Etosha State Park

Etosha State Park

This past weekend was spent traveling Etosha State park.  Etosha is a state reserve that covers 220,000 square kilometers of Namibia!  This reserve is home to the big five (lions, elephants, rhinos, buffalos such as wildebeest, and leopards) and many forms of antelope, browsers, and grazers.  It has terrain that ranges from tall and lush trees and bushes to the Etosha Pan, which is completely barren as far as the eye can see.  The drive was long and the road was bumpy but I saw some of the most amazing wildlife, beautiful scenery and amazing sunsets I have seen so far.  I took as many pictures as possible to share with you all but the pictures in no way can do the real image justice.  During our drive across the park we visited AfriCat (A reserve for rehabilitating cheetahs,) REST (The Rare and Endangered Species Trust,) The Mushara Bushman Camp (Where we slept in quazi-tents out in the bush of Africa,) Dolomite Camp (Where we stayed in cabins on top of a ridge that overlooked the countryside,) and many more amazing places.  I got to see a lion only 5 feet away from my car window, an endangered pangolin, (AKA the cutest little artichoke I’ve ever seen <3) watering holes with drinking rhinos, flamingos, and antelope of many kinds, as well as some of the most colorful and beautiful birds I have ever seen!

I could continue talking about the beauty of this place, but instead I’ll just let you look at the pictures and see for yourself.

Missing all of you back home and I hope all is well!  Enjoy the pictures and feel free to ask me questions if any arise! <3

This is the view from the main lodge at AfriCat, the Cheetah Rehabilitation Center and Game Reserve.

A Cheetah at AfriCat!!! They are so beautiful, but surprisingly, very lazy.

This is the view outside my cabin at Dolomite Camp, it was such a beautiful sunset!  Although I couldn't capture it in a picture, there was lightning striking in the clouds on the left only making the view even more surreal.

A Rhino drinking from a watering hole in Etosha!

We saw so many Zebras!  There are two types of Zebras in Namibia; The Plains Zebras and the Mountain Zebras.  These are a group of Plains Zebras, you can tell by the faint grey stripe in the white stripes of their coats.

This is a pangolin.  I had never heard of such a creature before I came to visit REST.  They are endangered because they are hunted for their scales just as the rhino is hunted for it's horn.  I feel so lucky to have seen and been so close to such an amazing, and frankly, adorable animal. <3

Tell me this isn't one of the most beautiful landscapes you have ever seen.  I could have stayed and enjoyed this view for hours.

A roaming Hyena!!!  I heard some while we were staying at camp one night, they may be cool to look at during the day, but they produce quite an eerie sound come nightfall.

This lion was in arms reach... I didn't test this theory but it made quite the pretty picture. :)

I know you have seen giraffes in pictures already but they are just so beautiful and I still can't get over seeing them roaming around everywhere!

The First Day of School - The Learners Are Back

Today was the first day of school at A.I. Steinkamp Primary School and it was the most interesting experience I have had with school this far.  School at Steinkamp starts at 7:20 AM, considering the group of four PLU students who were coming to teach here did not yet know their placements, we all arrived early.  We went looking for the principal with little success so instead we decided to sit in the teachers lounge until she arrived.  The principal arrived only minutes before the opening ceremonies were scheduled to start but she gave us reassurance that after the ceremonies had finished we would be given our placements.  Weary but excited we made our way out to the tiny outdoor pavilion where such functions are to be held.  Somehow what looked to be several hundred if not one thousand students from grade one to grade seven were squeezed into long lines with only inches of elbow space and filled the pavilion that I estimated to be 20 ft. by 20 ft. square of space.

Once all the learners had gathered and the parents congregated around, the students and teachers alike sang songs of praise and prayed for a good school year.  The students raised the school flags and sang the anthems of Namibia, Africa, and their school.  As the banners were raised the parents became restless and they began to speak with each other in such a way that the speaker from the school could no longer be heard, and no matter the speakers pleas for silence the parents talked on.  I was so shocked at how the parents acted at such a function and their indifference for listening while another was talking.  The ceremony lasted from 7:20 until nearly 9:30 and we still had not been given our placements.  Students had rushed off in every which direction to the classroom they attended the year prior, not yet sure if they had passed and would be moving on to the next grade, or repeating that grade for another year.  The four of us PLU students walked back in to the school to await an answer from the very busy principal.

After some more time and some more waiting we were finally put into classrooms around 11:30, only one and a half hours before school would be let out.  I was put into a 4th grade math classroom with an estimated 50 students. I say estimated because I had not received a roster.  I had not been given the chance to start the day in the classroom so there was no time to learn or put in place any form of classroom management.  I had no idea where the students were academically, and I had no idea where to start.  I had planned to start the day with a name game so that I could begin to learn the students names and decided to give it a try anyway.  This proved to hold their attention for awhile, but it was so hot outside that many children had to keep leaving to splash water on their faces or to use the restroom.  The names were much harder than any I have had to learn in the states, but I was feeling a little better after the game was over.

