My First Choir Concert Was a Zoo! (Or Maybe a Circus?)

Okay, so my choir concert was both the most hilarious and most traumatic thing I have EVER done. First off, it started an HOUR LATE, and it was held in the cafeteria during dinner hour. That’s one way to draw a crowd I guess, but it was very loud. However, there was a wooden, impromptu stage-ish thing (VERY unstable, I think it cracked at the end), and we set up audience style seating, so it was legit. So, most traumatically, I was FRONT and CENTER of the choir. Like, my terrible dancing right in the middle. Then the director starts the opening remarks and is all like “you can see we have some NEW people”… and points to the token white girl standing front and center. Yeah, I was all like “hello audience type nod”. Yeah, there is another international girl in the choir (her name is Martha!) but she stands in the back off to the side. So yeah, that bit of awkwardness. Then we sang our songs and I did my best to not look TOO much like a fool doing the step dancing thing. (I even sang a solo-ish thing in a group of eight!) but then… we were done with the songs we had rehearsed… and then kept on singing songs. ONES I HAD NEVER HEARD BEFORE. So I got to learn songs IN SETSWANA on stage! D: And one of them, the conductor was all like “hey, if you don’t know the dance, please move to the back” but no one behind me would switch with me! ;_; so I spent the whole song desperately trying to mouth the words and watching a girl out of the corner of my eye trying to copy the dance moves… IT WAS SO HARD AND I DEFINITELY MADE A FOOL OUT OF MYSELF! But… surprisingly it was somehow really fun. One of the songs I didn’t know was like a mad choir jam session where this guy would call out words and we’d sing after him and copy crazy dance moves. I was having a tough time singing because I was laughing so hard! It was one of those WEIRD moments where I lost all self-consciousness and just HAD FUN with it. LOL!

The other thing that was weird was the amount of SCREAMING coming from the girls in the audience. Half the time, you could barely hear the choir apparently.

OTHER COOL THING THAT HAPPENED RECENTLY! I went to a circus! There was a South African circus that came to Gaborone for the VERY first time. If I am not mistaken, this is the first South African circus in Bots ever. It was… surprisingly normal, and since it was pretty small ALL the seats were good ones. There was really NORMAL circus stuff. For example, there were jugglers, clowns, trapeze artists, horse and miniature pony tricks, tigers, ELEPHANTS, etc. The clowns were actually REALLY funny. In one of their “in-between acts” acts, they got four audience members to stand in a square and strung caution tape stuff around them until they were a make-shift boxing ring and then proceeded to have a slow-motion boxing match to Chariots of Fire (think Olympics theme song, I think). The acts were all small scale, but VERY impressive. One thing I appreciated was whenever the other acts were doing something high up; they wore safety wires just in case. This seems like it would make it less daring, but I USUALLY spend circuses stressed about the performer’s safety, so it helped. (My GOD I really am a mother hen/ Sam Eagle from the Muppets type) My only complaint was that the tigers… didn’t look so good. They were OBVIOUSLY afraid of their handlers and really over-weight which implies lack of proper exercise. Also, the handler was using this stick with a freakin NAIL in it to get the tigers to do simple tricks. It was very sad. The other animals weren’t as bad, but what are they doing with FIVE tigers when they OBVIOUSLY can’t afford to care for them properly? Sheesh! But I had TONS of fun and hey! It’s a freakin CIRCUS in AFRICA! What!?

Next week I’m off to the Delta! Wish me luck and await the next post with anticipation!

DO RE MI FA SO LA TI DOOOO!!!!

So let’s talk about choir. I am having A LOT of fun with it when I’m not sick (I went when I was feverish because if you miss too many, you get kicked out… they’re REALLY strict!) We sing in Setswana all the time which is really hard but is actually helping me in Setswana class a bit! :D And the conductor’s assistant is going to start writing out the songs for me and Martha (the other international student in the choir) that don’t include music), so that will make things a lot easier!

