sarah mcVey: Week 5 and counting

Well here is to week 5 being just dandy! It was actually a pretty relaxing week mostly because we hung out on campus a lot more than usual. It was nice actually just to hang around.

Also just a really quick shout out to one of my life long best friends who got engaged this last week! Megan Gessel, I am so happy for you, I think you and Scott are perfect for each other and I can’t wait to help with the planning from the other side of the world. Congratulations pretty girl, Scott is one lucky guy. Always knew you would be the first of us to go and it’s weird that it’s not weird that you are getting married. May 24^th is gonna be a great day.

As far as Africa goes, lets see what stories we got this week…Only got a few, so the AFCON final was last Sunday and we spent it at a really great Bar/Grill that was completely full of avid soccer fans- most of which were cheering for Burkina Faso-including myself because they beat my team (Togo) and it was a pretty awesome game, except for the fact that Nigeria won 1-0. I treated myself to NORMAL FOOD- I got a super tasty salad with all sorts of veggies in it, which sounds weird because who calls that good food? Me. Now. After not having veggies for like a month, it tasted sort of what I suspect heaven would taste like.

Valentines day was a very nice day; a group of us went to the mall called Airport Junction where I treated myself to a mango and a pair of the most awesome pants I had seen in a while. Then it sort of became a bummer night, because the power went out in the mall. We had just sat down to order all you can eat pizza, delicious when the waitress told us we could only order off the valentine’s menu. Lame. So we tried to go to a different restaurant that the power pooped out on us. So we sat there for an hour in the dark, decided it was not going to come back on so we went to a different mall and ate a different kind of delicious pizza. I had so many valentines that day- when I get home and boys don’t really talk to me again, I am going to wonder where all my game went- then I will realize I never had any, it was just the boys here that have WAY to much.

The weekend was particularly excellent because we went camping at the Khama Rhino Sanctuary located like 4 hours away from Gaborone. Early Saturday morning a group of 8 international students packed up and walked over to the Gabs Bus Station where we got on a old bus that took us 3/4ths of the way to the sanctuary, then we had to wait for a different bus so we spent a few hours later in the morning eating cool time popsicles (which are the most amazing things ever, I like guava flavor the best) and getting hassled by little kids that couldn’t figure out what kind of creatures we were. Finally we got to the sanctuary where we spent the afternoon at a restaurant enjoying burgers and fries and playing card games. Then we got to our camp site which was real nice. We spent the evening climbing trees and setting up our tents. Then we decided we wanted to build a fire so some of us went on a walk looking for wood- Claire, Audrey and I pretty much tackled an entire tree and took it back to camp which worked out pretty good for logs. Only problem now was how to start the fire. Hunter spend an hour working on a contraption he invented trying to get some sparks and finally we forfeited and asked our neighbors for a match. We got a pretty large bonfire going, toasted tuna sandwiched over the fire and went star gazing all night. We finally tried to get some sleep by squishing way too many people in 2 man tents on the hard ground, needless to say, sleeping was a challenge even for me (which is saying something) but I still love camping. At 6am we woke up to go on an early morning game drive in the coolest safari jeep ever, it was like riding the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland so I enjoyed myself besides the fact that we saw animals! The rhinos were super awesome to see but I still love seeing the zebras and the wildabeasts and deer-like creatures. After a few hours, we packed up and stood on the side of the road until a bus drove by, we flagged it down and jumped on getting back to Gaborone just in time to nap for the rest of the day. I really love camping.