First Week

Man! This first week has been crazy! It took forever to get here. I left Shreveport, Louisiana on 3/11/13 at 5:00am and arrived in Namibia on 3/13/13 at 7:00 pm! I traveled on 4 different airplanes and two buses to get here. The longest flight was almost 15 hours.

I started training the day after I arrived at 7:30 am. So far I've been through 3 days of training and have been given too much information to process! I find out which African language I will learn tomorrow, as well as, meet my host family for the next 3 months. On Tuesday I will move into their house. I'm really nervous about it.

Other than that, I've just been trying to see as much as I can. I'm in a town called Okahandja. It's not far from the capitol, Windoek. The people here are really nice and so far everyone I've met speaks english and about 7 other languages. This part of Namibia isn't really that different from the U.S. There are grocery stores and restuarants where you can get pretty much anything. Once I get placed at my permanent site, things will probably be much different. So, I better soak it up now!

Today, I went on a hike up a hill (it was a mountain to me) that was called Pride Rock. On the way to the base of the hill we had to go through a farm with a bunch of children who decided to be our guides up the hill. There were about 5 or 6 of them, I guess. Many of them were not wearing shoes. You should have seen them flying up those cliffs! It was crazy! Once we made it to the top, we stopped for a bit and took some pictures. The kids were so excited! They loved having their picture taken and eventually just took the cameras and started taking their own pictures. On the way back they decided to follow us to our hostel and just sat and talked with us for a bit. It was definitely a wonderful day. The view of Okahandja from the top of Pride Rock was simply breathtaking. Pictures could never do it justice.