First few weeks!

Hello world!
Sorry I haven’t updated in a while. I didn’t have access to internet very much until today! Now I have a magical little device called a 3G stick so I can have 3G wherever I go. Or. If I don’t have 3G access, I can still get regular internet. I think I’m in love. You still have to pay for service (they pay per byte here), but between 1am-5am it’s free happy hour! So needless to say, on the one day a week I can sleep in, I’ll probably be online then to upload photos and such. Win!

Anyways! I am doing pretty good here in Namibia! We have mostly been doing language and other sessions each day. I now can greet, talk about my work (ek is a gesondheidsvrywilliger=I am a health volunteer) and talk about where Im from and go shopping in Afrikaans. I feel like a lot has happened since I’ve last updated so I’ll break it down into sections to make it easy.

Homestay: I finally moved in with my host mother a few weeks ago. Her name is Lorato and she lives in a bright green house in a little town called Veddersdal. She is a teacher at the high school here and has a 16 year old daughter in Windhoek. She is a hilarious woman who is very loud and loves to laugh and tell jokes. I’ve very much enjoyed getting to know her. She always laughs at me because I do not know how to cook, so tonight I made her grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup (neither required much cooking skills). At first, she was quite skeptical about the whole idea—she looked at me like I was crazy when I told her what it was. But she LOVED it. All she did tonight was talking about the grilled cheese. I got 9/10 stars. She took away one because she had to measure out the water for the soup because I didn’t know how much 850 ml was haha.

Culture day: Last Saturday we had our Namibian food culture day. Each language group had to cook different foods depending on the culture their language was from. Since ours was Afrikaans, we had a lot of braai meats (braai is just grilling), roosterbrood (grilled bread—best stuff ever) and some vegetable soup. It was all pretty good! The other groups did some more complicate stuff. For instance, some people had to kill, defeather and cook chickens. Another group cooked goat head. No really. They take the head of a goat and dry it out by the fire for a few hours. Then, you scrape the fur off with a knife and boil it until it gets so soft you can just pull it apart and you eat the whole thing. I scraped off some of the fur, which was rather interesting. There was also oryx, some yummy corn stuff, traditional spinach and amazing little thing called fat cakes (pretty much deep fried bread). That day I ate: goat head, goat brain (actually it wasn’t bad at all—tasted like a very mild meat), chicken intestines (mmm. I could avoid not having this again) and other things.

The Big Week: Next week is the week of two major things: our first LPI (language proficiency test) and our site announcements! I am SO excited/nervous/eager/everything to find out where I am going! Many groups can figure out the general region of where they will be judging by the language they are learning. However, Afrikaans is pretty widely spoken so I have not the slightest idea of where I will go. Needless to say—next Thursday cannot come fast enough! We also have our first LPI, which I am nervous about, but I think it will be okay.

So yeah! Those are the major things going on. Sorry I have been awful at keeping in touch with everyone. I haven’t had much time and when I do I do not have a lot of energy or means to keep in touch. But now it will be much easier. Miss you all and love you!