First off, my cockroach Chaco ran away. I am now alone once more. The weather has also decided to cooperate and be at a steady 62 degrees. In fact, today has been the first time I have seen a cloud here. It's always the most blue skies from horizon to horizon.
Last night was an interesting night. A bunch of us had toured a mall with Ella who is a professor at the college. She is this classy american teacher that got her PhD at Ohio State. She had an itch to go see the world and found a volunteer job in Namibia. She is now a professor here at the university. Anyway, I saw that they are selling the last Harry Potter book here and gave me hope that I would have a chance to read it while here.
So last night she came to the podcast workshop we were at and asked me if I wanted to go see the new Harry Potter movie! She and her friend were going and she remembered that I liked it. We grabbed a taxi and I met her friend Davie at the theatre. It's funny, they don't have movie trailers. So if you are running late, you miss the first bit of the movie.
It was great, Ella hooked me up with a popcorn and coke (yeah I haven't given up the stuff) and she kept feeding me chocolate during the movie. Needless to say I was in heaven. Half way through the movie the reel just stopped. It was intermission! We had a five minute break and then the movie started up again.
The theatres are pretty decent. They have stadium seating but they don't have the surround sound like we do. The prices are about the same as we pay, maybe a dollar cheaper. For the record, I really did love the movie.
Afterwards we went to this restaurant and I had a pizza. We sat there for two hours and we talked about everything. Davie is from Indonesia and works at the Indonesian embassy here in the capital. She had just flown in yesterday from Jakarta. It was pretty cool to get their perspectives on Namibian culture. Definitely a highlighted evening in my life.
The weird thing was when we went to Davie's car in the parking lot. A guy was walking rather close to us and I whispered to Ella, "This guy is really close, should we be worried." As it turns out there are mall guards that walk you to your car and keep a watch out for you and your vehicle. You give them a few coins as a tip. I didn't see that one coming!
We drove past the American embassy and that was well guarded. We may get a chance to visit while were here. This morning (Friday) we have been in lectures to learn a brief history and cultural study of Namibians and the world around them. Very enlightening stuff.
I found that Namibians are very concerned how the world views them. Only because they know that there exist scary places in Africa and they want to be known to the outside world as very modern and progressive for Africa. They have made huge leaps in that direction too; at least in my mind. They have a very clean city and the people are very friendly.
We went to the Namibian Parliament today and we learned how their government works. Interesting tidbit: A BYU helped write the Namibian constitution. When we were in the National Assembly's room, I went and sat in the speaker's chair. There is a lovely picture of that.
Tonight Susan, Lynn and me went to a steakhouse with the Fins. It was so much fun talking with them about Finland and getting to know them more. They are so awesome. I really like them and I think they will be around us a lot these next few weeks. For dinner I had a fancy hamburger. It was good but a little strange. It had bacon, cheese and banana in it. I may have to try that when I get stateside again.
Oh the open markets here are an experience by themselves. These people expect you to haggle with them. Instead of giving you back change they negotiate with you to just buy something else. That's probably how I got talked into buying a second spoon. Yeah, I bought a wood bowl and a spoon so I had something to eat my breakfast in. Not that it matters a whole lot, my refrigerator is fussy and my milk is a large ice cube.
Well, I better be off. Talk to everyone later!
Em
P.S. For two days now, the internet has been so ridiculously slow that I can't send a pic or two. I may have to wait till we get back to have a visual version of these logs.
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