On the local flora and faunae

Ok, some pictures...

The airport in Windhoek:

The zebra skin on the wall of the hostel:




Traditional Herero dinner (including goat's stomach and head, called smiley):




To skip ahead a bit during orientation, here is what everyone came to see. Huge animals in Etosha National Park:



Those zebras will someday grace their own hostel wall.



So, I have a ton more photos, but these are taking about 4 minutes to load apiece. I only paid for thirty minutes of internet. Yeah, so, to be continued.
One last photo, my first sunset in Opuwo:

Life in Opuwo

First of all, yes, I know, no pictures yet. Sigh. I have them all ready here, on my nice flash drive, and this old computer at a random hostel will not recognize it (I'm just surprised there are USB ports). So, as soon as I find a computer that does work, they will come.

Anyway. I am in Opuwo, and have been here since Saturday night. It was an interesting 12 hour adventure getting here from Windhoek, though it should have been more like 8 hours. Yeah, drivers tend to take the time for random errands here. I got to my place, which is at the end of a long, empty hallway. It is an old hostel, and mine is the only serviceable room. I started out without running water, no stove, no bed, no fridge. I now have a stove, a nice bed, a fridge, a dresser, and occasional running water (that is the most annoying thing, let me tell you). But other things are good. The teachers and learners have been so nice to me, and try to help as best they can. And Opuwo itself is surrounded by beautiful scenery, with mountains and a plateau visible.

Teaching itself has been hard. We have no textbooks for the learners, and really my room consists of a chalkboard and sometimes chalk. Challenging. Carmen has helped a lot in keeping me de-stressed, as well as seeing Ayoola (another volunteer) last weekend. It's been a tough week, but it's getting better, and I did come here to challenge myself.

There's lots more to say, but I'll try to save some of it until I can post some pictures. Needless to say, I wouild love emails saying hello. Bye bye.

On Perpetual Dehydration

Namibia is a dry place. And hot. But not the uncomfortable, please-shoot-me-now kind of hot from say the south east of the US. It's more in the style of "wow, I can feel my skin cells dying a hot death right now." I am used to drinking a lot of water a day, being a runner, but that does not matter here. "You drank 5 liters of water in the last ten hours?" the sun says with a laugh, "well I am just going to make it seem like that never happened." I expect the land here feels the same way. I have some lovely pictures which are now comfortably residing on my camera. Again, I will post the gorgeous scrubland that extends forever and ever as soon as I can. In the meantime, wait with bated breath for my recounting of our trip through Etosha National Park, where much wildlife was observed and recorded. In the meantime, our training here continues for another few days, and we leave Saturday to go to our teaching placements. I am learning the language used there, Otijiherero, the most charming aspects of which are the 9 different formal greetings to use throughout the day. Yeah, greeting is important here. And staying hydrated.

Untitled Post the First

Last night I ate goat's stomach and tongue. Pretty good actually.

On International Travel

So, I like airports. They always seem a little disconnected from time and location. Example: I've been to the Phoenix airport, but never really been to Arizona. I don't care what time it is at Dulles because in a few excruciating hours I will be in Johannesburg, 7 time zones away. I am now in Windhoek, and all the traveling went well. There was a small baggage fiasco at Dulles, and I was required to check my carry-on. Everything turned out all right, though there is a little dent in my checking account because of it. New Years in Johannesburg was fun, especially swimming in the hotel pool on Dec. 31st.
Namibia, or what little I have seen so far, is lovely. It is sunny and in the 80's during the day, and nice and cool at night. Outside of the Windhoek city limits it seems like there is nothing but flat scrub land then mountains; no ugly suburbs to clutter things up. No pictures yet, though I will post some as soon as that becomes possible (I have to install some software on Carmen's computer). The other volunteers are all great, and we seem to be getting along just fine so far.
When I went to Austria last year I was somehow unaffected by jetlag. Slightly different this time. I fell asleep at 10:30 last night, then woke up at 2:30am. I couldn't fall back asleep, but neither could some other volunteers, so we just hung out watching weird animal documentaries. The US to Namibia dollar exchange rate is basically 10:1. This is good news. And items only cost maybe 3 times as much in dollars. Very good news.