Sunday, January 22, 2012
Lion Gate Park Has No Lions... But It DOES Have a Roller Coaster
So I went to Lion Gate Park/Resort yesterday with about 25 people from the choir and it was SUPER fun! It’s this water park/theme park sort of thing about 15 minutes outside of Gaborone. I was expecting something teeny and, well, less than it was. But my god! It was a bit like being at home except for all the thatched roofs. There was an honest to god WAVE POOL, two slides, and a two-level kiddy pool. There were 8 rides (though four of them were kids only and a fifth was out of order). There was even a ROLLER COASTER. So basically, I had tons of fun playing in the pool and once I got over the “OMG, this is a theme park ride in AFRICA a la Flying Swings and Tilt-A-Whirl! What if it BREAKS!?” I had a lot of fun there too. SOME HIGHLIGHTS! While swimming in the pool, the guys had the funny idea to start doing fake “baptisms” like you see on travel programs where the priest is dunking peoples’ heads in the ocean water and yelling. So… they proceeded to grab all the girls in the group and “baptize” them, much to everyone’s amusement. I was not spared, lol! Another thing is that… almost NONE of them had ever been on a roller coaster before. And we ALL went on the Ghinza Roller Coaster for 14 Pula each… It was hilarious! They were all so nervous but excited and you would not BELIEVE the screaming. All the guys were acting macho and saying they’d have their hands in the air the whole time… I’m pretty sure I’m the only one that did that. It was a good sized coaster, it even had a loop, but it wasn’t THAT big. Some of the girls were a bit traumatized and most of the guys admitted to being scared out of their wits after some obligatory manly posturing. But they all had fun and didn’t regret trying it, so I suppose it’s okay. The last highlight was near the end when things LOOKED like they were winding down, but then we started singing. In a huge group. In the pool. With dance moves. In Setswana. And of course I was the only foreigner. But it was so much fun! People outside of the pool kept trying to take pictures and little kids kept trying to join in even though they didn’t really know what was going on. It was a pretty fun day!
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Cheetah Tracking Adventures, Part 3
DAY THREE
Five AM wake-up, breakfast in bed (we ate in the back of the car, which was technically my bed), and tracking cheetahs through the bush was not a bad way to start the morning! I was pretty tired by this point, but my enthusiasm for seeing the boys was not diminished and I FINALLY could identify them pretty well. Anakin is the one with the really dark spots, Omadillo has the fluffiest face, and Obi-Wan has smaller spots. Really, that is pretty much how you ID cheetahs; they are practically IDENTICAL!
The boys were still pretty lazy and I finished my book while we were sitting with them. They moved only once to find some shade when the sun came out for a bit. It was sprinkling by the time we walked the 2 kilometers back to our camp site. The rain came on VERY suddenly actually and we ate lunch huddled in the back of the car again.
When Rachel arrived to give Ryan his supplies for the day, she came bearing CHESTER! We were going to release him with the boys! So another volunteer and I hopped on the back of the truck with Chester’s crate and we tracked the boys as close as we could get from the road (Rachel’s car has 4-wheel drive). Since we were in the truck that they used to be fed from when they were in captivity, they came running when called. Once they were about 30 meters down the road, we opened Chester’s box. He came right out and went up to the other three and they all started purring and licking each other. They were so cute!
The only other exciting thing about the day (besides the fact that we arrived back at CCF at 7:30, aka over 4 hours later than expected) was that we almost got stuck in a giant mud puddle. Really stuck. Jess and I (the volunteer that was with me in the back) gamely hopped out and pushed the car from the front while Rachel reversed. We were knee deep in mud and water; but joking about it brightly when we eventually got un-stuck. Getting stuck is a huge fear out here in the rainy season since the tractor takes about 5 hours to get out to Bellebino farm to get you unstuck. I was COVERED in mud, but it was okay because my clothes and shoes were already FILTHY from tracking anyways.
We got to CCF in time for dinner and I was very happy to shower after our mud adventures. Really, I have no IDEA how Ryan does it day after day. It is EXHAUSTING tracking those boys!
Five AM wake-up, breakfast in bed (we ate in the back of the car, which was technically my bed), and tracking cheetahs through the bush was not a bad way to start the morning! I was pretty tired by this point, but my enthusiasm for seeing the boys was not diminished and I FINALLY could identify them pretty well. Anakin is the one with the really dark spots, Omadillo has the fluffiest face, and Obi-Wan has smaller spots. Really, that is pretty much how you ID cheetahs; they are practically IDENTICAL!
