Odds and ends...

Well, we are just beginning our third full day here in Botswana and it has dawned bright and clear (again). Sitting here at the computer, I look out the window at our fence which is covered in brilliant orange flowers and beyond the fence to the lemon tree which still has a large number of bright yellow fruit hanging on it. (The folks that own the property say that they have picked over 1000 lemons off of this tree this year.) It is a very quiet place as it is off the main roads and as a result we have slept very well. I think that we are mostly over jetlag at this point as we have both been able to sleep through the night pretty consistently.

We spent most of yesterday out in one of the villages visiting a sort of daycare/preschool with Tina, the FM staffer that handles new staff orientation. FM had arranged to purchase fleece track suits for the children to insure that they are more appropriately dressed as the cooler temperatures arrive. It was a real pleasure to see how excited the kids were to get some new clothes and then to watch them run around outside in their new, very bright tracksuits. African kids seem to have the best smiles I have seen anywhere.

After returning to Gabs, we went out shopping for a phone for Alysa. I am pleased to find that driving on the right side of the car (left side of the road) has come pretty naturally and we have been finding our way around pretty easily. I don't think Gabs is a particularily hard city to navigate but my sense of direction is nonexistent here. Something about being in the southern hemisphere...the sun being in the northern section of sky instead of the southern. If the sun is rising or setting I can tell you what directon east or west is but even that doesn't do me much good since I have yet to correlate landmarks with direction. (ie. downtown is south of us, the airport is west of us, Mark and Deb live southwest of us) I suppose that will all come with time.

I will try to get some pictures up here in the next couple of days. It seems that the computer doesn't like the SD card we have been using thus far. We'll use a different one for a while and get some pictures up here in a day or two.