One more week

The countdown began yesterday (Wednesday) for my last week of being in the United States. I cannot believe that my flight is next week! Over break, I wish I could say I have been working on getting ready for the trip by packing my bags and getting all of my papers together.. but I have not really been doing that too much. Just spending time with family and friends before I don't see them for so long.

Reading the handbook has been interesting. I was at first feeling overwhelmed with all of the information coming at me, but now have realized that a lot of the things that IAP says are really to just make us feel comfortable with where we are going and to make sure we know that we aren't going to some city in an African country without someone being on the other side to receive us. Orientation will be a nice way to collect necessary information that will help us around the university and the city itself. My orientation starts on January 24th right in the morning. On the 23rd I move into my house with 16 other people and meet my landlord who is going to bring us on a small tour of the cape! (And also take our money for living in the house). Our orientation also starts with a tour of the city and the cape again. We are also registering for classes and taking a written placement exam, which shouldn't be too bad.. but definitely won't be fun.

I applied for world cup tickets a while ago with my friend Don who is also going on the trip! I am hopefully seeing England vs. Algeria on the opening day of the world cup and then France vs. Uruguay on June 18th! The drawing for the tickets is on February 1st so I will let you all know if I will be a true hooligan at the games!

I have plenty more to do before I leave but will be ready come wednesday next week. I am trying to figure out how Skype will work down in Cape Town. I will have access to internet in my house and it is supposed to be relatively fast. The only problem is that internet is REALLY expensive. You have to pay mgb/second, which can get pretty pricey when video chatting and stuff. I will still want to video chat with people every once-in-a-while! I am excited to have this blog so you can see what I am up to and see some of the pictures I put up!

That's all for now folks