Toe-socks and Tylenol

Boring library stuff to start with; non-library readers please feel free to scroll down to the * section for stuff about my life outside of the book world.

The first three days of this week went by very quickly. At work I've been cataloging non-fiction books (all original cataloging using the Dewey Decimal System) and environmental reports from various organizations (these are arranged according to subject, e.g. - Agriculture, and get a call number based on the subject and the author; ex. a report by a J. Smith about agriculture would get the call number “AGR Smi”). This library has a lot of separate collections that don't get mixed in with the regular stacks, and while similar, they all have their own way of being cataloged and described in the system. This may seem like it makes things more complicated, but it actually makes it easier for students to find things they're looking for without having to consult the catalog. This is a good thing, because students don't actually have access to a catalog. That's right. No OPAC.

This library uses LibWin 2002 for all its cataloging and circulation needs. However, the librarians are the only ones with access to it, because to create a public version for students would have been more money than the resource centre could afford. So, we have a catalog which is digital and connected to the server, but no one besides library staff can use it. This means that searching for materials based on subject, title, whatever, only has to make sense to the librarians, so one can get as specific as one wishes or as broad as one wishes when adding subject headings, as long as one knows that librarians would be able to find it. However, when actually coming up with the call numbers, one has to think even more about the end-users, the students, to be sure that a material's position on the shelf reflects the subject as accurately as possible.

Even though the students have the expectations of the librarian doing the searching for them in the catalog and even finding the book on the shelf for them, the stacks are open to facilitate browsing, and it is ever-more important that shelf-labeling be consistent and that materials that are related to each other be in close proximity. When looking for a book on, say, bird-ringing, one must be able to find all bird-ringing materials in one place. There's no catalog for a student to look up the subject, so having one book about bird-ringing under conservation, one under oronthology, and one under research methods does no good. They all have to be in the same place, because otherwise a student will believe that we don't have those other two books, and they'll settle for what they found, even if it is not what they're looking for. Whereas, if a student looks under one subject area on the shelf and doesn't find anything there and s/he expects the library to have something, s/he will ask the librarian for assistance, and s/he then will be pointed to the place where all the materials on the subject are located. Although it is always desirable to give call numbers that reflect what students would think a book is located under, it is more important to be consistent. If one is consistent, it will be easier for students to learn where things are without needing to consult the librarian as much, regardless of how much sense the classification makes initially.

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I eat my lunch in the cafeteria or on a nice day outside under a tree, usually by myself, which I don't mind, and I hardly ever take the full lunch break to consume food, so I have some extra time to wander around. This suits me just fine, because I get to explore the campus a little more each day. There are some nice little walking paths just on campus, which make the perfect after-lunch diversion, and they get me outside in the middle of the day, which does wonders for my motivation and energy for the remainder of my shift. Well, on one such day of exploration, I discovered an obstacle course. It was a bit overgrown, but the structures seemed all in working order. I decided that after work, when I had more time and was dressed more appropriately for exercise, I would check it out.

So, after work, I put on loose clothing, worked out a bit in the backyard, and jogged across campus to the obstacle course. I had fun climbing and swinging and whatnot for a while, and then I got to the monkey-bars. Apparently, everything only seemed in working order, because some of the monkey bars were loose, and when I went to grab on to one, it rolled in place, making me lose my grip and fall to the ground. It wasn't even that big of a drop, but I managed to land sideways on my right knee and I heard a bunch of cracking sounds erupt from it as I hit. I thought, “Shit, this isn't good. Particularly because I'm on the other side of campus by myself without my cell phone. I sure hope I can walk.” Well, thank God, I could. It was a bit painful, but I could walk. I hobbled back to my cottage and called Gawie to ask for something to put some ice in. When he asked why, I told him I'd fallen and hurt my knee. I was going to be fine, but I just wanted to ice it. He advised me of something I already had in the house that would work, so I declined to make him come over and look at my injury. Sunel still called and asked if I was okay when she got home a little later. And truthfully, I felt fine. My knee was a little sore, but I iced it, wrapped it, elevated it, and since I could still bend it all the way, I figured I'd be fine.