The boys were still pretty lazy and I finished my book while we were sitting with them. They moved only once to find some shade when the sun came out for a bit. It was sprinkling by the time we walked the 2 kilometers back to our camp site. The rain came on VERY suddenly actually and we ate lunch huddled in the back of the car again.
When Rachel arrived to give Ryan his supplies for the day, she came bearing CHESTER! We were going to release him with the boys! So another volunteer and I hopped on the back of the truck with Chester’s crate and we tracked the boys as close as we could get from the road (Rachel’s car has 4-wheel drive). Since we were in the truck that they used to be fed from when they were in captivity, they came running when called. Once they were about 30 meters down the road, we opened Chester’s box. He came right out and went up to the other three and they all started purring and licking each other. They were so cute!
The only other exciting thing about the day (besides the fact that we arrived back at CCF at 7:30, aka over 4 hours later than expected) was that we almost got stuck in a giant mud puddle. Really stuck. Jess and I (the volunteer that was with me in the back) gamely hopped out and pushed the car from the front while Rachel reversed. We were knee deep in mud and water; but joking about it brightly when we eventually got un-stuck. Getting stuck is a huge fear out here in the rainy season since the tractor takes about 5 hours to get out to Bellebino farm to get you unstuck. I was COVERED in mud, but it was okay because my clothes and shoes were already FILTHY from tracking anyways.
We got to CCF in time for dinner and I was very happy to shower after our mud adventures. Really, I have no IDEA how Ryan does it day after day. It is EXHAUSTING tracking those boys!
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Cheetah Tracking Adventures, Part B
DAY TWO
Waking up at 5am is not high on my favorite list (it’s not on the list at all!), but the fact that I was waking up to track cheetahs made it SO much better! It had rained all night, so we couldn’t get the car out of the lot, so we tracked them on foot. They weren’t so far away and when we found them, they were hunting again! We heard an oryx death cry and Ryan took off at a run! I was VERY hard pressed to keep up and I pretty much failed. I mean, from when we first saw them trot off to the kill spot, it was over 300 meters! Luckily, Ryan was wearing a bright red beanie that was easy to follow.
When we got there, the boys were already on their kill: an oryx calf. I was so proud of them! Omadillo was holding it down while Anakin went for the throat bite (classic cheetah kill which strangles prey pretty quickly) and Obi-Wan protected them from… well us. He was very weary of Ryan for a bit. But then it started getting very sad… and gory. Since these boys are still learning, they couldn’t quite get the neck bite right and kept getting startled by the oryx’s little horns… so they eventually gave up on the neck bite and Omadillo started eating the hindquarters… while it was still alive. It took the poor thing 35 minutes to die. Ryan and I were so angry at them when Obi-Wan and Anakin just laid in the grass instead of helping with the kill, but they are LEARNING and apparently Chester usually does the neck bite. It was pretty horrific and so sad because the little oryx was fighting the whole time. When it finally died, Obi-Wan and Anakin started eating, too. Moral of the story is that it was hard to watch and very sad, but I am glad the boys are hunting and getting their own food successfully. They will learn to kill properly with time.
The rest of the day they were pretty lazy. They were so full of food that they looked pregnant! Ryan and I actually sat down and did data entry/ read a book respectively. They were just flopped on the ground, so we didn’t have to record much. It was VERY surreal to be sitting 10 meters from 3 technically WILD cheetahs reading a book about dragons… but there you have it. It didn’t rain ALL DAY so we got a fire when we got back to camp! Dinner of leftover mystery meat (possibly goat we decided), garlic bread, and pasta was awesome! (BUSH FOOD TOUR!)
Waking up at 5am is not high on my favorite list (it’s not on the list at all!), but the fact that I was waking up to track cheetahs made it SO much better! It had rained all night, so we couldn’t get the car out of the lot, so we tracked them on foot. They weren’t so far away and when we found them, they were hunting again! We heard an oryx death cry and Ryan took off at a run! I was VERY hard pressed to keep up and I pretty much failed. I mean, from when we first saw them trot off to the kill spot, it was over 300 meters! Luckily, Ryan was wearing a bright red beanie that was easy to follow.
When we got there, the boys were already on their kill: an oryx calf. I was so proud of them! Omadillo was holding it down while Anakin went for the throat bite (classic cheetah kill which strangles prey pretty quickly) and Obi-Wan protected them from… well us. He was very weary of Ryan for a bit. But then it started getting very sad… and gory. Since these boys are still learning, they couldn’t quite get the neck bite right and kept getting startled by the oryx’s little horns… so they eventually gave up on the neck bite and Omadillo started eating the hindquarters… while it was still alive. It took the poor thing 35 minutes to die. Ryan and I were so angry at them when Obi-Wan and Anakin just laid in the grass instead of helping with the kill, but they are LEARNING and apparently Chester usually does the neck bite. It was pretty horrific and so sad because the little oryx was fighting the whole time. When it finally died, Obi-Wan and Anakin started eating, too. Moral of the story is that it was hard to watch and very sad, but I am glad the boys are hunting and getting their own food successfully. They will learn to kill properly with time.
