Valentine's Day

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

A relaxing weekend

 So a bunch of the international students and I went to go camping.  But instead of a tent we stayed in a cabin.  On the left you'll see a view of the place. We were right on top of a hill and you could see for miles. It was very beautiful.  While there we pretty much just hung out, however  you could go riding for a little bit. Three of my friends and I went riding.  The horses were very lazy and didn't want to move too fast but we were able to get them to trot.  The path we rode on was very flat and I would have loved to just canter  the entire way, except that I had no idea where we were going, and that my other friends don't know how to ride as well as  I do.  The strange part of this was the fact that our  guide didn't ride a horse like us, he simply walked and when we trotted he would run with us.

After riding we just hung out. I don't know a lot of the international students well so it was nice to hang out and get to know each other. We played a lot of card games where I learned a new one called California Speed.  We also played Mafia, Scramble, and the pointing game.  It was a lot of fun and nice to get off campus for a little while.

 This is a picture of the inside of the house.  It was fairly open and I really thought it was very cool.  The water here was safe to drink, however it tasted really weird so I didn't drink too much of it.  The toilet didn't work the second day we were there so it made the bathroom stink, but we weren't there for too long the second day anyways so it wasn't a big deal.

We had to bring our own food.  So Kevin, who is pretty much our student resource, and a few other students went grocery shopping.  When we first got there we had lunch.  For lunch we had salad and sandwiches.  We also had chips, but that was for a snack.  Then for dinner we had pasta, potatoes, salad, steak, and  sausage (which I made).  It was delicious.    Over the weekend I learned how to roll sausage.  It comes in a long tube thing and you have to roll the ends and then cut it.  It was interesting however when I was done my hands were stiff with raw meat juice. It felt really gross, but learning how to roll sausage was pretty cool.

It's been a month, what have I learned?

This post is about the things that I've learned in the month I've been here. In no particular order here they are:

* Cows have right of way.
           That's right, you don't matter as much as a cow.  And there are a lot of cows here so when driving it is important to keep an eye out, even though they're not known to jump out at you, they do like to stand in the middle of the road or lie down in the middle of the road.
*  Patience
           Everything here moves close to the speed of a snail.  When trying to get dinner there will be a single person at the cash register and a line of around 20 people waiting.  And it's like this everywhere.  If you're in a rush to do anything I would suggest getting to that place 30 minutes early because that is how long you'll probably be waiting.
*  Aggressiveness
            If there is a single door to enter and leave a building people will push themselves through. Don't wait for a person to leave, because they won't wait for you to enter the building before they try to exit.   If you want to get through you have to make a way through.  If there is a counter to order something, instead of a line people form a blob.  You need to be close enough to the counter and aggressive enough to catch the people behind the counters attention before someone else does.
* People do not yield to pedestrians
          In the states it's a big thing to not hit people.  So whenever a person is walking across the road a car has to stop. No matter where the person is walking cars have to yield. That is not the case here.  Here cars will keep coming at full speed and you have to try and dodge the cars to get to the other side of the road. There was a time when my friend and I were walking on the side of the road and I had to walk right into her because if I didn't the side view mirror of this car was going to hit me.
* If you can't stand the heat then go home
        It gets hot here. And when I say hot I mean HOT! The first week I was here I sweat so much I was sure    you could have filled a bucket with my sweat. Not to be gross, that's how hot it gets.  But now, after being here for so long, I don't sweat as much.  If you are afraid of the sun, or the heat, then you are in the wrong place.  The people here are so adapted to the heat that most locals wear long pants and a tee-shirt, sometimes even a long sleeved shirt when it is 90 degrees.
* Don't plan on shopping after 4:30
       Everything here closes really early. Come 5 pm most of the shops are already closed. The only places still open are restaurants.  So if you want to shop it has to be in the early afternoon.
* Look right then left
      The cars here drive on the left side of the road, and because of that you need to look right then left.  It took me a while to do that because I was so used to looking left then right.  Also the majority, I'm talking 90% of the cars here are standard.
*  People get paid to go to school
      If  you're from Botswana and you're going to the university then the government pays for education. Not only that, but the students receive an allowance each month. Unfair? I think so. Whenever I tell people that I paid money to attend this university they get really confused.
* Setswana is an easy language to learn
     The official language here is English, but the national language is Setswana.  So because of that I am taking a Introductory Setswana class.  This language is really easy.  The verbs don't change when talking about the past or present and they don't change when talking plural.  The noun is the one that changes if  talking plural, but only like two letters.  The language has a few difficult sounds but that is the hardest part.  Most of the people here will choose to talk in Setswana.  They learn english in the schools when they're younger but Setswana is spoken in the house.

There are a lot more things I have learned, but these are some of the ones that came to my mind, and also are some of the more important ones.