sarah mcVey: One Month Mark

This week was a pretty chill week for the most part. School actually really
started with week which is just wonderful and I just started working
on my first group presentation for my Traditional and Alternative
Medicine class which will hopefully end up being really awesome. My
other classes are great too, I really love my Rural Development and
Reproductive Health classes.

A few quick stories to make this more exciting! First one is
about soccer- my paperwork finally went through which means I actually
got to play this week! We all met up to go to our game which was about
an hour and a half drive we loaded everyone onto a bus that should
really only fit about half the amount of people we smushed into it.
When I say I had half-of-a-half-of-a-butt cheek on a chair, that is a
generous assumption. Armpits in my face, sweat making everything
overly sticky and no room to move made for a very enjoyable bus ride.
Anyways we get to the field and its way crappy even by Africa
standards, it was dirt which was fine but the kicker was the bushes
and cow pies scattered around the field. The refs decided this was
not game ready so we ended up just playing a friendly game which was fine,
but I actually got to play wing which was so much fun! Having a white player
is something of a rare occurrence here so when me and the other white
girl sub'ed in everyone (even fans from the other team) started
cheering at the top of their lungs and every time we would touched the
ball they would shout "lacoa!" which means white in setswana. ha no
pressure, and of course I trip and fall and eat it way hard, start
bleeding and everyone had a field day. The best was after the game
when the other team came up to me trying to touch my hands and a few
of them even tried to switch me jerseys like they sometimes do in the
world cup. Once the ball went out and it was a corner kick, I went to get the
ball and kick the corner, and some local guy got the ball for me but when
he handed it to me, he reached out and just touched my hand- just
stroked it real quick. Ha I have a feeling soccer is going to be one of the more
interesting things I am involved with this semester.

I found places to volunteer! I have gone to two of the three places
so far and absolutely love them. The first one is the clinic on
campus where I go and can do simple height/weight/BMI tests along with
simple blood tests for cholesterol and blood sugar, hopefully
eventually I will even get to help out with some HIV/AIDS stuff which
would be sweet. The other place I have been to is an after school
program for orphans and kids living in vulnerable situations. So I
get to hang out with ridiculously cute kids for a few hours every
week. There was one little girl with down-syndrome in the group and I
was immediately drawn to her, lucky for me, she was drawn to me too.
The last place I have to turn in my resume for tomorrow, but the local
hospital might be able to attach me to a doctor to shadow and help out
around the unit for a few hours a week. WIN! we will see how this all
goes but it seems to be playing out pretty well!

One last story, when we were coming back from dinner on friday
night we got in a car accident. A drunk driver ran a red light
and our cab actually ended up t-boning him but we were all wearing
our seat belts and we are all fine, just a little whip lash for a day but that is
gone now. We were also way lucky because the police were literally right
behind us which made getting everything sorted a ton easier because
they saw the entire thing. Moral of that story, always wear your seat belt.
Also, dont drink and drive.