5 Days

I am now done with my finals, and have the rest of the week to do nothing except say goodbye and pack.  I cannot believe how the time has gone by.  It seems like only yesterday I was stepping off the plane into the sun.  Despite the challenges I've faced here, I really have grown to love this place.  This post is going to be about the things that I really like.

 1:  The pace.  Now when I'm at home I am always on time and I move fast.  My life seems to be constantly in motion with little time to slow down and breathe.  Here though, everything moves at its own pace.  You take your time going places, and enjoy the view.  Dinner isn't a meal its a gathering.  The food doesn't arrive as quickly so you have more time to talk to your friends and relax.  You're never in a rush to get somewhere, you get there when you do.  Don't try and set a deadline or a time limit because it won't happen.  People relax here, and enjoy life.
2:   The people.    The people here are very nice.  They're very curious about me and why I am here, but for the most part it's just that.  They don't want anything from me except my insight on their country. My friends and I have hitch hiked plenty of times and the people that give us the ride are always courteous and friendly. I have never been turned away when asking for help.  If you stop somewhere and seem upset, someone will come and offer you help.  You don't need to be afraid to approach someone (except maybe on occasion guys).

3: The temperature.  I HATE snow. I don't like it. I don't mind the cold as much as I mind the snow. So coming here while it was still winter back home was a godsend. I love waking up to the sounds of birds and cows outside my windows.  The sun is always shining and when it rains it only rains for about 20 minutes before it clears up again.  It is hot here, but not a humid heat.  It's the kind of heat that makes you want to sit outside having a picnic.
4:  The culture.  This place has great culture. It's very rich, and old traditions are integrated into the modern society.  I love how the music is a mixture of some of the popular hits, i.e Adele, is mixed with an African drum beat.  Most people except for those in the city live in traditional villages.  I love watching the traditionalism and the modernism mix together.  I think it's fascinating how their language Setswana is still be spoken despite the fact that English is the official language.  This country tries and succeeds at holding onto its roots.

5: The beauty.  The sunset here is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen.  The vibrant colors mix with the suns rays and the clouds creating a entrancing tapestry across the sky.  (Impressed at my poeticness? Because I am).  Anyways I love the flowers here.  They are bright and colorful and everywhere.  I also really like seeing cows, donkeys, and goats everywhere. They wander the country unsupervised.  I ususally  wake up to the sound of cow bells and moos.

13 Days a.k.a This Mortal Form Grows Weak, I Need Sustenance!!!

I've met a lot  of really cool and awesome people here.  I hang out with a lot of them, though there are 2 people who are the closest to me.  Their names are Meredith and Ali. If you've read this blog before then you've seen pictures of me and them, and you've read some of our adventures.  That being said they deserve a post because we spend so much time together.

       When I first got here I flew with someone else and we had to wait for a third person to arrive before our guide would bring us to the campus.  The third person was Meredith, and that is how we met.  Because we arrived after Orientation started the three of us kind of stuck together. Even once Orientation was over Meredith and I stuck together.  We're in a math class together so I see her at least once a day.

  Normally I see her at least twice a day.  Meredith is a morning person.  She never sleeps in (it's like her body won't let her sleep past 9 am) and every morning she would smile and say "Hello" in this voice which I have decided is the quirky Meredith voice.  Usually I would grunt or mumble in response (I am not a morning person in the slightest).  She's really nice, and always always always smiles.  When I say always smiles I mean SHE ALWAYS SMILES. Even a person is hitting on her and not taking the hint that she wants to be left alone she smiles.  She's really sweet even when she tells you to fuck off.  Add her blond hair and she could charm anyone.  She is as weird as me.  She makes plenty of weird faces, and says really funny things.  She laughs as much as she smiles, and can sing along with the best of rappers.  We get along quite easily, and always have a good time together.  Almost all of the trips, except for the safari, was with Meredith.  She never fails to make me laugh or cheer me up.  She is also really smart and everything comes naturally to her.  We are the only white girls in our class, and because the teacher can see how smart she is she is called to the board a lot.  If I have a problem in that class I go to her.

   The next person I hang out with on a daily basis is Ali.  Ali is a lot like me.  When it comes to our relationships we both wear the pants, yes that's right I'm not afraid to admit that, and we have very similar taste in men, our  boyfriends are pretty much the same.  She is a political science major so if I have any questions about politics I go to her. Because of that she is very opinionated and isn't afraid to speak her mind.  She is strong and very self assured. I wish I was a lot more like her.  She doesn't back down from a fight, but at the same time she can be soft and silly.