Well, I woke up the next morning and unlike the day before, I couldn't walk on it. I couldn't even hobble without extreme pain. Bending it or straightening it all the way was also out of the question. It was also quite swollen. I was prepared to go to work with a bottle of painkillers and not do any walking around, but my roommate, Vivian, refused to let me hobble to work. So, I called Gawie and asked him to come take a look at my knee, as it had gotten worse overnight. He told me that I should stay off it and stay home today, and if it wasn't any better by the evening, he'd arrange for me to go into town and see a doctor tomorrow. It's probably just a sprain, though, because if anything was truly broken, I wouldn't have been able to walk on it yesterday after I fell.

I really hope it gets better soon. For one thing, I don't like the idea of permanent damage, because that would make it hard to do karate and parkour and hiking and any number of physical activities which I enjoy. For another, even though I've got traveler's insurance, I just don't want to have to deal with the paperwork to get my injury paid for. Thirdly, if my first town trip was any indication, whenever I go with a driver in a college vehicle and not a specific person in their own vehicle, the trip takes all friggin' day and isn't really any fun. And finally, I want to get back to work. I generally like what I do, I know that Sunel needs me there, and sitting at home all day, particularly without the internet, is kind of boring. I mean, I can read, nap, draw, write, etc. But what I feel like doing is being either active or productive, which I can't really do when I'm laid up like this. And it's kind of hard to concentrate on any of the above-mentioned pursuits when every so often you're wincing in pain.

By the time anyone reads this, I'll probably be on the road to recovery, because it means I'll have been capable of hobbling over to the resource centre to use their internet and post this. So there's no reason to worry. I'm just using my abundance of free time and boredom to vent. Until then, I'm lounging around the cottage in my toe-socks, trying not to put too much stress on my knee, and taking painkillers as often as I can without exceeding the recommended dose. In the month prior to leaving the States, I'd had numerous infections and gotten in a minor car accident. However, I'd recovered from all my maladies just in time to go on my trip. But now that I'm here... seriously, sick my first week and then injured? I think South Africa wants me dead almost as much as America does.

Doing good things

Thursday at work was rather interesting. After cataloging another small collection akin to the WWF manuals (these ones were the Redbooks - lists of endangered species), Sunel said she had a project for me. We are a very small library, and as such, have a very small budget. Therefore, any money that we do spend, has to be justified that it meets the needs of facilitating education and training. This means that we don't really have a budget for entertainment, which is unfortunate for the staff and students who live here and don't have transportation to go out after work/class or on the weekends. So, it was put to me to develop a collection of fiction books for the library so that staff and students have leisure reading during their time off, which they had been requesting for some time, but alas, no budget. And there's no ILL or anything like that here, either. If we don't have it in-house, we don't have it, and you're not getting it. The key, though, is that I have to develop this collection with absolutely zero money. Good thing I'm resourceful, and know how to politely beg.

I spent the next two days (minus part of Friday which I spent putting some files into the archives) soliciting donations from local public libraries for discarded fiction books. Initially I was just going to ask for adult fiction books, but noting our involvement with the village schools near here, I wondered if I mightn't ask for some children's books too, because if we're poor, they're probably much more so. Sunel thought this was a great idea, so I had at it. I've actually had a bit of luck and some good responses so far. Next week, actually, Sunel is supposed to go out and collect a bunch of donations from one of the libraries that responded (being that I don't have a car and such), and I'm anticipating the arrival of these "new" books greatly. This is pretty much going to be my baby, my big project, of the semester, in addition to all the routine stuff, and I like the idea of that.

Both days after work I went on a sunset game drive. It was a little harder to capture the animals I saw on camera because of the fading light, but I did see a lot more of them, which I'm really happy about. Funny observation: the whole "deer in the headlights" phenomenon is worldwide. After it got dark, the impala would just stand right in front of the car, frozen in the headlights, just like North American deer, and we had to drive forward slowly with the lights off so that they would jump away from the vehicle moving toward them.

