Two Weeks Left in Bots!

 Volunteering at Mokolodi

Playing tug of war with the thorny, prickly, dangerous trees

 taking a dip in one of Mokolodi's watering hole

 Hanging out with two of my favorite volleyball players: Moleti and Anthony

My waffle-ice cream-pb-banana waffle for breakfast!!!

 Hello once again. As a study break I thought I would update all of you on the happenings of this past week. I can’t believe I am already studying for finals! I have my first final tomorrow-Setswana which is going to be an oral test where I will have to converse with my teacher, Nthati. I am pretty nervous about it because even though I am living with a host family and surrounded by the language I mainly speak English to them and am spoken to in English by them and my friends. Then I have another final this upcoming Thursday for my Psychological Challenges of HIV/Aids course. Technically finals are not supposed to start until November 19^th but many teachers here do not like teaching the last week of actual classes (the week of the 12^th) and instead of waiting around until the 19^th to give the final are giving it to us early. This is fine with me since now I have only two finals during the actual finals week and was able to get both of them to be on the same day, the 19^th. This then means that I am done with all my courses on the 19^th and have free time until December 1^st when CIEE takes all the students to the Okavango Delta. Since I have like 10 days with nothing to do I am going to be heading to Maputo and Tofo in Mozambique which are supposed to have amazing beaches! So although I am not technically going to be leaving Africa until December 12^th I really only have two more weeks in Gaborone and the last 3 weeks will be spent traveling: Mozambique, then the Delta then Cape Town for 4 days.

Since I have such a short amount of time left in Gaborone I am trying to hit everything that I like to do one more time which included two for one whizzers at Milky Lane on Tuesday night. On Tuesday I didn’t go to volleyball because CIEE had a meeting where we got to present a media project we had been working on. For our CIEE class, we were split into groups of 5, given a topic about Gabs and then were to make a 5 minute instructional video about it. My group did transportation while some of the other topics were Setswana, homestays, dorm life and CIEE in general. So CIEE got us pizza and juices and we all came together to watch each other’s videos which was great. Then it was time to head to Milky Lane for our whizzers which are kind of like DQ Blizzards. But of course nothing is simple in Bots. Even though Anthony and I had been going to Milky Lane for this deal for the past two weeks we order and she charged us for both. When we complained she said the deal was no longer going on and they forgot to take down the sign. When we asked then for the money back and to cancel the order she said she couldn’t cancel the order. What??? After arguing for a bit, the manager comes over. I love her! Her name is Alice and she is one of the few people in Botswana who practices customer service and she knows us because we go there so often. It turns out that the deal is still going on it was just that the two particular ones we ordered couldn’t count for it because they were two of the expensive ones. Long and short of it we did end up getting two cheaper ones for free but eish, what a hassle.

Wednesday was Halloween but no one here celebrates it and so it wasn’t that special of a day at all. No one even knew it was Halloween here. However, us Americans thought we had to do something to celebrate so after volleyball, me, Ashley, Anthony, Kylee and Charlotte headed to Linga Longa Restaurant for some good old, orange macaroni and cheese. Of course we needed chocolate too though so while waiting for our food, Ash and I ran to Pick and Pay to get some wonderful Cadberry chocolate to satisfy our need for Halloween candy! It wasn’t the typical American Halloween but we did what we could with what we had!

Thursday and Friday weren’t that particularly interesting. On Friday volleyball practice was a lot of fun though. There weren’t that many people there so the boys and girls mixed and we scrimmaged for most of practice. It was so so much fun. Unlike with the girls when you make a mistake the boys will correct your mistake without saying anything about it or will give you a high five and say good try. Plus they love to tease each other which is hilarious. At one point I was with these two guys in the back row and they kept saying to set them because the back row is where the points are coming from. This started this huge chorus of “Julies” every time I went to set the ball with 5 different hitters yelling my name and hoping I set them. It was awesome! The rest of the night was good too because my mom was at the hospital just down the road so I was able to get a ride home with her and found out that she made dumplings for dinner. They were great. Then I just spent the night hanging out with Tshego watching My African Dream which is like a talent show.

Saturday I had to get up really early because the CIEE kids were volunteering at Mokolodi Game Reserve so had to meet on campus by like 8. It turned out to be an awesome day full of crazy happenings. It started when we were on our way to Mokolodi and got pulled over at a police check point. What should have been a five minute check turned into an hour detour because it turns out the combi company we hired didn’t have the registration to drive these cars and therefore had to pay a 1800 pula fine immediately which they didn’t have. So we were literally just stranded at this police check point. Eventually Mokolodi came in their game drive trucks to come pick us up and take us into the park where we met the headman for the day, Ian (funny story-because of his accent many of us thought he said Yen so for a good part of the day people just kept calling him Yen!).  Once inside the park and at our worksite we divided into three groups. The main problem they were having was that when the heavy rains came the water would pool in the road and form a river and even washed some of the road away. There were three tasks to be done; collecting rocks to fill in the huge holes in the road, digging ditches/creating barriers and trimming branches to clear the game drive road. I started on rock collecting which was actually pretty fun. We got to wander around the bush finding large rocks and eventually created an assembly line from the bush to the road to fill in the holes. It was so rewarding to see how many rocks we collected and how much of the road we were able to fill in. After a short break for snack time I switched tasks and hopped in the back of Ian’s pick up truck to drive to another part of the road to cut down tree branches that were in the way of the road. It was so much fun flying through Mokolodi in the back of the pick-up truck as Ian was a crazy driver but it was so much fun. Cutting the trees back, however, was a completely different story. These are no normal trees but smart little devil trees. They look really leafy and green and soft but in fact they have a ridiculous amount of tiny thorns that face inward so when you get stuck in them and try to pull back you just get more caught.  I got my head stuck in these trees like five times and had to have people come untangle me and had the branches stick to my shirt, pants, shoes, skin!!! Came out with some “real nice” scratches all over my arms (take note of the tug-of-war pictures with the tree!). To cool off on the way back to the other kids, Ian took us to a watering hole that we got to dip our feet in and play with the mud for a bit. So much FUN!!

We then got to have our lunch which was this awesome braii!!! Braiis are huge here and are basically just a barbeque with a bunch of different meats so we got like three different salads, pap, butternut squash, chicken, sausages, steak. Everything was so good and I definitely had my fair share of food. After sufficiently gorging myself, some of us walked over to this huge lake and got to see a crodocile and two hippos. Then on the way back from the braii we saw like 5 zebras. The afternoon was definitely another “aha moment, my life is so great!” I mean I just got to rebuild a path in a game reserve, splash around in a watering hole, eat at a braii right next to a hippo-infested lake and then see zebras running around and that’s a normal weekend now!! Loved it!!

The day wasn’t over yet though. After hanging out at UB for a bit, most of the international students decided to go out to a local bar we go to once in a while for the night. It was so much fun to hang out with the other kids because we really do not have much time left together.

Sunday was yet another good day. One thing that has been on my and Anthony’s bucket list is to go to Milky Lane and get their icecream covered waffles-today was the day. We headed out to railpark and got our peanut butter banana, ice cream waffles which were delicious!!! Yet at the same time made you want to throw up. Definitely glad I got them but for sure something I would not do again. Afterwards, some of us went to another mall to hit up a target-like store called Game and then walked back to my house for an afternoon of chocolate-chip cookie making. Basically it was a day filled with my closest American friends, ice cream, cookies and waffles-who could ask for more???