I made it!

Hello from South Africa! There's so much to tell, I don't know where to start. Well first, the flight wasn't so bad. Even though I was in the plane for ~18 hours, I managed to sleep most of the way. We were met in Cape Town by the rest of the group and drove in to the home base about 2 hrs away in Robertson. The place is awesome -- just as beautiful as the pictures on the website, surrounded by mountains. Inside it's very cozy with a nice living area with a fireplace. We each share a room and a bathroom with one other person that has all the amenities one could want. There is a super friendly full-time staff that cooks and cleans for us -- they won't even let us take our dishes to the kitchen after meals! So no, we're not exactly "roughin' it." The food has been great, too. The Afrikaaners (most of the white South Africans) are of Dutch descent so they're big hearty people like myself and love to eat :-)

The group is getting along great so far... there are 3 college students, 2 Canadians, 1 senior citizen, 2 guys and me (not mutually exclusive obviousy b/c there are 7 of us in total). We've been super busy so far. We did orientation and tours the first 2 days and today was our first day of volunteering. It's going to be a crazy but rewarding experience... more on the high school and Nquebela township later.

With all the opportunities to see and do things here, I'm finding 5 weeks to be too short! We're going to make the most of it though, and are already planning out all our weekend adventures.
Ok ride is here! I'll post again soon.