Most of my weekend I spent either cleaning house, catching up on sleep, or shooing critters out of my room. Seriously. A scorpion, a baboon spider, a baby squirrel, our resident frog, and a bat all made themselves part of my life this weekend, in addition to the normal bugs that abound. The elephants were really loud this weekend too. Gawie noted that it's probably the bull elephant we've been seeing trying to move in on some younger females, and either they don't want it and/or the older females are jealous. When elephants get mad, they don't just trumpet, they growl too, and they're incredibly loud. More than once I'd heard them and gone running to the fence to see what I could see, and they were nowhere, but I could still hear them so loudly as if they were right in front of me.

Next weekend, one of the administrators is taking a trip to town and has invited me to come along. It's nothing special, she says, but it'll get you out of the bush for a day. She wants to go get a facial and get her nails done among other girly pursuits, which seems kind of ridiculous for the part of Africa we're in and what we do here, but on some level I understand it. Sweating all the time, bugs, critters, dirt 24/7...I completely get the need to break away every once in a while and do something nice for yourself. I'd settle for a shower with more water pressure than a leaky faucet, but getting my hair done and going shopping will do just as well. I'm also hoping to go on a longer sunset game drive into the night, and farther into Kruger than I've been going, and maybe seeing a couple of big predators too.

Just another day at the office.

Sort of. In that, I don't really have an office, and if I did, I didn't spend much time there. But it was just another day. I went there for about two hours and started labeling the books I'd cataloged yesterday. In a small library such as this one, everyone does everything. There are no assistants and paraprofessionals to do tedious, repetitive, clerical tasks. The whole library is more or less a one-woman operation without volunteers such as myself. It's good to get practice doing all levels of work for a few reasons. For one thing, in small library settings, you may be called upon to exercise skills in completing menial tasks efficiently in order to serve your patrons. For another, if you wind up in a management position, you'll know what your front-line staff feels like in their day-to-day work, and this will allow you to empathize with your employees and help foster understanding and good relationships across management levels. It will also keep you in touch with the everyday work that makes the “big picture” happen, keeping your visions of grandeur in check.

Not everyone who lives and works at the college has their own transportation, and being in a remote location can make it difficult for people to get their basic essentials. Therefore, someone from the college takes a trip to town every week, and anyone who needs one or two things can give the driver money and a list, or, if they need to do specific tasks in town or want to browse or have a quite a few things to get, then they can come with. Well, I needed a few things, and wasn't sure of a few things, and needed to do specific things, so I decided to go to town today. I got what I needed in less than 45 minutes, and spent the next four hours waiting for the driver to complete his other tasks in town and pick me up. This was not fun. Although, I did manage to play a game of tag/follow-the-leader with a couple of kids in town who were waiting for their father to complete some important-sounding task at the payphone. This was rather fun, while it lasted.

Upon returning to the campus, Sunel refused to let me work late to make up for the town trip taking longer than expected. Instead, she gave me food and told me to go relax. That was nice of her. I wound up reading the rest of Africa Geographic magazine and going to the library after-hours to use their WiFi. It was quite a good evening.

Today I was really tired and barely made it out of bed and into work on time. Tea time really helped. As did lunch. Particularly because I spent most of my day cursing the abomination that is Microsoft Word. I really hate that program. It's such a pain in the ass. After finishing the labels from yesterday, my new task was to format a bunch of course manuals. The library puts together, prints, and binds the manuals (read “textbooks”) that nearly all of the courses use. The professors write up all the information the way they want to teach it, and it's our job to make it all look pretty. Well, let me tell you, that getting documents from several sources and trying to make them all look uniform, particularly the layout that we were required to use (set forth by the director of the college), is annoying as fuck. Pardon my French. But seriously, I friggin' hate Microsoft Word, and all its tables and bizarro word-wrapping rules and retarded clip-art.

