Belated Blog Posts Are Like Belated Birthday Cards: Appreciated But Late

Sorry I have not blogged in a while. It would just skip my mind and then I would remember I had to blog at really inconvenient times: like at night when I was trying to sleep or during class. Anyways, so here is a VERY belated blog about the trips I have taken in the last few weeks! This weekend was quite boring and I mostly just stayed in. So how about hearing about the trips I’ve taken so far!

Trips I have taken so far! We went on a cultural excursion weekend to Mokolodie game reserve, which is only a couple hours from Gabarone. We ate three different “cultural” meals in different villages. When I say village, I really mean tourist type lodges and villages. It was pretty much the same meal over and over again, which I suppose goes to show that it WAS really traditional. It was also the same TYPES of food as in the cafeteria, however it ACTAULLY TASTED GOOD! AMAZING! Apparently, the cafeteria just cooks horrible food that could be good but isn’t. That’s disappointing, right? Anyways, the meals were delicious! We also stayed overnight in a traditional cultural village called… I forget. It was a Setswanan name. But they had a baboon as a totem and told us that we were all officially baboon totem people for the night! They did traditional dances for us and then made us get up and taught us a few dances. One was just a celebration dance, but the other was a “coming of age presentation dance”… which basically consists of us hopping around and then presenting our chests and butts to the watching guys by thrusting them out… yeah. They also taught us some “traditional” women’s work like grinding sorgum for dinner. Yeah, women’s traditional work in Africa is all chores. We stayed in a cabin on the floor, which wasn’t all bad. However, out of all the tents and cabins that we stayed in (our group had, like, 50 people in it), ours was the only one with REALLY warm fleece blankets. Everyone else FROZE… so I can’t complain too much. The next day, we actually went to the Mokolodie reserve and did a GAME DRIVE! Now, I was excited, but not as excited as my compatriots because I have been on LOTS of game drive type things at CCF. (Though we were counting the animals, not just looking) I SHOULD have been more excited because I saw a TON of new animals! I saw wildebeest, impala, kudu, ostrich, giraffe, and… get this… A WHITE RHINO WITH HER BABY. O.O I SAW A BABY RHINO AND IT WAS THE CUTEST THING EVER! It was just standing there about 10 meters from the road! It was so amazing! That was the ONLY thing I really wanted to see on the trip to Mokolodie and I saw it! Our safari car driver was a tad worried at first that the mother would be aggressive and charge the car, but she was really unworried and just kept grazing. Her baby was really curious, though and kept wandering towards the car before getting scared and running back to mom… but he kept doing it over and over! It was so cute! After the drive was over, we ate a barbeque (brai) out in the bush by a huge lake and saw hippos! (From very far away…) They served the best apple crumble with custard for dessert! SO GOOD!

The other trip I took was just last weekend. We went to a horse safari place about a half hour outside Gabarone for… camping… yeah, not really. We stayed in this house/ cabin thing, so it wasn’t REALLY camping. But we did have a GREAT view from the cabin and we had a REALLY good barbeque and fire. (Though we did have some mishaps with getting the charcoal to ACTUALLY light) We even made bread by wrapping dough around a stick and roasting it over the fire! A definite first for me! Although it came out a little doughy. Also, marshmallows were a given. :D Sunday morning, I took a half hour horse ride! (It wasn’t REALLY a safari, since this was a really small operation out in the bush, but I had fun anyways!) My horse was black and white… actually; its coat looked like cow print! But he was very good. I thought that since he was used to this route with tourists, he would just follow the horse in front of me and ignore commands… but he actually paid attention to what I was doing with the reigns and such so I avoided the akasha trees that the horse in front of me dragged my friend through! He was awesome! Sadly, I didn’t get a picture of me riding a horse in AFRICA because I forgot my camera that weekend! I am such a fail!

Anyways, we are planning a trip to South Africa next weekend. We plan to visit the Apartheid museum and (hopefully) Krueger National Park. It’s still in the works, but wish me luck!

Dumela Bomma le Borra!

So… classes. They are so far pretty interesting, ESPECIALLY Setswana class (I love languages!), the only problem is that the professors keep CANCELING THEM. Seriously, except for the Setswana class, I have only had one of each other class. And one keeps cutting them short and the professors are ALWAYS a few minutes late to class… oh Africa time! And hey, usually a canceled class wouldn’t bother me much except that this is RECURRING and I really want something to learn or DO here on campus! I think it’s just how years start out here, but hey, hopefully it’ll pick up soon. Oh! But here are some phrases that I can say in Setswana now!

Dumela mma/rra- hello madam/sir
Bomma/Borra- plural sirs/madames
Leina la gago ke mang?- what is your name ?
Leina lame ke Heather- my name is heather
O tswa kae?- Where are you from?
Ke tswa kwa Oregon- I am from Oregon
Ke itumela la gogo itse- it was nice to meet you
Go siame- goodbye

This is a VERY difficult language to pronounce! The “G”s are like “H” in the back of the throat, and the “K”s are VERY hard. Also, I am having SO MUCH trouble with the sound that “tlh” and some “th”s make. However, there is no verb conjugation and no masculine/feminine articles! YAY! There goes my least favorite parts of learning languages! SO happy! The problem with learning the language is that EVERYONE here speaks English along with Setswana! Thus, it’s hard to practice. However, my roommate seems to really like that I’m trying to learn, so she has helped me with pronunciation and asked her friends to speak simple Setswana to me whenever possible! She’s REALLY nice. And she has good taste in music.

Another interesting thing that I have learned since being here is that the campus is pretty quiet at night (my roomie goes to bed around 10pm normally) and everyone wakes up REALLY early. There is music blasting on my floor at 7am or earlier and sometimes my roommate’s friends even come over at 7:30 AM. I don’t have class until 11am each day SO I AM STILL SLEEPING. It is very annoying and anyone who has tried to wake me up will tell you that I HATE being woken up! (Unless you are holding a cup of coffee and it’s like non-instant coffee doesn’t EXIST on this campus!) SO I usually just grumble and turn over and try to ignore the early morning ruckus. Jeez! But at least it’s relatively quiet at night.

On a happy note, my favorite kind of cheese— Gouda— and my favorite tea— rooibos— are really common and cheap here! It’s so exciting! XD

That’s all for now folks! PS- If you wanna skype I would love to! The time difference is 6 hours for the East Coast and 9 hours for the West Coast! Set up a time with me on Facebook and I’ll be there!