We came back into the classroom and I tried to find the students general mathematical level.  I had no tests prepared so instead I asked the students to solve multiple problems that ranged from addition and subtraction and multiplication to characteristics of geometric shapes and story problems.  I began to realize that a lot of the students in my grade four class had the mathematical knowledge of many 2nd or 3rd graders in the U.S.

I started to pose some problems for the students and the class initially was going well, the students were engaged and excited and then a switch flipped.  The classroom was hot and the children were tired, no matter how many times I would walk around the room and wake students as I went, nearly 5 to 6 students always had their heads down on their desks! As I tried to correct behavior on one side of the room a fight would break out on the other side of the room, and I don't mean a verbal fight, I mean a hair pulling, kicking and punching fight.  I had to restrain several children so that they would stop beating each other!  The students started to lose their calm and their focus so I tried to distract them with songs and games which only partially worked.  The bell rang and I wished them a good day, exhausted.

I have never been in such a hectic environment on not only the students part, but the faculty as well.  Many classrooms were left without teachers during the day, and a lot of the teachers who had decided to come often left their classroom unattended.  As I sit here writing this I am determined to provide my classroom and my students with a quality education.  It is going to take every little bit of patience I can muster, and a lot of hard work on both my part and my students.  Wish me luck, this will probably be one of the hardest tasks I have been asked to complete so far, but I am ready and I'm willing.

Swakopmund

Hello everyone! I'm so sorry that I have not been able to write for a few days.  When I started this blog it was my goal to write a little blurb everyday, but as my Dad pointed out to me, we take our internet access for granted in the U.S.!  Although I will still try my best to write several times per week, I know that my internet will not always allow me to do so.  So bear with me if you don't see a post everyday as I had originally planned.  We have pretty slow internet here in Windhoek but this past weekend I was in Swakopmund on the coast of Namibia, the internet was 10x slower in my room but I have so much I want to share with you all so I'll try and keep it as brief and interesting as possible!

Swakopmund is a little German settlement on the coast of Namibia, about a four hour drive away from Windhoek.  We left for our little adventure at 7:00 on Friday morning and after our long drive of which I slept most of the way :) We arrived in a beautiful little town with a dutch feel like Lynden, but surrounded by sand dunes on one side, and the Atlantic Ocean on the other.  Fun fact...apparently Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt own a house in this little African Oasis, or so I was told by several tourist trap employees!  We stayed in the Hansa Hotel and it was the nicest hotel I have ever stayed in!!! The American dollar is at about 10.5 to 1 Namibian dollar so a room that cost nearly $300 a night only cost us $30.00!

After we had settled in to our hotel we took some time to explore the town.  There were tons of tourist shops and restaurants and I began to notice something very unsettling.  A lot of the restaurants had a primarily white client base that was being served by a primarily african workforce.  This wouldn't have been quite so unsettling if I had seen some Africans eating at these establishments as well, but I never did.  Instead I saw these locals serving at these restaurants, begging passerby tourists to buy from their shops laid out on blankets on the ground, or constructing makeshift tents out of eyesight from everyone else to sleep.  The financial differences I saw in this town were tremendous and very unsettling as I remembered my sleeping accommodations back at the hotel.  My thoughts on this topic go much further than I will say here, but this first week has really shown me a lot of the cultural divides here in Namibia and I will be writing a blog post on this further in the near future.

The next day we went down to catch a catamaran and go on a boat trip.  This trip was one of the most amazing I have had so far!!!  On our way to catch the boat I saw pelicans that came up past my hip! They were huge and yet so unfazed by people you could stand right next to them and they would just stare at you!  When we got to the dock shortly before we began to board a seal hopped onto the dock and started waddling it's way towards us, I have never been so close to such an animal before and it was amazing, but that's not even the best part!  When I sat down on the boat and the captain came to the front to say hello I was quickly taken off guard when a wild seal came waddling up behind me and for lack of a better explanation gave me a big seal hug! The captain held fish over my head and the seal was all to eager to use me as a ladder to get to that fish! Almost like my dad dangling a toy over my head for our dogs only to lunge onto my lap, only this time the dog was a seal.  I have some great pictures I will put below for you all to see.  I was allowed to pet the seal and take a few pictures before it jumped back into the ocean and swam off.

The next day we went quaking through the sand dunes.  I've had the opportunity to quad with my grandparents before back in Vermejo, so it was so fun to get back on the quad, and it was such a beautiful atmosphere to ride in.  We rode up and down the sand dunes until we reached the ocean and I was again amazed at the beautiful scenery this country has to offer.

I know this isn't every little detail but I'm hoping you are enjoying reading as much as I am enjoying writing these posts for you all, I wish you all the best back home and I'll talk to you again soon!

