Hello everyone!
I hope your weekends were wonderful- I know mine was.
On Friday, we went to a [delicious] Portuguese restaurant and I had some delicious beef. We also split a delicious bottle of cabernet sauvignon and had a great time playing with the candle and toothpicks at our table [pyros]. When we came back to our flat, our NC state flatmates were getting ready to go out, which made us feel a little lame since we immediately got into our pajamas to start watching Doctor Who. Oh well.
We got to sleep in the next day and Acacia made delicious, delicious cinnamon rolls. We were going to go to Mochudi, but Acacia got word that some care packages (sent in April) had finally arrived. So Perri and I went ahead to River Walk to get cash while we waited for Acacia. We got our money really quickly and went down to the restaurant area, where we found a small bazaar. We still had illusions about going to Mochudi, so while I saw a lot of things that I wanted to get for myself and other people I didn’t get any of them because I didn’t want to carry them. However, by the time Acacia joined us, we figured it would be too late to go to Mochudi. So of course, we started shopping. On our way back to the flat, we saw monkeys playing in the yard/trees around this one house, so of course nothing would do but to watch them for a little bit. After that nice adventure, we headed over to Bostwanacraft to get the rest of our gifts. Basically, Saturday was a really great day of shopping. I’m really excited to give everyone their gifts, and I hope I can get days off in August to go to Michigan. We also watched some really good episodes of Doctor Who that night. Just sayin’.
Sunday, I decided to go to Mass. It took me about 45 minutes to find the mass times for the cathedral in Gabs, and even then I wasn’t sure about the reliability of the site. It only had one time- 10 am. As I got there I see 7:30 English, 10:00 Setswana. So the entire mass was in Setswana, which I thought I would have been able to follow, but all the responses were sung so I had no idea what was a hymn and what was part of mass. It also took 2.5 hours. Amazing. I was really surprised to see the amount of young adults that were there though, both in the congregation and involved in the choir. I suppose it’s not that unusual for the States as well, but it did make me realize that St. Anthony’s is an older parish. I'm hoping to find a nice church by UW- if anyone knows of one, please let me know. After I walked back, we headed for Mochudi. The leather store was closed (bummer) but we went to visit Acacia’s mentor from her independent study project. He’s a traditional healer, although he used to be a physics and maths teacher. He seems like a great guy and Acacia had a great experience with him.
Today in lab, we did so many cool things- we made and ran an SDS-PAGE gel. I’ve ran them in Claremont before, but I’ve never made them. Unfortunately they take 4-6 hours to run, which means we need to go back in at 6:30 to start staining it :( We also just got back from talking to UB’s Research and Development office to start working on the protocol for introducing a more anthropological aspect to the project. We’re all excited about it and want to come back next year.
So, that’s all for now. It’s starting to hit me that these people are really far away from me, and that while I’m excited to go home, I don’t when or if I’m coming back. It’s kind of a weird tension between wanting to go home, feeling bad for wanting to go home, and realizing that I’m only now getting comfortable with this trip. Isn’t that the way it goes, though? I’m really glad that I’ll get to see Acacia and Perri next year, and I hope that Phono and Kelvin can come visit. Phono is coming right after we leave Bots, but I won’t be able to make it down to Cali because of UW research. I’m feeling much better about my roommate sitch now- we’ve exchanged a few messages and she seems really nice- as are all of the Minnesotans that I know. So anyways, less than a week til I’m stateside and my feelings about it are growing ever more confused.
LeeAnn xx
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