On the other hand, choir here is MUCH more intense than in the states! At least once a week, we spend the entire time doing intense workouts and running because they believe being fit makes you a better chorister. It actually may be true for things like breath support and stamina, but that doesn’t actually MEAN that I WANT to do intense work outs! LOL! I even had to go buy work out pants at this little Asian store (cheapest place to buy clothes!) because I didn’t have any proper clothes for choir… work outs. They say “Chelsea Football Club” down the side, but they were only 30 Pula and they fit well enough. Though I think they are guys’ pants. However, during the workout the coach let the girls do “girly” push-ups… which was interesting and nothing I have ever been allowed to do in practice due to all girls’ schools not believing in “girly” exercises. The others were very amused by my partial indignation at the slight to my… well… womanliness?

Also, choir is OFFICIALLY Tues, Thurs, Sun from 6-7 (5-7 on Sundays)… however, last week we had choir Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, AND Thursday! Apparently choir is practically every day instead of just three times a week. ALTHOUGH, that may be due more to the fact that we have a CONCERT coming up on Friday! Wish me luck! I will try to put up a video of it this weekend. :D

My Not-So-Awesome Joburg Adventure

So… my trip to Johannesburg, South Africa did not go exactly as I envisioned it. In fact, it was a bi tof a disaster all round.

So on Friday after classes, four friends and I hopped onto a combie looking forward to our great adventure. By the way, a combie is like a minibus/ van and they don’t leave until they are all the way full. Basically, I spent the six hours to Joburg sitting on the edge of my seat as the two ladies next to m managed to take up 2 ½ seats instead of their allotted one. And the girls and I kinda got lost for ten mins at the South African boarder, but besides that the ride wasn’t too bad.

The trouble started when we arrived.

Our combie driver was very sweet and found us a taxi to take us to our hostel right away. He even took down the guy’s license number and warned him that we were American girls and that he expected the taxi driver to take really good care of us. And he did take care of us, but it took us over half an hour to find the hostel since NO ONE knew where it was. I mean we had the address (which turned out to be wrong) but no one the taxi driver asked had even heard of the place. We eventually found it (we were worried for a bit that the place was a fake) and ran into our next big road bump.

The manager had booked us rooms but then given them to other people…

So we were in the middle of Joburg at ten at night with no place to stay. Our taxi driver sat with us for an entire HOUR while we waited for the lady to either give us rooms or get us another place to stay. While this was nice of him, his original fare of R250 went up to R430 (around 60USD). Eventually the manager got us a dorm style room at another hostel called the Rosebed Backpackers (or something like that) We were so tired, we went to bed right away.

The next morning we got up and went to the Diamond Diggers Backpackers. It was MUCH better than the one the night before. It was quiet (unlike the last one), had a GREAT view of the Joburg city, and had a pool. (Though we didn’t make use of it) We spent the first half of the day settling in and going to a mall for lunch. Seriously, a mall. In the afternoon, we went to the Apartheid Museum, which is what one of the girls wanted to do most while in Joburg. It cost another R80 each to get there and R40 to get in, but the museum WAS fascinating. I really didn’t know much about what had happened before I went, but the museum was really nice.

After the museum closed, it was dark and so we headed back to our backpackers to eat and chill. (Joburg is not really a safe city for a group of girls to hang around in at night)

The next morning, we had wanted to go see the caves at the Cradle of Humankind Heritage Site, but the other girls decided it was too expensive and so we didn’t go. Instead, we headed to another mall and went to a sushi buffet (who ever said there was no sushi in Africa!) That was pretty much the highlight of the trip: the all you can eat sushi… which is kind of sad if you ask me!

Then we took the combie back to Gabarone… At least I was MUCH more comfortable this time as this combie had bigger seats and I sat with my friends instead of two old ladies. Basically, all we did this trip was go to a museum and I spent over P1000 (about 200USD) on transportation and lodging…sigh.

Ah well, you win some, you lose some. Better luck next time, ne?