Du Mela

Hello friends,
or rather, I'll say Du Mela - the formal greeting for "Hello" in Setswana.
I have been here for a week now and what a week its been!

The journey was lengthy with 4 flights and 26 hours of flying time, I was pretty exhausted but so incredibly excited to land in the beautiful Bots!
The first week has flown by both quickly and slowly; I've taken that its probably because there is nothing and everything that needs to be done all at the same time.
There are about 80 international students this semester from all over the place including the States, Sweden, Germany,Bosnia, Switzerland, China, and me- the only Canadian... bulllettt!
They seem like a sweet bunch of people, ready to learn and open to experience- so I'm excited for new friends! yay! :)
The first trip we took was to a small opera house theatre where they served us a traditional Botswanian meal. There were plenty of delicacies, amongst them were the infamous "Mupane worms".
Essentially, a fat,long and black maggot fried and seasoned with spices and sauces.
Most people know, I'm normally down for anything especially with food- but for some reason, this meal was too new and exciting for me to devour.
I did try and managed to eat the whole worm and thought it was pretty decent ( minus the fact that I knew it was worm the entire time) Will I try another one before I leave Botswana? I'm going to try and avoid it, that's for sure!
After the traditional meal, our international leaders/volunteers decided to show us some native dances, songs and games to the country,which were incredibly cool and made me jealous that we don't have as many of those in Canada.
Apart from this one evening trip, the rest of the week has consisted of getting to know campus and going to class. The first week is a write-off at UB- you're usually lucky if your professor shows up to class this week!
The people in Botswana are extremely friendly... sometimes overly friendly! But they have a light about them and are high spirited, so making friends with locals shouldn't be a big problem.
I have yet to feel completely settled but I know that by next week, I will report with a lot more confidence on what the scene is.
For now, I'm off to celebrate a friends birthday on the rooftop of the school! ( I don't think we could ever do this at Laurier) Should be a sceeeeennnne!

Have a beautiful weekend!

side note: My camera is having trouble uploading pictures and videos- but I'm working on it cause yall need to check out some footage for sure!