Beautiful sunset over the Atlantic Ocean in Swakopmund

A lighthouse in Swakopmund

Some of the buildings in Swakopmund

The biggest Pelican I have ever seen!!!!

Here I am next to it!

This is my new best friend Bubbles <3

Bubbles loves hugs!

Almost as much as he loves fish > = >

Yes, this is me having a raw Namibian oyster shooter!!!

And this is me kinda regretting my decision...

Sanddunes meet Ocean views in Swakopmund!

Exploring Windhoek and Okapuka

Exploring Windhoek

We have been so busy these past couple of days and time has just been flying by, hence why I will be posting a long, two-day blog.  The past two days here have been spent exploring this beautiful country in Africa, I have taken 200 pictures in the past two days, and I will try to share several of them with you all even though the Internet makes loading pictures quite the chore. 

We started off Tuesday with a tour of Windhoek, led by our hilarious guide Uanee (Pronounced “ONE A.”)  Uanee is from Namibia and comes from the Herero tribe, and he is one of the nicest people I have had the pleasure to meet. Uanee took us to see the Parliament building where we were strictly told not to take pictures of police officers, but I managed to take beautiful pictures of the building and the surrounding garden which I will post for your viewing pleasure. We also visited the oldest church in Namibia and it was beautifully built, I wasn’t allowed to take pictures of the beautiful stained glass but I’ll post a picture of the outside. After a few more stops along the way and more humorous dialogue from Uanee we were dropped off in groups on the main street of Windhoek for a group scavenger hunt.  Each group was tasked to find the places described on our scavenger hunt list and along the way we found amazing shops, met amazing people, and overall had a wonderful time.  It was a great way to familiarize ourselves with the area and explore the town on our own terms.

On our way back to the house after the scavenger hunt we stopped at some beautiful lookout points and I got some amazing pictures of the city that I will share below.  We spent only 30 min. at the house before we all hopped back in the car to head to the Tjiramba’s home for dinner.  Edwin Tjiramba and his family have been great friends of my professors for many, many years and they were kind enough to invite us into their home.  It was touching to see how close these two families were in spirit even though they spend the majority of the year apart, and I felt so honored to be a part of this celebration of friendship and family. 

I was so tired after all of this that I came home and went straight to bed.

 

 

Okapuka

I woke up this morning to begin probably one of the coolest things I’ve done to date, a game drive at the Okapuka farm! We drove 30 min away to see one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen, and I will try to post multiple pictures, but they don’t do such Okapuka justice.  On the game drive we saw giraffes, springboks, wildebeests, ostriches, warthogs, impalas, crocodiles and more!!!  I’ve seen some of these animals before but always in an enclosure and usually only one at a time.  I saw several herds of these animals roaming and wandering in the wild and it was absolutely breathtaking! The best part about this is that this is only the first of FOUR game drives!!! This country is so beautiful and I can hardly believe I’ve seen so much in only three days; I am so excited to see what the rest of this trip will bring.  I miss you all back home and I’ll talk to you again soon! <3

Finally Here

I arrived at the Seattle airport at 11:00 AM on January 4th, It is now January 6th and I'm sitting in my temporary home in Windhoek, Namibia! It was the longest journey of my life but I am so happy to be back on the ground, and even more so to be on the ground in Africa.  We didn't do much today because we were all so tired and we had to unpack, but I got a few pictures of the scenery that I will post for all you to look at.  We went to the grocery store today and that was an experience.  Almost everything is different and a lot of things have instructions in different languages so for the first shopping trip I bought vegetables, fruit and granola, I'll try and be more adventurous next time. We are going on a tour of the town tomorrow so I'll try and take lots of pictures to share with you all.  I hope life in the states is going well and I'll see you all soon!

The Adventure Begins...

So It's official, I've left Washington and have started my adventure of a lifetime!  I've been preparing for this trip for months now and somehow it still managed to sneak up on me!  I've been shopping for school supplies and things for this trip for a long time and being the procrastinator I am, didn't start packing until the night before...OOPS...Lets just say packing for a two month long trip in one night is stressful and some tears of frustration were shed... lesson learned...hopefullly... :)
I started my trip with a TEN hour flight to Amsterdam, which is where I am sitting while I type this.  I was on the biggest plane I have ever been on and it basically had i-pads on the back of every headrest! I played bejeweled, solitaire, and I watched three different movies for free! It was AWESOME...for the first 5 hours... then my butt went numb and the turbulence kicked in for the next 5 hours, which was far from awesome.  I only have a couple pictures so far but I'll post more soon! One flight down, two more to go :)  I'll be in Namibia at 6:55 on Monday morning, wow that seems far away.... <3 you all and I'll talk to you soon!

Here's David and I at the Airport!!!!

And my Entertainment Center for my 10 hour flight :)