I mean, it's been so long since I've been forced to use inferior Microsoft Office products to this extent, that I felt like I was learning the whole convoluted system all over again. The first few documents took forever to cobble together (The scope of the project made it not possible to make a blank template and simply place the information into it as needed, all formatted nice-nice and headache-free.), but after I sort of got the hang of it, the rest of them were slightly easier. Slightly. I think Microsoft needs to stop trying to be user-friendly. Every attempt just makes things worse. Microsoft will never make sense, and changing the order of its chaos and putting shiny new buttons on it will make it no more comprehensible than would writing table-assembly instructions in calligraphy in another language and using modern-art expressive interpretations of the life of a table help me to figure out how to put the damn thing together and make it work and look nice. I suppose I need the practice, though. Most professional environments haven't caught on to open-source software that works and is user-friendly, so I might as well get used to it now and when I'm out in the real world, I'll be more prepared (to constantly bang my head against the desk).

After work I went home and cleaned the house up a bit. Seriously, if you don't sweep the squirrel poop and dead bugs up regularly, it gets nasty very fasty. Then I just spent the rest of the evening chatting with my roommate, Vivian (I got a human roommate a couple of days ago, btw), who seems really nice so far. I like having someone else I can talk to outside of work who resides in my timezone and doesn't require technology to do so. She goes to bed earlier than I do, so I started reading some of the assignments I downloaded last night, before I just got sick of it. Anyway, I'm rather tired, so I think I'm going to call it a night. Ciao for now!

Picture Post (as promised)

Click on any picture for a full-sized version.

People:

My second host family in Jo'burg: Porsche, Thapelo, & Tsebo

From my first host family, this is Victoria and myself. Below are her parents, Henti & Bronwen.

I haven't gotten any pictures of the people at the college yet, but I'm sure I will soon. I've got quite some time to spend with them yet before I leave them picture-less. Basically, I spend the most time with my (human) roommate, Vivian, and my boss Sunel and her husband Gawie. They're all really nice people. And Vivian is teaching me Shangaan, which is fun. I can have a basic "Good morning" conversation in Shangaan, and that's about it, but it's a start.

Places:

This is me in front of a gigantic Nelson Mandela statue in Jo'burg.

And this is just overlooking the area. Despite being a big city, there are a lot of trees in Johannesburg, which you can see when you are looking down from above it.

Here is the thatched-roof cottage I live in. Most of the lights work, most of the time, and the water's only stopped running once so far (it's been a week living here). It is really rather cute, though. What I don't understand is how every room is separate and you have to go outside to go to the bathroom, kitchen, etc. It's a little bizarre.

Animals:

Buffalo and impala

Elephants and hippos

Giant termite mound

There will be more pictures soon, but I do have limits on how much I can put up at one time here. Enjoy!

All coming together

Sunday was great, because not only did I get to go on a fantastic game drive (pictures, soon, I promise...I took a ton of them), but my luggage showed up as well! So I got to see loads of animals up close and personal, most of which cooperated with me and posed for the camera, and I got to change my clothes. I also managed to get online for the first time in maybe three days (I'm such an internet junkie...you have no idea how hard it is for me not to be connected...even in a place like this...it's terrible, I know). So, all in all, a good day.

Today (Monday) was my first day of work. The students don't start showing up until next week, so this first week at the library is to get as much organized and useful as possible. I'm somehow still not quite over jet-lag, because I couldn't sleep last night until far too late, and I had to wake up early for work this morning. Mandatory tea-time at 10:00 though really helped me not to be a zombie the whole time I was working. There's an optional tea-time at 13:00 that I skipped, because I'm just not used to that many breaks in a day, but next time I might go. I'm not much of a regular tea person, but they had this herbal stuff I'd never heard of before, and it was actually pretty good. I'll remember what it's actually called eventually, but the name of it means “red bush” in Afrikaans...or something like that.

