South Africa trip, Week 1

Well, I know I let this blog lapse terribly. But I did want to finally update. Actually, I went to South Africa to collect some data for my dissertation. I wrote a small blog on another site and I want to transfer the writing here, to my real blog. So here is the writing for the first week.

Trip to South Africa, Week 1

Okay, so I am here in South Africa collecting data on Zulu verbs for my dissertation. I'm in my last year of my PhD program in linguistics with a focus in Bantu language family syntax. Today is Wednesday and I got here last week Monday.

It didn't start out too well. A couple of days before I left someone helped me figure out that I had put the deposit down on the wrong YMCA. The recommended one was the one on a univ campus, but when I was told to search for "Durban YMCA" and make the reservation, well, only one came up online. So I reserved there. Turns out this YMCA is in the hood. Once I found out the name of the neighborhood, whenever I mentioned it, people would be like and and and various other emoticons I don't feel like looking up. But I had already paid the deposit.

Then, my plane in Chicago was broken and we sat on the tarmac for 4 hours while they fixed it. Then we took the 8 hour flight to London, but because my plane was so late I wasn't able to meet other LHCF people in London for lunch. Booo!

Then, I was eating popcorn on the plane, caramel and cheese, and my freaking tooth fell out! Or my crown, more accurately. Stupid incompetent dentist! He put in 2 fillings and 1 crown and all of them fell out within a year! None of my other fillings ever came out. So now I'm here missing a molar.

Okay, so things were not going well even before I landed. But after 3 planes (Chicago to London, London to Johannesburg, Jo'burg to Durban), I finally arrived. They put me in a room on the 7th floor and the elevator is out of order. And since this is not American style, the "ground floor" is first, so it's really like I'm on the 8th floor. It was rough carrying my luggage up all those stairs, though I had help. I guess I should look at the bright side, right? I mean, I've been wanting to tone up and lose a few pounds, maybe going up and down these stairs all the time will help, right?

But things have brightened up since I've been here. I'll tell all the more fun stuff and show pictures in part 2 . . .