A Little Catch-Up

The past few weeks were eventful, but little occurred that compelled me to start writing. Since a fair number of small things have accumulated, I have decided it is time for an update.

Three weeks ago the WorldTeach volunteers travelled North to Tsumeb for a teaching practice session. The organization posted flyers and broadcasted via the radio that any learners who would like to attend could visit a week-long session of morning lessons smack in the middle of their last week of holiday prior to the new school year. Each of our seven WorldTeach classrooms had about five to ten learners, which when I considered how many American children would willingly start their school year one week early, struck me as a rather impressive turnout. During that week, back at the hostel small teams of volunteers took turns cooking dinner for the rest of the group, and despite always knowing it in theory, the experience finally drove home to me in practice that I am utterly worthless in a kitchen. Thankfully, I also learned that I'm not so bad in front of a group of school-children, and with the confidence I gained I found myself joining the kids in a game of uma (a kind of memory jump-rope game) and felt assured of my ability before departing for my year-long site in Oshikunde.

For some diversion after our week of hard work, our group spent a morning touring the wilderness of Etosha National Park. A noteworthy but irrefutably bland thing we observed was the Etosha Salt Pan. It is an enormous flat expanse of earth moist with salt water, and it is about as exciting as it sounds. I mention it only because it is visible from space, a statement which unfailingly causes me to geek out for at least a moment. With that said, we also witnessed some extraordinary wildlife. Impalas, dik-diks (I'm not sure if that is spelled correctly, but I'm sticking with it), zebras, elephants, a hyena (eating a giraffe carcass!!), live giraffes, lots of birds, oryx, kudus, wildebeests (and danger), a chameleon, a jackal, a monitor lizard, and lion paw tracks if memory serves me right. I have a lot of pictures of this that I am trying my best to post. In the meantime I will just mention that every proportion of a giraffe's body is downright incorrect.

Our last week of orientation consisted of preparatory shopping, celebratory dinners, a birthday party, local language lessons, a fair amount of Band of Brothers, and a lot of Pictionary. After packing everything up Sunday, we all went to sleep for the last time at our orientation hostel in Windhoek with an alarm to be ready for our pickup at 8 the next morning. Each of us, going to different locations, had a long day of traveling ahead.