After work I went on a walk around the perimeter of the college (an electric fence keeps the animals out of the buildings), and took pictures of the African sunset and wildlife through the wires. I saw two male impala fighting today. They ran at each other with their heads down, horns forward, and crashed together. I could hear them as I saw them butt heads. They both stopped and looked at me as I walked by, but continued to fight each other, probably over a girl (I saw some other impala nearby), when they realized I wasn't a threat. After my walk I went for a quick swim and showered. Now I'm just waiting until it's late enough that it's a reasonable hour in the States for me to go online and call people. Now that the library is operational, WiFi is up 24/7. However, when the library closes, you have to go outside to use it. Needless to say, being a warm body outside the library with a light-emitting source is bound to attract all manner of insect. So, I'm probably just going to do the bare minimum communication with people so that I don't get eaten alive.

The following is a bunch of boring library stuff that you should not feel obligated to read, but I feel obligated to write, because I'll need to refer to it later when I'm writing up my report on this whole experience for class credit. (Although, if you happen to be one of my fellow library students/librarian friends, then, by all means, read on.)

Most of today I spent cataloging a collection of wildlife management books from a series put out by the World Wildlife Fund. This library is very small, and anything out of the ordinary gets its own classification. Series, conference proceedings, coursework books, etc., all have their own little sections and their own way of writing call numbers. I invented the call number system for the books I was cataloging today. I used a combination of letters to represent publisher, title, and copy. The collection was big enough that it needed its own section. So, the first thing I did was to choose the letters WWF to begin the call number, because that tells me who the author/publisher is and what section the book will be in. Then I used the first three or four letters of the first word in the title to make up the next part of the call number (three is the standard, however, if there are two distinct titles in the series which would have the same call number, I expanded it to four). Finally, I used c. and a number to represent individual books which were duplicates. For example, the call number for the third copy of a book entitled “Human conflict management manual” would be:

WWF-Hum c.3

Although I did add subject headings to the record, classification by subject is not necessary for this collection, because students using these books generally know precisely which book they need, and therefore giving a call number related to the title rather than the subject makes it easier for both students and librarians to find. This collection of materials is unique from the rest of the library materials in that having as many copies as possible of a book is desirable, because they use these books to teach classes with, and students all come in from the same class needing to take out the books, so we have to provide them with as many resources as possible.

Now, anyone who knows anything about going to college in the U.S. will be scratching their heads, saying something like, “But that's what the bookstore is for; the library never has textbooks.” because we've all been ripped off by the campus bookstore, overpaying for a new edition that you can't sell back because next year they'll pull the same thing on whoever's coming in after you. It's not like that here. At least, not at this college library. The college itself is small enough, and the focus is more on hands-on conservation activities than it is classroom learning, that a bookstore isn't necessary here, and would actually get in the way. The college is situated on a game preserve, which means that the land immediately outside the college's property is protected. This limits the amount of building and expansion that can happen, because then the college would be encroaching on the territory of the wildlife. I'm not even going to get into the irony that would be there if a college dedicated to wildlife conservation went and destroyed habitats in order to build a bigger campus. Oh, wait, I just did.

I'll stop boring all of you now with my library mumbo-jumbo, at least until next time, when I talk about expectations of the users, budget, and maybe even community outreach projects. Fascinating, I know!

Scorpions, and Spiders, and Snakes, Oh, My!

I have arrived safely at Southern African Wildlife college. My luggage, however, has not. I've decided that my suitcase is cursed. Not me, not traveling, but that particular suitcase. It's the same one that got lost for four days when I went to Rome. And, just like in Rome, they promised they'd deliver it to the college the very next day. Also, just like in Rome, they failed. I learned my lesson the first time and packed a change of clothes and bare essentials in my carry-on, so I'm not completely up shit creek, but it's still annoying having only two days' worth of clothes for an indefinite amount of time, and not being able to use this weekend before the college officially opens to get everything all unpacked and settled in. Maybe I'm just bad at traveling. I like being in different places, but traveling, getting there, and all the crap along with it, sucks hardcore.

