84 degrees, showers / clear
sooo, it turns out the internet situation here is little stickier than i thought. i ran out of my first 120 minutes kinda fast, mostly from waiting for websites to load. and i couldn't buy another card until about an hour ago. so now i'm back!
on saturday night, a group of us went out to eat at spur, an "american" restaurant with pretty decent food. i forget what i ate, but all i remember was that it was mad cheap. after dinner, we were invited by the polytechnic of namibia students to go see a fashion show, which was held as an orientation event for new students. they had some pretty rockin' music, but the show dragged on forever because it was more like a beauty pageant. i left a little early cause i was still tired from the trip, and i just missed sleeping in a real bed in general.
namibians really like to strut their stuff.
yesterday was a very relaxed and chill day. we had no plans except a small barbeque with some staff and students from the poly. it was nice to get to know a few people from here, i really also enjoyed the food and meat they had. my plate looked a little something like this:
i honestly wouldn't mind eating this every day.
for the rest of the afternoon, we played cards and relaxed back at puccini (the name of our place). we also went shopping down at the mall, got a few groceries and necessities like that. at night we went to joe's beerhouse, a local restaurant and bar. they had some pretty amazing drinks, and even more amazing food. i got myself to try a zebra steak (which is DELICIOUS), and we also ordered a meter of beer. the meter was pretty much a meter-long box with 13 beers lined up in it. it's just really cool to look at, and i guess that's what they're known for haha.
imagine ordering one of these for yourself... oh man.
on the way over, we learned a little bit about the taxi situation here in namibia. apparently taxis will pick you up and fit as many people into a taxi as they can. however, if there are any empty spots, they will drive around until they find someone else who needs a ride. they have absolutely no problem picking up other strangers to sit with you... as you can imagine this made our rides a little awkward. taxi drivers will also fight other drivers in order to get customers, we had about 4 different people offer us rides back to puccini. i guess they can't really be that reliable, maybe we need to find a better way to get around the city.
today, we finally got to tour the area a little bit. we got up at 9:30 in the morning and took a tour around the main mall and city area with our advisors. we walked around the plaza and found a cell phone shop, and most of our group bought cell phones and SIM cards. mine is really basic and i haven't tested it out yet, but hopefully it works! i spent some good money on it haha.
me, dan, and becky found a small bistro in the center of the plaza and grabbed a lunch. we all got club sandwiches and sodas, and the meal came out to be $150 namibian, which is approximately 20 dollars US. not bad for a lunch for three people! we then got ice cream cones for $6.90 namibian, or roughly 90 cents. i think i'm liking the prices here on food :)
in the afternoon, we all dressed up and went over to the poly to meet the director of the university. we walked into this huge conference room with two circular tables, and each seat was equipped with one of those microphones that you can press and talk into the intercom. being goofy, bme and john took turns just talking to the whole room, it was kinda cool haha. finally, the director came in and gave us a small speech about the area and some of his experience in traveling abroad. he seemed like a pretty cool guy, hopefully we'll be able to meet him again.
after a trip to the poly, we went over to the US embassy for a security briefing. i won't lie, when we walked into the building after all the security checkpoints i felt pretty american. i felt like i hadn't left the country at all seeing as how we were surrounded by american flags, pictures of obama, and normal white people. this guy named frank gave us a speech about the crime rates and terrorist rates in the country, and honestly i can't say i feel the safest being here. apparently people get pickpocketed all the time, and mugging is a very common act of violence here. even people who have been here in the past have told us they've experienced something like that before, and it's best to just use your common sense. oh well, i've been here three days and so far so good. let's hope we can keep this up.
oh, i completely forgot to talk about the local time and things like that. i believe right now we are 6 hours ahead of US time, since daylight savings just happened. it's a little hard to coordinate things between countries right now, especially since my internet is so limited. i'm trying the best i can to keep in touch, so just bear with me as i try to settle in and figure things out!
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