The rest of the day they were pretty lazy. They were so full of food that they looked pregnant! Ryan and I actually sat down and did data entry/ read a book respectively. They were just flopped on the ground, so we didn’t have to record much. It was VERY surreal to be sitting 10 meters from 3 technically WILD cheetahs reading a book about dragons… but there you have it. It didn’t rain ALL DAY so we got a fire when we got back to camp! Dinner of leftover mystery meat (possibly goat we decided), garlic bread, and pasta was awesome! (BUSH FOOD TOUR!)
Cheetah Tracking Adventures, Part the First
DAY ONE
The morning was pretty hectic as there was a little bit of a miscommunication in the time we were leaving and who was ALLOWED to go to Bellebino to track the cheetahs, but it went okay in the end and I arrived at the Bellebino camp around 1pm. I re-met Ryan, who pretty much lives at the camp and tracks cheetahs every day. I had been introduced to him once before when he was at CCF to catch up on data entry and have his first day in 16 days not trekking through the bush. He is a VERY enthusiastic guy who is willing to do pretty much anything for the release cheetahs.
How the tracking works is that we WALK twice a day (we go back to camp for lunch) to find the cheetahs and using a radio collar system. Once we find Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Omadillo (the three boys we were tracking), we follow them and take GPS points and notes about any significant events (such as marking, kills, movement from one resting spot to the other, etc). There is actually a fourth cheetah in the group called Chester, but he got into a fight with Omadillo a week or so back and had to be recaptured and fixed up. They were probably fighting for dominance of the group. Anyways, it is important that we track their progress and ability to hunt because the Bellabino farm is only the first step (the “soft release”) of their release. Their end goal is actually India!
The first afternoon of tracking was very interesting. We used the car to drive half-way (it does not have 4-wheel drive, so it can’t go very far with all the large puddles on the roads) and found the cats closer than we thought they would be and they were hunting! This was VERY exciting even though I had to run after them more than I would have liked. They didn’t catch anything though because they haven’t QUITE got being sneaky yet and so the adult oryx kept running them off with their horns. They eventually gave up and wandered off, but it WAS very exciting. We had to leave the boys a few hours early because there was a HUGE storm rolling in. We pretty much RAN the kilometer back to camp, and it started raining buckets and thundering shortly after we got back. Thus, Ryan and I huddled in the back of our car and ate cold lasagna and fries from last night’s dinner at CCF. It was so rainy that I didn’t even WANT to try to set up the tent that Rachel had brought to replace the flooded one that was supposed to be mine. So I set up a pad and sleeping bag in the back of the van and slept there! Great first day!
The morning was pretty hectic as there was a little bit of a miscommunication in the time we were leaving and who was ALLOWED to go to Bellebino to track the cheetahs, but it went okay in the end and I arrived at the Bellebino camp around 1pm. I re-met Ryan, who pretty much lives at the camp and tracks cheetahs every day. I had been introduced to him once before when he was at CCF to catch up on data entry and have his first day in 16 days not trekking through the bush. He is a VERY enthusiastic guy who is willing to do pretty much anything for the release cheetahs.
How the tracking works is that we WALK twice a day (we go back to camp for lunch) to find the cheetahs and using a radio collar system. Once we find Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Omadillo (the three boys we were tracking), we follow them and take GPS points and notes about any significant events (such as marking, kills, movement from one resting spot to the other, etc). There is actually a fourth cheetah in the group called Chester, but he got into a fight with Omadillo a week or so back and had to be recaptured and fixed up. They were probably fighting for dominance of the group. Anyways, it is important that we track their progress and ability to hunt because the Bellabino farm is only the first step (the “soft release”) of their release. Their end goal is actually India!
The first afternoon of tracking was very interesting. We used the car to drive half-way (it does not have 4-wheel drive, so it can’t go very far with all the large puddles on the roads) and found the cats closer than we thought they would be and they were hunting! This was VERY exciting even though I had to run after them more than I would have liked. They didn’t catch anything though because they haven’t QUITE got being sneaky yet and so the adult oryx kept running them off with their horns. They eventually gave up and wandered off, but it WAS very exciting. We had to leave the boys a few hours early because there was a HUGE storm rolling in. We pretty much RAN the kilometer back to camp, and it started raining buckets and thundering shortly after we got back. Thus, Ryan and I huddled in the back of our car and ate cold lasagna and fries from last night’s dinner at CCF. It was so rainy that I didn’t even WANT to try to set up the tent that Rachel had brought to replace the flooded one that was supposed to be mine. So I set up a pad and sleeping bag in the back of the van and slept there! Great first day!