 She has this trade mark pose which has been dubbed the dinosaur.  She, much like me, makes weird noises.  She is a bartender and she is the person who got me to drink while over here. She has helped decide the type of alcohol I like and takes care of me when I need it.  She is a lot of fun to be with and always does her best to make sure I'm having fun with her.  I do feel very ignorant compared to her, and I ask a lot of questions. I don't really remember exactly how I met Ali but I do remember that we were walking back from something in a group together and we started talking. We instantly bonded over Dr.Who (even though I prefer the 11th doctor and she likes the 10th).  After that we started talking and found out we had a lot in common.  I think we really stated hanging out because she was friends with Meredith via drinking and I was friends with Meredith as well  so we would all hang out.

            Between the three of us we have all the bases covered.  Ali is the sassy one, Meredith is the sweet charming one, and I am the highly sarcastic one. I am the best at getting rides, Ali is the best Haggler, and Meredith is the best at charming people and best at knowing where we're going and how to get there.  I have never been anyone except myself and while I know they think I'm obnoxious at times (especially when I drink coffee) I know they are my friends.  I feel more at ease with them then I do with some of my friends back home.  They know how clumsy I am and we joke about it a lot.

 They always tease about pushing me down a hole on the side of the road, but I never take it seriously because I know they will take care of me and have my best interest at heart.

When I'm having a bad day it these two people I turn to.  When I had an interview at 10 pm and didn't have internet it was Ali that walked with me to Riverwalk Mall so I could do my skype interview there.  When I needed someone to cheer me up and play card games with me Meredith is the one I call.  Every trip, except one, was done with these two. I am really going to miss them when I go back home, and I do intend on visiting them.  Thankfully they don't live too far away from me.                                  

Mozambique!

           So this is a time out from the count down. Over Easter break 2 friends of mine and I went to Maputo Mozambique.  We left Wednesday before Easter.  Getting to Maputo consisted of multiple modes of transportation. First we took a combi from UB to the station.  From the station we paid 190 Pula to take another combi from the station into Johannesburg.  It was a 1/2 hour to the Botswana boarder were we had to get out fill out a form and get our passport stamped.  Then we walked to the South Africa boarder and did the same thing over again.  Once this was all done we got back in the combi and continued onto Joberg which took 6 hours.  Thankfully the ride wasn't too uncomfortable.  I was able to read until it got dark and then listened to music.  We arrived at Joberg around 10 pm.  As one of my friends eloquently said "Joberg is the armpit of Africa". And it's true.  The smell of burning rubber saturates the air, and there is trash everywhere you turn.  Add in some run down buildings and creepy people and you get one sketch place.  Our combi driver took us to our hotel, oddly enough this hotel is the exact same one I stayed in when I was last in Joberg.  We spent the night there and the next day we flew out of the OR Tampo Airport into Maputo Mozambique.  The flight was fine, an hour long and food can't really go wrong.
          We ran into multiple issues once we got there. The first being this: All the websites we looked at said that to pay for the visa you can pay in any currency. We got to the visa spot and found out that was not true.  So we had to leave our passports with the visa guy and get escorted to an ATM where we had to take out there currency and then get escorted back to the visa spot where we paid for our visa's.  Once this was over we went over to where the hotel was going to pick us up.  Only there was no one there.  So we found a taxi and showed them where we wanted to go. Our hotel was the Catembe Gallery Hotel.  What we didn't realize was that the hotel was on a peninsula and we would have to take a ferry every time we wanted to go to the mainland.  So then the taxi took us to the ferry, we took the ferry and finally arrived to the hotel where they claimed I didn't pay for our reservation.  This issue wasn't resolved until the day we left where I showed them my bank account and showed that the money was taken out.

       The hotel was beautiful in my opinion.  Our room had a single two person bed in one area and then a single bed in a different spot. Our room overlooked the pool and the ocean.  The room had these really cool lizard lights that I adored.  The hotel had this little restaurant area.  The pool was the cleanest I've seen here, and had palm trees and chairs around it.  Then a walk way would take you to the bar which sat in the ocean where you could get drinks and watch the sunset.  Mozambique itself is beautiful.  The palm trees and beaches give it a sense of serenity and quiet.  The sky is always blue and it's always warm.

