ARRIVAL

Well I arrived in Windhoek Namibia late Friday night, and it has been a whirlwind ever since. The plane ride was insanely long and bumpy at times, but I had a nice person sitting next to me who did not judge me for my fears, but was instead very kind. Landing in Windhoek was amazing-- there was no airport or runway insight, no lights, simply these large mountains and empty space. For a moment I really believed we were going to land in the wilderness and suddenly pavement was underneath and the plane was on the ground. Our luggage did not arrive until two days later and my last piece just came yesterday. We were all worried about what might become of it in the Johannesburg airport, but everyone was lucky-- nothing really important stolen by our dear friends the baggage handlers.

I wish I could put the pictures I have of Windhoek on this computer because I think you would be surprised at how clean and modern it looks. I certainly was. At this moment I am sitting in what is advertised as "the biggest internet cafe in Africa" consisting of about fifty comptuters. Last night we went to a poorer area of the city where many black Africans were moved during aparteid. It is called Katatura. There the poverty was more noticeable. We ate at a traditional restaurant which prepared goat head for us (in case you're wondering I tried ear, cheek, and tongue-- the tongue is by far the tastiest). The woman who owned the restaurant was from the Herero (not sure how to spell that yet) tribe and dressed in traditional garb (I did take pictures of this as well). The people at the restaurant were all very friendly, but many did stare. I heard one person tell his friend, "they must be from europe" which made me laugh.

Mostly though we've been working hard with training-- lots of workshops on Namibia, but also on teaching. Tonight we leave to go south to a town called Rehoboth to stay with host families for a few days and get more practice teaching. Then we're heading to a dam-- the name of which eludes me at this second and to a farm owned by a friend of the program director (that's where the goat slaughtering comes in-- still a little nervous about that). So I'll be out of touch for the next week or so, but I'm sure I'll have lots of stories when I come back. We'll be in Winhoek a week more before heading to our sites on the 13th.