Week 4, already?!

7/5/09 I was so tired when I woke up today. I don't know what my problem was but I had no energy. Esale asked me, Clare and Kate to go with her a pottery place outside of town which I couldn't pass up. I'm not exactly sure where it was located but it was about a 40 minute drive. This was my first real experience outside of the city (the drive to Rustenberg doesn't count for me!) and it was interesting to see. There were farm animal roaming all around and many of them were not fenced in. Esale said it's like that most places and in fact a lot of time people will take their goats out to graze in the morning and they just find their way back home. I thought that was pretty interesting. I bought entirely way too much stuff at the pottery place but I couldn't resist. I got an entire coffee set (Coffee pot, sugar container, creamer container, 4 cups, 4 saucers) for less than 45 dollars. That is a steal by comparison to what I would pay for the same quality in the U.S. I also got a casserole dish for about 15 dollars but now all these goods pose a problem...how do I get them home? If I wasn't going to Cape Town I wouldn't worry about it nearly as much. Or even if we were just staying in one hotel the entire time but we plan on bouncing around a bit and these items are going to make my luggage very heavy. Dr. Bates said I could ship it back, which obviously I knew but I worry about them being transported safely in terms of breaking and being stolen. I may just pack them in my big suitcase while I head to Cape Town and then put them in my carry on bags for the long haul home. I'm starting to feel like I'm ready to head back. It's not that I'm not having a good time but there are a number of things I miss..like my own big bed, plastic shower curtains to keep the water from leaking out, my own car, not having to translate the cost of something in my head, cold milk for cereal, the sun and of course my family, friends and boyfriend. Maybe if I could bring all those things here then I'd be content? At least what we have coming up is exciting so I can't help but look forward to it! Next week is my last week at Baylor. On Thursday some of us are presenting at a conference being held at UB and Kate and I have decided to attend the morning lectures. Our presentation is on multicultural counseling and specifically our part is to discuss how our experiences here have shaped up and how we will carry it with as when we go back to the U.S. Saturday we leave for Kasane at 5am or so. It's a 10-12 hour bus ride to the safari we're going to. Apparently we're staying in a very nice lodge so that's good. We get back on Tuesday afternoon after doing an open air jeep tour and a river boat tour. We should have the opportunity to see a lot of animals, including the big 5. I will of course take tons of pictures! Then on Thursday morning we leave Gaborone and had to Joburg. from there the 6 of us (me, Clare, Mandy, Zach, Kate K, and Meg) will head to Cape Town while the other's head back home. It's gonna be quite an adventure!

7/6/09 Fairly certain nothing too exciting happened today. Beside the fact that my A key fell off which is in fact not exciting but irritating. Do you know how many words have A in them?

Tonight Mandy and I decided to watch a movie. I streamed The Proposal on to my little computer. It was funny to see both of us in a twin bed with this little bitty computer on our laps watching a movie. I liked the movie even if it was a fairly typical chick flick...what can I say, I'm a sucker for a happy ending and love stories :)

7/7/09 Breakfast hit the spot this morning. And so did lunch. And then so did dinner. How did I get so lucky in one day?! Breakfast was an egg scrambler, toast and this meat stuff that's surprisingly good, corn flakes and coffee. Lunch I had a half of a cheese omelette (can you tell breakfast is my favorite meal yet?) a biscuit, cole slaw, french fries and coke. Interesting combo but it was yummy. For dinner I had bread, mixed veggies, french fries, a chicken leg and the most delicious beef. Ok enough about the food..
At work today Kate and I continued to design the brochure. She had went ahead and put it in Microsoft publisher and we were on the hunt for free clip art and things to jazz the pages up a bit. It looks decent so far. After lunch we went to some of the Paediatric KITSO trainings on disclosure and counseling children and adolescents with HIV/AIDS. They were both really interesting and I took some notes. I don't know why I didn't think to bring a notebook with me.. but I've just been using the backs of sheets from other talks we've sat in on to jot down the important stuff. Once we got home from Baylor I decided I was going to finish Nineteen Minutes. Considering I'm not much of a fan of books anymore, I can say this one was definitely worth reading. I like books that keep my attention the way this one did but I'm glad to be done with it. I can't decide if I want to start another one or just call it quits. That's part of the other reason I don't read like I use to...I let the book consume me. I have the most difficult time putting it down. People were making funny of me because I brought it over when were playing catch prase the other night but that's how I am when I'm intrigued, I become engulfed.

I was just in the grumpiest mood a few minutes ago. Like I mentioned earlier my A key fell off so I was thinking about how annoying its been and decided that maybe I could fix it. Turns out one of the clip parts on the actual key is broken so I took my Q off and moved it to my A spot which has been extremely helpful. Then my E key started sticking so I popped it off, thinking there was dirt or something under it and one of the piece underneath that broke. So now that's barely hanging on but thanksfully because of the way I type the E hasn't been to troublesome, I can still hit it because it actually leans forward now. Anyway, the whole or deal last an hour and a half and was very close to ending with me throwing my computer across the room. (one of the downfalls of it being so light weight..) but I think I can make this work until I get home.. I already sent in request asking Dell to get me new keys. ughhh and now I just took a cold shower...awesome!