      We went into the city a lot and just walked around.  The city could be as beautiful as the country.  There are plenty of old Victorian buildings, and plenty of parks.  However the people don't keep it clean.  There is trash everywhere, maybe on par with Joberg.  At one point my friend asked a local where a trash can was and the lady laughed and told her to just throw it on the ground.  I took a bunch of pictures of some of the rundown buildings because I felt as though that they could have been really pretty.
              The city in my eyes is made up of two parts.  80% of Mozambique is slums and it shows in the lower part of the city that was closest to the ocean.  That is where it was the dirtiest and where we saw roads and decided not to go down them.  We also saw a lot of homeless people and people begging for money.  Now the other side of Maputo sat high on a hill and had a great view of the ocean.  This is where the rich people would live and it showed.  It was cleaner, and the buildings were taken care of.  This is also where the craft market was.

      The craft market was about 3 times longer than the one in Zimbabwe if you stretched the one in Zim out.  It was 2 rows of stuff and stretched on for so long.  We spent a decent amount of time here buying things, and we only walked the entire distance once, because there was so much stuff.  I personally loved it.  I got a cool bag and some stuff for my friends and family there.
Once we were done shopping and haggling like a boss we got lunch there and then got ice cream.  We took this weird taxi thing back to the ferry.  Pretty much its a car that is open on two sides and has one wheel in the front and 2 in the back.  The driver uses something similar to a motorcycle handlebars.  It was the  cheapest transportation and the most fun.

      We also went to Inhaca Island.  It's a 2 hour ferry ride to the island on a tiny boat that rocked with the waves a lot.  Once we got closer to the island we had  to get out and walk the rest of the way because the tide was too far out for the boat to go all the way.  So everyone had to carry their stuff and walk through the water to get to the island.  The water here was blue compared to the brown water at Maputo.  The island was beautiful, and reminded me of what I thought paradise would be.  Palm trees, and beaches that wrapped around  the island, with coral reefs in front of it and blue blue water everywhere.  We went snorkeling over the coral reefs and saw a lot of fish.  It was really cool seeing the reefs.  I had this one stupid small yellow and black fish follow me around for a little bit.  it would scare the crap out of me every time I turned and it would be there.  I also had grilled calamari for the first time here. It was really good and definitely a new experience.
       People in Mozambique speak Portuguese, and a tiny bit of English.  So communicating was difficult sometimes.  I got to use my "teacher" voice and would explain things very simply and slowly.  We would hitchhike from the ferry point to our hotel and one time we got a ride with a woman who couldn't speak English at all.  It was quite an experience trying to communicate.  I was able to get across that I studied math by saying "one plus one is two".  We were able to talk to some people in the little Spanish that we knew, but for the most part we just repeated what we said in English multiple times.
        When we first got to Maputo we wanted to exchange our Pula.  However no bank would do this.  Most people and banks didn't even know what a Pula was.  This I found interesting because the Pula is a lot stronger than the Meticai which is what Mozambique uses.  The people we talked to had no idea what Botswana was let alone where it was.
    We went home on Monday where we flew out of Maputo then to Joberg and then  took a combi to Gabs.  Overall I really enjoyed this trip. I loved seeing a new country and experiencing a new culture.  It was really relaxing to just sit under the sun and do nothing.  The heat in Mozambique was welcomed since it is starting to turn into winter here at Gabs.
                  Here are some more pictures:

30 DAYS!!!!

       This place has been a great confidence boost.  "Why," you ask? Well, I'll tell you.  Imagine a five year old who just got a new toy.  This little boy/girl will find it fascinating and will not put down this toy for more than a moment.  Well, I am that toy and the little five year old boy/girl are the men here.  Now before I continue I have to reassure all you guys that nothing has ever happened. I've never been touched inappropriately, never been grabbed, etc.  So now that is cleared up and I HOPE that you are all less concerned for me I am going to continue.
       Botswana is made up of mainly black people, I'm not being racist, that's just what it is.  The international students here make up maybe <1% of white people.  Because of this we attract a lot of attention.  I'm going to tell you some of the things that have happened to me, and to my fellow white girls.

