*To be read while Toto’s Africa plays in the background*

To any of you who read my previous post about my family, you will have heard a little bit about my twin sister’s volunteer trip to South Africa. Well, I’m happy to report that she has made it back on American soil and has officially won the title of ‘More Interesting Twin.’ It’s also possible that she always had this title. But, due to the fact she has no blog of her own (she’s far too busy and intelligent to ever voluntarily post this much personal information on the Internet), I thought I’d tell you all about her trip. 

Susan arrived home on a plane from Amsterdam last night (did you know the flight from Cape Town to JFK is so long they don’t usually fly direct?), with more stories from her last two weeks than I have from my whole summer. Unsurprisingly, my running into a guy from our high school graduating class at a bar doesn’t really compare to her experience riding an ostrich. (She really rode one, guys, and I’m about as jealous as any one human being can be of another human being.) 

She had a lot to say about her trip to Cape Town; she had the most wonderful experience teaching typing to kindergarten through seventh graders in a neighborhood outside of Cape Town. The students she taught had little experience with typing outside of the lessons that volunteers like Susan give, and yet by the time they reach high school they are expected to have all of their assignments typed. 

When she wasn’t teaching, Susan went on safari, bungee-jumped (much to my father’s dismay), and had a wine tasting at a South African vineyard. She also met the penguins from the movie Madagascar*, hiked through the African wilderness, and dropped her phone (and herself) into a waterfall. Guys, she tripped/slipped/fell into a waterfall, and lost her cell phone along with “any shred of dignity I had left.” Her words not mine. Waterfall? More like water-fail! (Was that last joke as painful for you to read as it was for me to type?)

*Not from the movie Madagascar.

She’s back now, finally having done her part to make the world a better place. Now that my father has verbally confirmed that she is back on American soil (he called less than 5 minutes after we walked in the door to our house), we can all breathe a small sigh of relief. Guess who’s back? Back again. Susan’s back. Tell a friend.*

*If this post were spoken out loud this last part would have been to the tune of Eminem’s Without Me. 

She may have been out of the country/off the east coast for the past eight months, but I’m pleased to report that Susan is as awesome and great as she always is. She has tons of cool new stories (ask her about the waterfall, please), but she returns entirely unscathed (no injuries resulted from the water-FALL, the bungee-jumping, or from a potentially-dangerous encounter with a pack of hippos which I’ll let her tell you about). 

In spite of the fact that she dragged me to the gym early this morning, I couldn’t be happier to have her here again. And not just because it gave me an excellent excuse to play Toto’s hit song, Africa. I played it as we walked through the Arrivals gate of Terminal 4 at JFK, and let’s just say people were less than amused. (Wait did I say “people?” I meant Susan.) 

For more details and information, see my Snapchat where I document the entirety of Susan’s return to America. (Also the title of a new reality show I’m producing, which was just picked up for 22 episodes. Catch it on QVC this fall.)

P.S. If you’ve made it this far, please go watch the music video for Africa by Toto. I’m not sure if I’ve laughed so hard in my entire life and if I had one wish from a genie, it would be that everyone I know sees this music video. Then of course I would immediately regret not using my wish for something more valuable, wishing for money or immortality or at least signed copy of N’SYNC‘s album Celebrity.

This blog post was written without the expressed consent of Susan Biggart.