happy new year!

Hello 2011! I have to admit, I wrote a pretty awesome blog on NYE, but unfortunately it would not upload…I am hoping this one will work! The gist of the post was delicious meat, beautiful weather, more delicious meat, dance parties, and, did I mention, delicious meat? How did you people let me be vegetarian for so long? Obviously you can see that the braii (barbeque) was fantastic. The meat was so fresh and seasoned to perfection. I could write an entire blog about it, but I won’t J

Today was another beautiful day…probably our hottest yet. We had the morning free, so a few of us decided to take a walk into town to get a few more items we needed. Windhoek is a cool place, but (I think I mentioned this before) not always the safest for travelers out alone. If you take the necessary precautions, you are fine…you just don’t want to set yourself up for anything. Because of that, we decided not to take any purses/bags or anything else that might draw attention to ourselves. We did, however, need to be able to bring a few choice items: money, phones, etc. Via our field directors’ advice, we (the women in the group at least) decided to pull the old “money in the cleavage” routine. Cell phone in the cleavage doesn’t work as well…depending on the cleavage that is. Anyway, our trip was extremely successful and we got to see some places we hadn’t seen yet. I tell you all of this because of what just happened to me about 15 minutes ago. It had been a kind of sweaty day, so I decided to take a shower before getting ready for bed. As I got myself into the room with the shower, put my soaps on the ledge, got my towel situated, I start to take off my clothes. As soon as I pop my bra off, what do I find? A ten Namibian dollar note! The note went somehow unnoticed for 8 hours! It was like Christmas all over again. I think I am gonna like this money in the cleavage business.

Tomorrow we are leaving out hostel in Windhoek to venture north to Tsumeb. There we will be staying at a hostel (with a pool) and running some summer sessions at the local school. We are partner teaching with another volunteer, running two hour sessions Tuesday through Friday. I will be teaching around grade 8 math with a really wonderful Canadian volunteer, Tanya. It has been really fun and exciting to plan lessons again…I really had missed it. When the weekend comes, we will all head to Etosha National Park for a little mini safari. I’ve got my binoculars and my sun hat all ready to go. I will definitely take pictures and try to post them soon!

So as you can see, it’s a big week coming up! I am really really enjoying all of your emails, calls!!, and messages. Keep em coming!

Write more soon,

h