Anyway, aside from all that crap, I think I'm gonna like it here. The drive to the college was beautiful, passing mountains and going into savannah. The college is right on a game preserve, so there's tons of wildlife here. Already, I've seen baboons, impala, and an elephant. There are quite a few birds here as well. Unfortunately, there are also many rodents, some of which have taken up residence in my house. I live in a thatched roof cottage, which is actually rather cute and I'd enjoy it if it weren't so infested. I mean, really, what rude house guests these rodents are! They eat my food, they poop all over the place, and they make freaky scampering noises in the roof all day. It's the poop that gets to me. I seriously wouldn't give a damn if they lived here if they were house-trained. It's like, “Okay, I'll leave out some bread for you and let you stay in my predator-free household, but you mustn't poop on the furniture or counters, and try not to play your music too loud when I have guests over. I'll even do your dishes for you.” We really could get along quite nicely if these rodents would just cooperate. But I guess they're not the reasoning type.

The college itself is quaint, the people I've met so far all seem nice, and I feel like I'm going to learn a lot and also contribute a lot working at the library here. Work officially starts on Monday, but I've gotten a basic tour of the grounds and a run-down of my responsibilities and what projects the library has in store for it. The library is very much a work-in-progress, because it just recently re-opened after being closed for a bit over a year, so updating all the resources and organizing everything in a useful way is going to be pretty prevalent in my workload. We'll see how it all goes.

As the title suggests, there's a bit of creepy-crawly going on here. My first night here I nearly had a scorpion as a bedfellow, which kind of freaked me out, and I was glad just to wake up alive the next morning. Hmm... scorpion bedfellow... sounds like it should be the name of a heavy metal band or something. I hereby copyright/trademark/patent the name “Scorpion Bedfellow” and all its derivatives. If anyone I know is ever part of any project and they use a similar name, I better get free stuff out of it! ;)

There are a lot of spiders here. Most of them won't kill you, but some of them still deal a pretty nasty bite. I need to read up on which ones I can safely ignore and which ones I need to call the game ranger down to remove. There are also some incredibly rare spiders that live in this area, and it's illegal to harm them because they're endangered species, so if I find one of those in my room, there's a whole slew of regulations involved as to who is allowed to remove it, how they're allowed to remove it, and where they're allowed to remove it to. I've got a lot of reading to do. Don't want to go breaking any laws and contributing to the extinction of a species now, do I?

I haven't seen any snakes yet, but I've been told there are a few potentially deadly ones living in this area, so the best thing to do upon encountering any kind of snake at all is to back away slowly and call in a game ranger. Fortunately, they're not too hard to find around here, because this college's purpose is to train people who want to become game rangers (and other wildlife conservation specialists).

So, my boss, Sunel, and her husband Gawie, who both live and work at the college, had me over for a braai, which is a traditional South African barbeque. They cooked steak over a wood fire inside a brick oven/grill/chimney thing outside and made braai sandwiches to go with it (which is basically cheese, tomato, & onion cooked on the braai grill inside bread). It was all really good. And normally I'm not a steak person, but they cook it differently and use different spices here, so I actually really enjoyed it. After wine and dessert, we chatted and watched soaps in their living room. They're just as terrible here as they are in the U.S. However, they're in Afrikaans, and sub-titled in English, so I actually started to pick up a couple of words by the end of it. Sunel said she'd speak Afrikaans to me every day while I'm here so that I can learn it. She also said that the other staff people and the students who speak Shan'gaan are all really happy whenever someone else wants to learn their language, so I should ask anyone I get friendly with to start using Shan'gaan words with me here and there. I'd love to come out of Africa knowing a couple of other languages, even just a basic grasp. Here's hopin'.

