Day 5: Meet the new characters - you'll love them.

Finally, I am not alone. I first met Lui, the docile Chinese girl who wears her hair in a pony tail. Her eyes are rimmed with glasses. She often, I believe, has a hard time understanding me. Her English is good, but mine is fast – and I can see her analyzing the words as they come out of my mouth. She answers when they have registered. If they don’t register she just smiles and nods her head in understood false acknowledgment. Lui is cute, seemingly naïve, but she is the only Eastern spice in our pot. She’ll add some good flavor.

That was yesterday.

Today I met Kim, the trendy Dutch girl, who I believe always has a boy in her room. His name is something like Carrot, with a cough for a beginning pronunciation that I can’t muster. He said to call him David instead. That, I can manage. Kim has blonde hair pulled into a cute pony tail. She has an accent, but her tongue is quick in English. Kim is spunky, spritey, and ready for a night out. I heard her come in late last night, and she left around six or seven this evening. She kindly invited me to come out for some drinks with her and her friends, but I was cooking some rice. She gave me her number, and I told her I’d call her if I made my way out.

Soon after, I met Anna, whom I instantly fell in love with. Anna is full of energy. She has bush brown hair and a style that mixes hip and retro. She’s from the Czech Republic, and her "r"’s are a little harsher than the rest. She is precious, and she’s my next door neighbor. She is the warmest and the friendliest, the sweetest, the greatest. We talked while she unpacked, and her excitement was obvious from her grandiose gestures and wide eyes.

“Of curse I want to travel in Sout Afreeka!” The “a” in travel sounds like that in ape, and the "e" could use an accent. I love the way she speaks English, looking for the words and carrying on sometimes without them if she can’t find them quick enough.

“You understand,” she says.

I have met my traveling companion, and she is only feet away from me always. She is an up-for-anything, an always-ready, a lets-just-go kind of person. She was meant to be my neighbor. She wants to go everywhere, see everything, do it all.

She brought the Czech Republic to South Africa in the form of food. Her mother had stowed homemade things and lots of candies in her bag. She showed them all to me, and we were both excited by the treats. She brought homemade marmalade and promised a good breakfast.

While she took a shower, Madison brought Peter into my dining room. Peter is also from Holland. His English is strong, and he has an adorable accent paired with little characteristics that make for a perfect character from a book. Peter looks like Barbie’s Ken – with Aryan features. His hair is even gelled to look like plastic. He wears trendy clothes like the other Europeans, and Lacoste shoes to match.

Peter is obviously comfortable among Americans – he talks the talk easily. He’s confident, comical, and easy to get along with.

Matt, Madison and I took Peter and Anna out into town. I had planned to spend an evening and night in my apartment alone until the others fortunately showed up. Finally, finally, finally, we had company in the residences. We were not the lonely Americans anymore.

Along our walk to the city’s center, I showed them the dog I have picked as my own – a beautiful brown-sugar female husky with piercing blue eyes. I whistle for her now every time I pass the gate, and she comes loyally when she’s there. I give her some lovin’ – call her all sorts of weird things and pet her like she really is mine.

Someone asked me what I had named her, but I said I’d have to think about it.

“How ‘bout Nelson,” said Peter.

“Nelson! That’s a boy’s na – How ‘bout NELLY!?”

And that was that, her name is Nelly Mandelly, and she’s mine.

We took our new European friends to the bar and café that we went to last night because it was too good, and we had to show them where a nighttime wi-fi hookup was. So we drank and ate around a new cherished bond of foreigners in a foreign land. The accents that filled our space were delicious, and my ears ate well tonight. We talked about our cultures and what the weather was like in our countries now. We talked about commercials on TV and drinking ages and driving ages. We talked about food and about school, what we were studying. We talked about California and China, Russia and London.

We walked back to our apartments together; the night is much less foreboding with more company. I could feel that we were happy to have each other for more reasons than just that one. It’s that there’s a certain thrilling excitement around making new friends, from different countries, and meshing well because of the mutual experience of foreignness. It’s a we’re-in-this-together kind of thing. And it’s golden.

After we arrived in the confines of our gated neighborhood, we bid each other good night and made plans for the next day. Peter and I were going to the wi-fi café down the road in the morning, Madison would call about the time we were supposed to register, and the others would sleep and wait for information. We all planned to go register tomorrow, go grocery shopping and go to our brie in the afternoon. So after our day was scheduled, we parted in our various ways.

Anna and I went up the stairs to our apartment and let ourselves in. As we were unlocking our room doors, I said to her, “We’re supposed to have another roommate from Germany—”

And there a girl popped out of the room in front of ours. We delivered surprised greetings and exchanged our names and nationalities. I don’t remember her name, but she’s from Holland (everyone here is). She’s a pretty thing, with a straight smile over straight teeth. She has beautiful eyes and short, cropped brown hair. She’s been here since yesterday, and I had no idea.

Soon after, another girl, whose name I also forgot, came up from nowhere to meet us. She had ringletted brown hair and a kind face. She wore some chic outfit, and she was also (you guessed it) Dutch. We talked about when we had arrived and how we liked it here.

The bond is instant when you find yourself with people from faraway lands in a country like South Africa. You have to be a certain type of person to choose this as your destination, as everyone chooses Europe or the U.S. as their choice of study abroad countries. But here we were, the four of us, living together in an apartment in South Africa. Our unique choices led us here, to meet each other, to be together for the duration of our stay. These are the people that will be the characters in my book’s South African chapter from now until its end. These are the people I will bond with over the next several months – we’ll share a life together. They’ll have weird, foreign habits and tendencies – and so will I to them. They’ll have trendy European fashions and lots of bread in their parts of the pantry. These are the people chosen for me, to teach me something about themselves, about the world, and about myself, too.

We've decided to have nationality nights where we cook for everyone according to our nationality. It's going to be beautiful. I love the world.

The story is getting better and better.