South Africa

Alli, Flo, Quinn and Emily piled in to the borrowed car. Emily's luggage in the truck and Obama's inauguration speech turned all the way up on the radio and fuzzing in and out. With the window's down 3 Americans and one French guy cheered out loud to the lines of Obama's speech. We got to the airport and hurried to catch the tail end on a TV that was pointed towards the cafe tables from behind the counter at the airport cafe. After the speech I had 15 minutes American time and about an hour and a half Kenyan time to catch my flight. We hugged goodbye and I was on my way to South Africa.
I flew to Nairobi first and spent the night with Alli's former host family from her study abroad days. I got in around mid-night and left at 5 am and had warm meals waiting for me on either end of my 5 hour stay.
I got back to the air port and settled down near my gate to watch the live overage of the 10 inauguration balls happening in DC. I got so wrapped up I forgot you need to board your flight BEFORE departure time - they also didn't announce it was time to board. I remembered in time and got in the back of the line - got on my flight and headed south.
Soon after we were in the air the pilot suggested we get out our camera's as we were about to have a nice view of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Now, not to sound snobby about this - but - my camera was a little on the fritz, and in the over head, and I was the window seat AND I forgot to mention that that night with the elephants and the water whole and all the amazing - we also had a magnificent view of the Mountain from our porch and I already had many many pictures of Mt. Kilimanjaro. So I decided not to bother. Then all of a sudden I realize we were getting closer and closer to a huge mountain. The ground was rising up to the plane! We flew directly over the table top of Mt. Kilimanjaro!!! Then the pilot tilted the plane and it looked like the wing could of hit. We circled around once and then returned to our flight path. Absolutely Amazing! I saw the top of Mount Kilimanjaro. Maybe I didn't stand on it - but it's still a pretty cool thing.

Alright, Cape Town. I got to Cape Town and had a friend of a friend to stay with. I was instantly in love with the city. Down town is called the city bowl because the mountains hug the city in a bowl and kind of tip it in to the ocean. I spent my first full day doing tourist things. I went to the beach and the water front. I went half way up one of the mountains. The second day I walked down the main down town street and went in to all of the boutiques I could find. The clothes were amazing - and often the owner/designer was sitting in the back room making the clothes and then running out to say hello when you walked in the door. The rumors are true - it is similar to San Francisco - but much smaller and less intense. I am really quite twitter patted with Cape Town.
Now I am on a farm/vineyard about 2 hours north of Cape Town. I have been here 6 days. We work 8 - 5:30 with 1 hour for lunch. There is a family of 4 that run and own the farm. We can eat all the grapes from the vine we want and last night we had a wine tasting. The wine tasting turned in to a brandy tasting which turned in to a grappa tasting which turned in to dinner with the family (with wine) which turned in to brandy and chocolate for dessert - which turned in to drunk Emily. I put myself to bed.
So far my favorite job on the farm in picking almonds. Did you know that the almond is closely related to the peach and look very similar on the tree?