New Experiences!

We were extreme busy each day with hours of orientation, which was definitely an important part of our preparation for our placements. However, at night we have had to find things to keep us entertained. In addition to visit some of the MANY local malls, and soccer, we have been pretty excited about CatchPhrase. Luckily one of my roommates, Kate, brought it, and we had a blast playing it one of the nights of our first week. We even taught Titus, from Zimbabwe, and Karabo, one of our guides from Botswana, how to play because they had never done it. We had a blast and there was a LOT of laughing. We go to bed pretty early because of the early mornings, but we definitely squeeze in as much fun as we can.

Kate, getting stressed as the time runs out!

Zach, taking this game very seriously :)

On Friday, we had our first day FREE OF CLASSROOM MEETING!! :) We were very excited. We took a drive through more of Gaborone, and toward these two big hills/mountains (we haven't yet established which they are) which have become landmarks of a certain side of town, and by Game City (one of the malls). We passed some really interesting scenery and lots of random, roaming animals. A point that a lot of people have made is that most of us were suprised by seeing extreme poverty on one side of the road and commerical car dealerships on the other. I kind of like this distribution though because it doesn't allow a city to keep their extreme poverty in some remote area that no one ever sees. When it is mixed in with the mainstream, higher class areas they are forced to see it, think about it, and be faced with the reality of their city's poverty on a regular basis. That has been really different from what we are generally used to.

We drove to the culture village, which was a bit of a drive. I was still a little sleepy and the bus was hot...I think someone got a picture of my catching some zzz's.haha! As we made our way into the much more rural area of town the scenery was bare, brown, and covered in these huge dark rocks and boulders. Luckily, we finally found the twisty, turny rock road that lead us to the cultural village, and before we could even see anyone, we heard these high-pitched noises that I could tell were coming from people. As we turned a corner we were greated by 5 women wearing traditional clothing-minus the polo shirts they were wearing haha). They had decorations on their head, their ankles, their waistes, etc. They were making that high-pitched noise with their mouth by wiggling their tongue back and forth. This has become a common practice among many of the OU students. We got off of the bus and the women greated us graciously. You could tell that everyone was so excited for whatever we were about to experience. The walked us into the village and sat us down. We were able to watch a tradition wedding ceremony in which one of our group members, Dan, got to act as the groom. The women would make noises throughout the ceremony and explanations. I think they use those noises to celebrate or agree? That was the impression I got. A funny ritual that they do is that on the wedding night, the grandmothers of the village sit outside the door of the new couple's hut and "snoop". I found this quite amusing. :)

Two of the women in the village in their (mostly) traditional clothing

Grandmothers snooping..haha

We got to see how the women and men spend their days. The women cook, clean and tend to the children and animals, and the men mostly play games...shocker... :)

My favorite part of the cultural village was the dancing that the women did for us. They sang a few traditional songs and did some really interesting, entertaining dances. I could not wipe the smile off of my face. They even got Dr. Bates, one of the professors that is on the trip with us, to dance and get really involved in the song. We loved it and he was SUCH a good sport. The ladies from the village got a kick out of it, too.

We got to take a walk to a look out point that was amazing and you could see everything. We got a lot of great pictures and, on the way, got to pick and eat some wild berries. They weren't really the berries that we are normally used to. They were very small, had a hard outer shell, and hard seeds. The part you eat is not very fleshy, it just has a lot of flavor. After the walk we were fed a traditional meal. It consisted of a kind of pounded, shredded beef, which is served when you have an important guest, really great bread, a spinach-like vegetable,beans, chicken, papa, which has become one of my favorite traditional foods in Botswana, and a delicacy that is like poridge, but it is made with melon and sour milk...the least I can say is that I tried it :)

Look-out point

Traditional meal-I know it doesn't look that appetizing but it was great :)

After the meal we had to leave, which I don't think any of us were ready to do yet. I could have stayed all day, night, and even weekend. That is actually an option. Haha. They have single places that you can rent out for an EXTREMELY cheap price. It is remote, quiet, relaxing, and you can't beat the scenery.

A funny issue we had was that for about a day and a half to two full days we had no water on campus. No flushing toilets, no washing hands, no brushing teeth, no showering, NOTHING. Luckily we had a couple of full water bottles that we used to brush our teeth and such. It was just a little road bumb, but we weren't on campus most of those days so it didn't cause too much of a problem. Luckily, Courtney and Kate washed their hair once the water came on. Not-so-luckily, we still had no hot or even luke-warm water, so they washed their hair in the kitchen sink with freezing cold water. Pretty entertaining :) But the water came back and we are VERY happy!

We got to really go out, off of campus, on our own for the first time on Friday night. We went to a local resturant/bar/dance club after 10pm called Bull and Bush. We had so much fun because the whole group went. Apparently that is the place to go for people who aren't from here. So we got to meet A LOT of people from the U.S. and other countries who are studying abroad, volunteering, etc. We had an intense dance party f0r quite a while, but had to end the night early because of plans on Saturday morning.

We have really been getting to know the people and culture and I can't wait for a month more of this! It can only get better!