Hello!
I have arrived safely in Namibia. Let me first start out by saying that the internet is almost non-existant on the campus, contrary to what we were told. We have been told to bring our laptops to the IT center, but one student has already done this and they only gave him a proxy to connect to - not solving the problem. So I don't know when if at all I will get actual internet on my laptop, so I may just have to stick to internet cafes (which cost money and have a time limit) and no Skype or pictures.
In general, everyone speaks English. People are either nice to you and will say hi, or they just stare at you. Before, we were told all these things about how to not look like tourists, etc, but it's just impossible to fit in when we're the only white people. So I've sort of given up on that.
Let's see, what can I tell you about my trip so far that would be short? Windhoek is an absolutely beautiful city. The weather is beautiful, the clouds are pretty, the city itself is bright and colorful and there are mountains surrounding it that just seem to rise up out of nowhere. There is a nice large park in the middle of the city. It actually reminded me of Key West a little bit in that the buildings are painted with bright colors and a lot of the residences are surrounded with high walls. The house that we (the girls) are staying at is awesome! We have a large house with a big kitchen and common room and dining area. Since we are technically off campus, we have our own security guard as well as walls and a gate around our house. You also need to unlock a gate in front of our door and the door itself, and there's an alarm system triggered by motion that we can set when all of us are away. Our individual rooms also have locks. So security is pretty tight.
As for our activities, so far we have found a great italian restaurant with good pizza. The exchange rate is about N$10 for US$1, so everything is cheap. 30 minutes at the internet cafe is N$10. The pizza is about N$6. We've also done a few touristy things while we were here. Peet (our prof. and advisor) took us on a bus tour of the city. We went to Katatura, a sprawling community outside of Windhoek. Most of these houses are very small, but also brightly colored like the buildings in Windhoek. Next we went to the "informal settlements." These were houses made from whatever these people could find - mostly corrugated steel. They were large enough maybe for a few people to lie down in. And these houses just stretched for miles over the landscape. I encourage you to look up pictures of the city of Windhoek and Katatura, since I can't upload my own pictures. We also found a really cool place to hang out near where we are staying - The Cardboard Box. Not only is a good hang-out place, it's also a hostel. We met a few European travelers and an American from Virginia who was looking to retire in Namibia. It was very nice.
So my weekend was great, but the party's over now. We have to get to work. Today my project group and I will visit the DRFN to meet the people we will be working with. We will most likely be giving a presentation to the DRFN tomorrow as well. We have a presentation on Thursday an a new draft of our methods section due next Tuesday. Every Tuesday morning we will have lessons on the Herrero language, which will not be very useful to those of use traveling to other parts of Namibia. I wish I could just hang out and be a tourist for 2 months, but that wouldn't get me much credit. Oh well!
My half-hour is almost up. I may not be able to get any emails or anything for a while. I'll try to come back to the internet cafe within a week. See you!