Monday, November 28, 2011
Baby Time!
It is quite cool and rainy here right now. Pretty much I spent the first two days here doing tedious data entry (I am happy to do it, but would obviously rather be doing something else.) But yesterday and today have been spent bottle feeding goats and feeding 3 week old puppies! They’re SO cute. There are 14 goats, all a few months old. Paige (another volunteer) and I feed four at a time because we do not have 7 hands each! They are bad goats, though, and like to jump on us and try to eat my hair. The amount of dirt and goat slobber on my shirt is amazing. They also like to randomly jump up and hit me with their front hooves. It doesn’t really hurt, but it can knock you off balance a bit. I also learned how to properly pick up a goat yesterday as we were trying to wrangle them back into their pen.
The puppies are SO cute. We had to weigh them and clip their claws yesterday so I got to hold them A LOT. They don’t quite know how to bark yet, so they kept making this grunting and squeaking noises that were really adorable. I got to pet them a lot and then watch them stumble around in the puppy paste we give them to eat. (It’s a combo of dry puppy food, water, and goats’ milk). They are ADORABLE but their mama looks so tired. By the end of yesterday, I was covered in goat milk, dirt, puppy paste, and probably a bit of pee from sitting on the ground of the puppy pen. Ew. But it was okay; I had a lot of fun helping out around the corral. The animals seem to be warming up to me nicely! Though… that might be because I keep giving them food. Haha.
The puppies are SO cute. We had to weigh them and clip their claws yesterday so I got to hold them A LOT. They don’t quite know how to bark yet, so they kept making this grunting and squeaking noises that were really adorable. I got to pet them a lot and then watch them stumble around in the puppy paste we give them to eat. (It’s a combo of dry puppy food, water, and goats’ milk). They are ADORABLE but their mama looks so tired. By the end of yesterday, I was covered in goat milk, dirt, puppy paste, and probably a bit of pee from sitting on the ground of the puppy pen. Ew. But it was okay; I had a lot of fun helping out around the corral. The animals seem to be warming up to me nicely! Though… that might be because I keep giving them food. Haha.
Friday, November 25, 2011
The Sketchy Taxis of DOOOOOOM
SO I am at CCF now!!! WOOOO!!!
It was fun timez getting here since I REALLY didn’t want to spend Thanksgiving ALONE in Windhoek. However, the shuttle to Otji I wanted to take left about a half hour after my flight landed and it takes about an hour to get TO the shuttle from the airport… anywho, here is the FULL story…
The day before I left was a mad rush of TRYING to figure out where the HECK to store my stuff and returning my bedding, checking out of my room, packing the last bits of my stuff all while trying to study for a test I had to write at 5pm. And seriously, I have NO idea what I studied. I STILL don’t know what half those readings were about seeing as I was thinking about all the stuff I had to do before I left. Turns out it didn’t really matter since the teacher just COPIED questions from our last test… I didn’t even NEED to study all that stuff! GAH! Well, at least I know I’ll ace this class seeing as she wanted to keep the TWO things I wrote for that class for future generations to see examples of “good” writing… seriously.
ANYWAYS! Moral of the story is that it was hectic and I spent the last night at UB with no power in my room, sleeping on a bare mattress with no bedding at all, in a dress because it was the comfiest thing I had that could be dirty when I arrived at CCF. Sheesh.
Then I got up at 4:30 to make it down to my cab at 5am because my flight was at about 7:30 and arriving two to three hours before an international flight is sort of a knee jerk reaction… Yeah, the airport was still empty. Not even the STAFF had arrived yet when I got there shortly before 6am. But I sat at a café and waited it out. The coffee was pretty good.
The plane rides and immigration were relatively painless (for once), the REAL adventure started when I landed and needed to actually GET somewhere. I had TRIED to book a shuttle called TownHoppers the night before, but I couldn’t see anyone with that uniform, so when a man in a Spirit Shuttles polo shirt walked up to me and said “shuttle?”, I took him up on it. It took an hour and N$300 to get to the taxi rank in Windhoek, but I made it. There, my shuttle driver helped me to get a shared taxi to Otjiwarongo. (A shared taxi meaning that there were two other girls I didn’t know in there with me.) The shared taxi driver was a hip-hop loving guy with bleach blond hair, but he got me to Otji safely enough. I even dozed off once or twice on the four hour ride. Once I arrived at Otji, I once again had NO IDEA how I was going to make the last leg of my trip to CCF. So I asked my taxi driver. Again. He called some people and drove to a place where there seemed to be a lot of idling taxi men. (This is a common occurrence in Africa and they are ALWAYS eager to get people in their cars). After a bit of negotiation, one man agreed to take me the 45 minutes to CCF. Basically, the entire trip was me placing my trust in sketchy taxi drivers. But sketchy taxi drivers are something that I am becoming alarmingly used to in Africa and they’re really not all that bad.
