Leina Lame Ke Setunya

I am very sorry for not getting around to Blogging about the Delta trip since I explained everything to lots of people on Skype… If you want to know more about that, just ask! For now, ON WITH THE PLOT!

So last weekend I went on a weekend camping trip with the choir… well… camping in that we drove an hour away and slept on the floor of a class room. I figured it would be a painful and grueling experience as I don’t really have friends that were going… but it wasn’t AS horrible as I thought it would be. I mean, I started out with feeling sorry for myself and trying to ignore the fact that I couldn’t understand a darn word anyone was saying around me because no one was speaking English to me, but it seems that they made a pact or SOMETHING to ensure that I didn’t feel left out or get lonely.. so LOTS of people made efforts to make me feel included whenever I sat by myself... they also offered to share bedding (I was told to bring bedding in Setswana... NOT helpful) and gave me a Setswana nickname! (it's Setunya, btw, which means rose/flower) There was NO transition to the name and I was confused for a bit because suddenly everyone was saying Setunya all the time and I kept forgetting that was supposed to be me... but they all seemed more comfortable around me after giving me a name they could pronounce correctly. Haha! The actual singing part was kinda arduous as we sang from 8am to 11pm with only about 4 hours break in between, though I was very excited when we learned a song in Italian that had NORMAL sheet music... Basically, I was glad to not be the ONLY one who didn’t understand the lyrics for once. After the singing, we played Setswana games outside... at first I hung back, mostly out of fatigue and confusion, but by the third game, I was in it (someone was all like "Setunya! COME JOIN!" and I felt so warm and fuzzy at the nickname that I hopped right in). It was really cool when we played the Setswana version of telephone and they added the rule "No Setswana" in there because I was in the circle... actually, during those games they were REALLY making sure that I understood everything. :D The only REAL complaint I have about the weekend (besides eating bread with butter and polony 3 times, YUCK) was the sleeping. While I was physically pretty comfortable because a girl offered to share her air mattress with me, the games went on until 5 IN THE MORNING with the florescent lights on and everyone yelling in Setswana... and Setswana is VERY loud... thus when I tried to go to bed at 1:30 after having only 3 hours of sleep the night before due to the SAME lights and loudness, let’s just say it wasn't very RESTFUL and I woke up on Sunday with a migraine. All and all though, it was nicer than I expected.


ps- Title translates to "My name is Flower"