our way to the hotel. Bags... hmmm... mine was missing... Anyway filled out the forms & they said it wud be at the hotel by the afternoon. So we made our way to the train to take us to downtown Chicago, and we foudn this en route --------->
Can you see the SA flag? Durban is a sister city of Chicago apparently...
So our hotel is the Inn of Chicago on the Magnificent Mile - it's really nice and we got there at about 3pm on Sunday - about 24hours after we left home on Saturday.
Finally!!! A chance to sleep!
The first night, my friend Fabrizio took us to dinner for the famous deep dish pizza from Chicago's famous -- Giordanos . There is soooo much cheese - its unbelievable - we cant eat cheese for a month now.
We went to the office on Monday to fill out paperwork etc. This is Prean in the office - chatting on google talk if you look close enough...
