So I wish I was clever enough to have come up with this clever hand gesture of a country...but I'm still endlessly amused with it nonetheless. I'm around the middle finger's knuckle. The rest of the homestay ended well. When I returned to my house Saturday morning, after a somewhat failed attempt at celebrating Mary Olive's 22nd birthday Friday night, to find my host sister standing at the gate screaming JAIMIE! (what she insists my name is. by the way mom and dad, thanks for the name that is impossible for everyone to say. I was told you should have named [View Full Entry]

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So for the past week or so we've all been with our homestay families around Windhoek. It was really odd at first...and still is in a lot of ways, because we all had just gotten settled in OUR house, and are very used to being on our own. To add to that, we come back to our house almost everyday, since alas, our living room is the classroom. So in some ways that's nice- I didn't have to pack a lot, I can get stuff I need everyday, but it feels really forced to have to leave my house just to [View Full Entry]

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So I definitely wrote this a week ago...and I have no idea what happened to it. If I were an interesting person I would probably have more interesting things to say. Our days still seem jam packed and fascinating to me, but then when you think about it they are pretty routine. Monday I started my internship, which is at an organization called Catholic AIDS Action. I've been there two days, and still not entirely sure on what I'll be doing. I spent more time riding in the combi to and from internships than actually at mine on monday I believe. [View Full Entry]

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So I'm now officially settled. We wrapped up our South African adventures and headed to Namibia on Wednesday. Besides the fact that there was awful turbulence right when we were landing, so it appeared that we were crash landing in the middle of the Kalahari desert, everything was great. I don't know why I didn't really believe that we'd be living in a desert, but I just assumed Windhoek, the capital where we are living wasn't. It was such a huge difference from Johannesburg. Coming from a city of almost 8 million to then driving through the desert for 45 minutes [View Full Entry]

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So apparently my infamous reputation beat me here...and my host mother was nowhere to be found the day we were all supposed to go to our homestays. So me and my homestay buddy Erica got split between two other houses. I ended up in Dobsonville, one of the sections of Soweto where about 12 of the 18 of us were. I lived with Winnie, a spunky 60 some year old woman and her 10 year old granddaughter Zuki. Thank god her name was Zuki, because I had no chance at being able to say any of the other names of people [View Full Entry]

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Apparently saying "I know what time it is" a cool way to say you know what's up. Or they just like to see us all look ridiculous. But in reality I have no clue what time it is. it seems like I've been gone for ages...when in reality I haven't even been gone a week. But I'm sure you all miss me so much that you think so too. Or at least I'll keep telling myself that. It's been a crazy whirlwind first several days. We had two birthdays in the first three days, have been to two different cities, several [View Full Entry]

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So it's go time. After a minor flight debable...realizing that my flight home was wrong and having to fed ex my paper tickets back to Canada on Wednesday...I now have my tickets in hand with 12 hours to spare. I leave earrly tomorrow morning...it would really just make more sense to stay awake if it weren't for the fact that I have to make two connections before I can peacefully sleep in my tiny chair for the 15 some hours to South Africa. right. I spend my first 10 days or so in and around Johannesburg and head to Namibia on [View Full Entry]

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So I was meant to go to my last wedding on Saturday...but we never really made it. Between running late to start with, getting lost, a huge traffic jam and torrential downpour, the wedding was over before we even made it there. So instead we went straight to the reception...the important thing is that I still got my free food. And I don't think I've laughed as hard as I did stuck in the car in a long time. Clerene's best friend, a crazy 70 year old woman noticed that all the guys in the car next to us were [View Full Entry]

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They say getting there is half the fun right? So my adventure to Guyana started about 16 hours before my flight even left for various reasons. I wanted to go to the festivities welcoming back the soccer team from the world cup and it wasn't a really good idea to travel at night to get my flight at four in the morning. So I was nice and sweaty and just lugged my bag all around town. All went well until I underestimated the length to the airport and instead of getting a taxi walked a good mile and a half with [View Full Entry]

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So I decided the time had come for me to head down de islands. Everyone refers to the Bocas...a group of about 11 different islands of the northwest coast as simply going down de islands. It's right off the coast of Chagaraumas, an area that used to be the US military base during WWII. So now it consists mainly of a national park, lots of expats, and yahties who bring their boats up here to get them out of the hurricane path. One of the islands, Gasparee, is most known for its cave so that's where I was heading. The elementary [View Full Entry]

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