donkey carts and kisses, oh my

Hello all!

Life in Nam is progressing slowly but surely.
I began my official lessons in Jul/’hoansi, and my tutor tells me I am clever… I think he just likes the 20 dollars an hour I pay him. I don’t think I will ever get to a place where I am remotely fluent in the language but I hope to get at least proficient in the next 21 months…. It's also hard as I'm trying to get fluent in Afrikaans, which is possible I think, but I have too many competing languages in my head during the day. So I'm going a bit crazy I think.

The new group of volunteers has come to Namibia. So welcome to Group 32. It’s nice not being the newbies in country anymore. It's very similar to college where you're not a freshman anymore but a sophomore. I still don't know anything.

This weekend I went to visit a friend and she decided that she really wanted to ride a donkey cart. I supported her decision and we went into location to find a donkey cart. (location is the poor part of town, usually comprised of shacks) We went around and asked people who had a donkey cart and pretty soon everyone was out of their houses watching the 2 white people in search of a donkey cart. Eventually we found a donkey cart and she hopped on. Well I think that a donkey cart is cute and all, but I ain't getting on. No sooner had she sat on the cart when the driver took off full speed. I am running behind her taking pictures with her camera while the dirt from the road is covering me. The donkeys are racing on this dirt road riddled with pot holes, the wheels are not looking sturdy, and my friend is clutching the side for dear life. HAHA. She disappears somewhere and I'm left standing there with her camera in my hand, in a makeshift dump where the cart was parked. So I'm waiting for her and I see a turkey! A huge turkey, feathers out and it looks mad. Well I snap a photo which of course pisses off the turkey who proceeds to chase me. Yes I got chased by a turkey. Well of course the whole village is out watching and laughing at me. So I run for cover muttering about how in America I eat turkeys like him for Thanksgiving. (Not that I'm counting, but that makes it twice that I've been chased by some animal in Nam)
I try my best to not look like a tourist, but that day wasn't happening. So everyone wanted money from me and normally we volunteers will respond that we don't have money as we are working for free and blah blah. I usually respond with "no, you give me a dollar" and it works just as well. So my friend returns triumphantly, and alive thankfully, with a parade of children following her. I guess she wants to do one exciting thing every month to blog about. So I am going to follow suit. The thing now is finding something exciting to do here.. Keep you posted


Moment of the week: Last week at the soup kitchen there were 3 little boys there hiding behind tables and peeking out at me so I was playing with them and tickling them, so it was very cute. Well yesterday when I was at the soup kitchen, the same 2 boys were hiding behind one of the buildings, jumping around, and making a scene to get my attention. I was playing along by making faces and then one ran up pretty close and blew me a kiss and laughed then ran away as fast as he could to his friend who was also laughing. It just made me smile all day :)

Hope all is well in America! Wishing I was there for the end of summer. Here it is starting to get really hot. Apparently, October is when you won't be able to sleep as it gets too hot. GREAT.