6-10-09- Wednesday

The tenth. I’ve been here 11 days now. I have to admit, I’ve had my ups and downs of happiness being here, but today was a good day. This morning started, again, with a ton of rain. People here say it never rains in the winter, but it has rained for 3 days strait now. I’m getting a little tired of it.

I was supposed to follow Dr. Mullan around today in the COE clinic but he is leaving next week and was busy doing some paper work stuff. However, this gave me a great opportunity to get running on my Case-based project. As I said yesterday, its very hard to author these things. The network is slow and concepts are difficult. But so far so good, its just going to take we a while to do it.

Ryan tells me that there are 3 undergrads coming in to volunteer for about 3 hours a week. He gave me first picking at them to help me with my project. So far, the only thing I could think of was getting them to search for that ideal 4 year old to take pictures of and possibly to get some details for the case.

Anyways, a long day at work ended with a little excitement. 1) we decided to go a head with our trip to South Africa for this weekend! We would leave sat. morning and travel about 2 hours (no clue how we are getting there) to a game reserve near the border. We will stay there for one night (in a tent; but a pretty nice tent) go on one night safari and one morning safari, eat 3 meals and return Sunday before dark (hopefully). All this for about 1500 rand a person (~$200). Really not too bad. This trip may end up taking the place of the Victoria falls trip because that one costs over $1000 per person. Oh well. 2) I decided to go to the gym even though it was still raining. The run there wasn’t bad and it felt good to work out, but the run back was cold, it was getting dark and the traffic was heavy. I found myself getting home much faster than I normally do. But besides being very cold and wet, I was happy to be running my familiar path. Happy to see the familiar school children who still stare at me as I run by (they probably think all white people are stupid enough to run in the rain). Happy to be somewhere new.

I remember my Outward bound trip. I hated my time there (most of it) because it was hard work and there were little familiar comforts. But, I look back on that experience now with nothing but admiration. I learned a lot from those hard times and I plan to learn even more from these.

Tomorrow is Thamaga out-reach. I have no clue what to expect.