When I arrived at CCF, I didn’t really know what I was supposed to do… Santa was gone for a few days (the one I had been talking to) and I didn’t REALLY know if anyone else knew I was coming. After some confusion and introducing myself to one of the new interns and figuring out that they DID know, we hauled my stuff to my room, which I am sharing for the moment with Rachel (One of the BEST people I knew last time) and Suzie (a new girl in the ecology department).
Moral of the story is, the trip was an adventure, but I was NOT alone for Thanksgiving dinner.
Which was delicious, by the way, and included PIE.
SO THAT’S TH EPIC TALE!!!! One day poets will make it rhyme and sing it for kings and queens and all that rot. Go me.
It was fun timez getting here since I REALLY didn’t want to spend Thanksgiving ALONE in Windhoek. However, the shuttle to Otji I wanted to take left about a half hour after my flight landed and it takes about an hour to get TO the shuttle from the airport… anywho, here is the FULL story…
The day before I left was a mad rush of TRYING to figure out where the HECK to store my stuff and returning my bedding, checking out of my room, packing the last bits of my stuff all while trying to study for a test I had to write at 5pm. And seriously, I have NO idea what I studied. I STILL don’t know what half those readings were about seeing as I was thinking about all the stuff I had to do before I left. Turns out it didn’t really matter since the teacher just COPIED questions from our last test… I didn’t even NEED to study all that stuff! GAH! Well, at least I know I’ll ace this class seeing as she wanted to keep the TWO things I wrote for that class for future generations to see examples of “good” writing… seriously.
ANYWAYS! Moral of the story is that it was hectic and I spent the last night at UB with no power in my room, sleeping on a bare mattress with no bedding at all, in a dress because it was the comfiest thing I had that could be dirty when I arrived at CCF. Sheesh.
Then I got up at 4:30 to make it down to my cab at 5am because my flight was at about 7:30 and arriving two to three hours before an international flight is sort of a knee jerk reaction… Yeah, the airport was still empty. Not even the STAFF had arrived yet when I got there shortly before 6am. But I sat at a café and waited it out. The coffee was pretty good.
The plane rides and immigration were relatively painless (for once), the REAL adventure started when I landed and needed to actually GET somewhere. I had TRIED to book a shuttle called TownHoppers the night before, but I couldn’t see anyone with that uniform, so when a man in a Spirit Shuttles polo shirt walked up to me and said “shuttle?”, I took him up on it. It took an hour and N$300 to get to the taxi rank in Windhoek, but I made it. There, my shuttle driver helped me to get a shared taxi to Otjiwarongo. (A shared taxi meaning that there were two other girls I didn’t know in there with me.) The shared taxi driver was a hip-hop loving guy with bleach blond hair, but he got me to Otji safely enough. I even dozed off once or twice on the four hour ride. Once I arrived at Otji, I once again had NO IDEA how I was going to make the last leg of my trip to CCF. So I asked my taxi driver. Again. He called some people and drove to a place where there seemed to be a lot of idling taxi men. (This is a common occurrence in Africa and they are ALWAYS eager to get people in their cars). After a bit of negotiation, one man agreed to take me the 45 minutes to CCF. Basically, the entire trip was me placing my trust in sketchy taxi drivers. But sketchy taxi drivers are something that I am becoming alarmingly used to in Africa and they’re really not all that bad.
When I arrived at CCF, I didn’t really know what I was supposed to do… Santa was gone for a few days (the one I had been talking to) and I didn’t REALLY know if anyone else knew I was coming. After some confusion and introducing myself to one of the new interns and figuring out that they DID know, we hauled my stuff to my room, which I am sharing for the moment with Rachel (One of the BEST people I knew last time) and Suzie (a new girl in the ecology department).
Moral of the story is, the trip was an adventure, but I was NOT alone for Thanksgiving dinner.
Which was delicious, by the way, and included PIE.
SO THAT’S TH EPIC TALE!!!! One day poets will make it rhyme and sing it for kings and queens and all that rot. Go me.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
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"
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"
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