Shopaholics

---

Today we went with Pam and Jennifer and did what we thought was some last minute shopping. We went back to the Namibian Craft Centre. The center has a wide variety of different crafts and the proceeds go directly to the crafters. Some of the crafts are made by organizations to help support women or people with HIV and TB. We did some damage to our pocketbooks and purchased some lovely souvenirs.

We did go back to the street craft vendors and the experience was not as stressful today. We attributed this to the fact that there were more people shopping so they didn't feel as urgent of a need to attract our business. We visited the stall with the Himba women and asked them if we could take their picture, to which they replied "money." As we were bargaining with them, a little boy that was 2-3 years old came up and told us "30" which made us giggle. Another woman scolded the Himba women telling them "you don't just say money, you have to say 30 or 50 or whatever" which we also thought was a little funny. After shopping we checked out Zoo Park which is a small park in the city center that used to be a zoo but is now just a pretty park. We had a nice lunch at the restaurant in the park.

After lunch we drove over to the Parliament building and there was a wedding taking place in the beautiful gardens. The bride and groom were wearing outfits typical of what you would see in the US, but there were many older women in traditional dress chanting and dancing to bless the couple. It was really interesting to watch. After the wedding ended we toured the gardens which were really beautiful and a lot of locals were relaxing or picnicing there. There were also some cute chameleons hanging out in the park 😊

When we got back home, we checked the South African Airways website about our flight since we knew the brunt of Irene would be hitting NYC the day we were supposed to get in. The website informed us that our flight had been cancelled (yet no one else did despite having signed up for alerts from both the airline and the airport) We spent a few hour rescheduling and now we will get in on the 31st instead.

In the evening we went to Thule Hotel's outdoor veranda with Jennifer and the Browns for a sundowner (drinks while watching the sun go down). It was really nice other than the dog who wandered in a peed on a pot of flowers near us. The view was incredibly beautiful. Now we have to come up with some fun things to do with our 3 bonus days in Namibia 😊

---