Monday, January 10th was our first full day in Namibia. For this day, Paula and Jan had organized quite the itinerary for us. We began with a nice tour of the city of Windhoek. We first drove up to high point that overlooked the city. There we found some awesome huge centipede type bug that some of the girls picked up and let crawl on their arms. The view of the city was amazing and it was fun to see all the different buildings from a bird's eye view. Next we traveled to the parliament building in Windhoek were we enjoyed some fun looking lizards and many beautiful flowers. We then traveled to the outskirts of the city to a place called Katitura which means a place where no one wants to live. This is where people were relocated to during the time of Apartide. Katitura is where the students we will be teaching live. The living conditions are poor here and few people have running water in their homes. The people mostly walk everywhere and we saw many businesses including barber shops, bars, and car washes. The community in Katitura is very tight knit and family is very important to the people there. The buildings and houses are called shanties and are made of scraps of tin and old boards. While in Katitura, we stopped at the one of the schools our student teachers will be at called Moses Garoeb. It was amazing to be there and the desire to learn that is present here was evident even from the empty establishment. On our way back to the taxi from the school, we ran into some neighborhood kids and all of our hearts melted. They were so happy to see us and posed as we took pictures of them. Seeing the excitement of these children got all of us excited to start teaching next week. From Katitura, we went into downtown Windhoek where we exchanged money at the bank and bought some much needed supplies. Some of the girls bought adapters for the power supply and others bought bags and shoes. I bought a pair of sunglasses. For some reason I hadn't thought to pack some and my eyes had been squinting the entire time we've been here. Before our time at the mall, we went to a place called Zoo Cafe for lunch where most of us got pizza to eat. We also decided to try a local soft drink called Rock Shandy. It was made of sparkling water, 7-up, and something else we couldn't understand when the waitress told us. It was pretty good. It sorta tasted like ginger in liquid form. At about 4pm we headed back to the taxi and Shane drove us home. It started to pour down rain and I mean pour when we were coming home. We spent the rest of the evening hanging out and low key around the hotel. We had a meeting as a group at 5:30 to debrief the day and that was really good. We went around the room and talked about our highlights of the day, something that shocked us, and questions we had. It was really good to hear everyones different perspectives on the experiences we had.
Kari was brave to put the centipede on her arm
The city of Windhoek from above
Our centipede friend making his way across the open land
We really enjoyed the tour and this was just the beginning
Visting the parliament building and garden
This is my lizard friend
I love how positive this sign is ;)
Katitura
The school that I am not going to be at but that some of the other girls will be
The desire to learn is so strong here it is amazing
The word you can't see behind the bush after our is DREAMS
These boys wanted their picture taken, they were posing and were so happy to see us
These are my sweet new shades that I am so thankful to have because the sun is so bright here
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