Anyway, it's just about bed-time, and I've got one of two things to look forward to tomorrow: either my luggage will arrive and I'll finally be able to unpack, or I'll go with Sunel and Gawie on a game drive in Kruger. Seeing lots of exotic animals...finally wearing different clothes...either one is acceptable to me.

In the future, I will be more discerning about eating things which I do not recognize

Wednesday, unfortunately, was a much-wasted day, as was Thursday. My third hosts, a guy named Stephan (or Themba) and his roommates, were working for most of the day, so after Stephan picked me up early and took me out to breakfast (they have coffee milkshakes here, by the way!!!), I had made plans to get some stuff done in the morning and go about Jo'burg on my own until they got back. I went to an internet café in the morning to get some shit done, and in the course of going about my updates I decided to dine upon local, unfamiliar food. I was okay for a little while; I read, took a nap, even managed to parkour a bit. But then I started to feel a little off. Well, by the time the evening came around (and my hosts were home from work and ready to take me out), I felt nauseated something awful. I actually ran out of the restaurant so as to get sick on the sidewalk if I needed to rather than in a room full of people eating. One of my hosts took me home and made me tea and gave me water and some medicine while the rest of them finished their meal. I kind of feel bad for ruining the evening that way (although my hosts were completely sympathetic and said not to worry about it). I spent the majority of the remainder of the evening parked in front of the toilet, and when I did manage to feel well enough to lie down, I had a bucket next to my bed just in case. I didn't wind up sleeping until about 5:30 in the morning (why do roosters...or whatever rooster-sounding African bird it was...start to crow at 3:30, by the way, when it's not even remotely light out?).

When I woke up at 10/11 o'clock-ish, my hosts had all gone to work (although I vaguely remember Stephan/Themba popping in to check on me before he left) and I was on my own again. I spent a good portion of the day sitting on the porch watching colorful birds dart around the backyard. I didn't think to bring my camera with me when I went to sit out in the fresh air, though, and at that point I was still feeling too sick to do that much movement, so the journey into the house, up the stairs to fetch the camera, and back down again, was just far too daunting to contemplate. I'm sure there will be many other colorful and exotic animals awaiting me when I get to Kruger National Park. It is a game preserve, after all.

Stephan called to check in on me periodically throughout the day, and eventually I felt better. For most of the day, though, I was afraid to consume anything but water because I was still feeling a bit queasy. It's gotten very hot the past two days, so I decided that it would be a perfect opportunity to spend time indoors wandering around an air-conditioned mall (because heat + already feeling ill = not very fun). I managed to time my walk home just in time to catch the beginnings of a thunderstorm. It was actually quite refreshing that things cooled down a bit. I got a little bit of parkour in before it really got rainy, and in the evening, I went out with Ofentse, who'd offered to host me after I'd already made arrangements for the week, so we just got food and chatted while my hosts were working late. I actually managed to eat something and keep it down this time, which was an incredible relief.

I'm getting used to how English sounds over here, and to certain words and phrases they use that are different from ours back in the U.S.A. For example, shopping carts = trolleys, a porch is a veranda, mashed potatoes are just mash, and they've got a funny word for granola too, which I don't remember at the moment. I've even mostly gotten used to the fact that they drive on the other side of the road (it only phases me now when I have to cross a busy street and I need to look right first instead of left). One thing I don't get is that when someone in a store is asking if you need help finding anything, they say “Are you winning?” At least, that's what it sounds like to me. I'll have to ask Stephan about it when he drops me at the airport, because it's also very possible that it's an Afrikaans word that they just throw into an English sentence (that does happen down here), or that I'm totally mishearing it with their accent.

Now it is late, and I've got to get up early to catch a flight to Hoedspruit (which I found out at the beginning of the week was pronounced hood-sprite), where a representative from the Southern African Wildlife College will pick me up from the airport and bring me to the college inside the park, which will be my home for roughly the next three and a half months. I'll get settled and hopefully be completely over jet-lag and normalized to South African time over the weekend, and on Monday I start my internship at the college's library. Wish me luck!