      I have a friend, we'll call her R. Now R and a few others walked to main mall one time.  On the way there a guy approached her and grabbed her wrist saying that "R was the most beautiful thing he's ever seen and will she please marry him?" Well, R like any other girl approached by a stranger replied "No, I'm sorry" the stranger then went on to ask R "if she would at least reproduce with him."  First off, I don't what guy in his right mind (and maybe that's the point) would ask a random girl to marry him or to reproduce with him.  I mean seriously dude? You're just setting yourself up for failure.
      I was doing laundry one day and decided that while I was waiting I was going to paint my toenails.  A guy saw what I was doing and asked me if he could paint my toenails for me.  Now while this isn't a creepy sexual story or anything, having a random guy ask me if he could touch my feet is kind of creepy.
     My friend M has the unfortunate pleasure of having blond hair here.  Because of this she attracts more attention than I would.  One time she was at the station (where all the combis gather) while walking a guy from across the street continued to yell " Yo blondie! Yo English!  Blondie! Blondie! I don't speak English very well but you are beautiful!"  In a crowded place surrounded by strangers the one thing you don't want is someone to be yelling to you and drawing attention to you.
       My friends M H and I went to the bar on campus (not one of the best ideas in my opinion) and got some drinks.  We decided that we would sit at a table across the road from it (because you're not allowed to drink anywhere else except that everyone does!) and play cards. After a few minutes people began to notice us.  We would get groups of guys coming up and asking if they could play cards with us.  My friend H would tell them it was a girls night and that boys weren't allowed.  Oddly enough a bunch of them insisted that they were gay (which is illegal here) or transsexual (which is also illegal) and because of that we should let them join.  We would just laugh and tell them to go away.  I decided that I would keep a running tally of how many guys came and hit on us (just hit on us, not being friendly and talking). After 2 hours we were up to 20 guys!
     One other night my friends M G A and I were drinking in A's room.  We decided to go to Bimbo's (the only fast food restaurant open at midnight).  We saw that one of our fellow international students Peter was also going to Bimbo's and we bummed a ride off of him and his 3 friends that we didn't know. This was not one of our finest ideas.  We got to Bimbos and found out that 2 out of 3 of his friends were drunk.  One of them kept talking to me asking if he could talk to me alone.  I mean no! Why would I walk away from my friends in the dark to talk to you alone.  I kept responding that whatever he had to say to me he could say in front of my friends.  He continued to try and lure me away.  I continued to beguile him and reject him. At one point he took a hold of wrist looked me in the eyes and said "You shouldn't talk to African men like that" I then responded " I will talk to men anyway that I want to". Just because they treat women like their dirt here does not mean they can expect me to be submissive as well.  He then asked my friends if they could "release me so that he could talk to me alone". I responded stating the fact that I was not some dog that could be let off it's leash. Eventually we got  away from them and went to a gas station to wait for a taxi.  There 2 more guys decided they could try their luck with us.  By that point we were in mood to talk to guys so after a few minutes of intense hatred they went away.
      These are just some stories.  Usually a guy will just come up to me talk to me for a few minutes, ask if i have a boyfriend (you always say yes, or that you're married) and then once I rejected him he would walk away.  We do get a lot of honks directed our way when we walk which is quite obnoxious.  The attention was nice at first, but now I'm kind of tired of it.

33 Days

So I know I complain about Africa a lot.  You have to understand. I love this place, with all my heart, but somethings just make me grind my teeth. This post is going to be about ... INEFFICIENCY!!!!   There are a lot of inefficient things over here.

                So I might as well start with the school. When the local students here and international students register for class it is done by hand.  Meaning that the local students have to line up and wait (sometimes for days) to enter a room  where people at a table will ask you what classes you want to take. They will then write you down for that class. Sometimes though you go to class only to see a sign that says the class isn't being offered...yet somehow you managed to register for it.  Also because it's by hand it means that you're not alerted if the combination of classes  you want to take makes sense, i.e taking a prerequisite for a course and that course at the same time.
           In order to use the wifi here you need to register your laptop.  In order to register you're laptop you need to go to the department IT office you're under and get them to register for you.  In my eyes it would make a lot more sense to have a single location where everyone can register their computers. The offices here have really weird hours, and often times after taking a 2 hour long lunch break leave around 2 hours earlier.

         Most buildings at a university make some sort of sense. And if you don't know where you are then there is a map to guide you.  At UB the buildings are numbered.  Now you'd think that if they were numbered then 480 would be next to 479 or something like that. That is not how it works here.  480 is on one end while 479 is at the other end of campus.  So you need to wander around hoping to stumble across the building you need. If you get lost you could attempt to look at a map...except there aren't many maps oncampus and if you do find a map it isn't updated.  So you're pretty much destined to ask the locals, who have no idea where anything is.
      When you need to print you need to buy a card at one location.  Once you have a card you need to put money on this card by traveling to multiple locations.  Then you can go to the library and print.
      There are a few stores in the student center.  They had to close one store for 2 days  while taking inventory and another store closed the entire week.  Why these stores couldn't possibly take inventory while they're closed is beyond me and I don't understand why it takes a tiny store more than one day to do inventory.
   Now as I've said before I do love this place but sometimes it makes me a little crazy.  The first time I skyped my parents from here my dad told me that this place would  teach me patience. And it certainly has. After waiting in a line to get dinner for around a 1/2 hour the lines back home will seem like nothing. I have never been patient but thanks to this place I might return more patient than when I left.