Shila Travels: 23!

Oh hey!

It's Sunday afternoon. Tomorrow marks me being a human for an entire 23 years!

I'm not a super big birthday person, but I do like getting older and smarter with every passing year. It feels good! Thanks to everyone for all the love :) <3

Another busy week has passed with all kinds of interesting things going on.

This week at work:

- Power outages are on the upswing lately and it's driving me a little bananas. It always seems to happen at the most inopportune times. Kate has been using the time to organize SO many things at the office, and I'm helping a bit (even though I HATE organizing) so it helps the time pass. I didn't make as much headway with transcriptions as I'd hoped because of the power being out so often, so next week I'll have to push to stay on track.

One of my readers

We love love love this kid

- Early in the week we had a morning training for financial literacy in relation to NGOs. It was a really informative thing overall. We got into groups and had to create a hypothetical annual budget based on restricted funding from a donor. It was TOUGH! I have so much more respect for what our director has to deal with on a continual basis.

-Milena our new roomie is arriving shortly and I'm pumped. She emailed and said she isn't phased by killing bugs- WHAT A PLUS! :D

- Speaking of bugs, there is good news this week: I haven't seen a SINGLE cockroach! Or scorpion for that matter. The best!

- Thursday afternoon marked the day of prayer for those impacted by HIV/AIDS, so a remembrance service was held with the kids. The motto is "Building Botswana through zero new infections." It was a really lovely ceremony.

Such a beautiful set up

Ribbons for the kids

A time for remembrance

Praying for those infected or impacted by HIV/AIDS

- Some of my readers have been testing my boundaries a bit now that the novelty of the new literacy program has worn off. I'm trying my best to use positive reinforcement to keep them motivated. I still adore reading though, challenges and all. It's so rewarding. One of my kids went from knowing only a few letter sounds to only missing four (and four hard ones): w, y, g (which makes a different sound in Setswana), and q. Progress!

We found some hilaaaaaarious random papers while we were sorting through shelves. We have NO idea what these are from, but some of the answers were sooooo great.

It is danger hahahahahaha

This weekend was such an adventure!

My upcoming birthday was the perfect excuse to do some fun things.

On Saturday, we went to Gabs and had the best day. It started at this mall we've recently discovered that has GORGEOUS shops and restaurants. We ran into a co worker and had a lovely lunch. Then, shopping around. THEN, we were booked in for a one hour massage! And wow, whaaaaat an experience hahahaha. So first of all, we got there only to find out that we had signed up for the double-therapist massage, so each of us had TWO therapists working on us at the same time. Four hands = wowwwwww! There were some… let's say interesting massage techniques used at certain points, so Kate and I had to restrain ourselves from laughing sometimes. And there was certainly no concern for keeping body parts covered, which was also pretty hilarious. But overall I'd say it was worth every penny. Around $35CDN for an hour massage with TWO therapists? Yes please!

In the waiting room

Carmen, Maura, Coady kids, I can't even wait to reinstate back massages during debrief!

After the massage (and we were so oily that we could have slid to the mall), we randomly decided to take in a five minute 5D movie. It was SOOOO ghetto fab, I almost cried it was so funny. The seats moved, the screen was 3D, the video itself was the strangest thing, and at one point there was even random water sprayed on us. It was so bad that it was good!

5D! So hilarious.

Bloody Road, anyone?

Then we had dinner and drinks, met a couple people, and went to a bar that draws the expat crowd. It was a ball! It felt so interesting to not be the only white folks. I got dance lessons from a new friend and had a blast on the dance floor.

Getting dance lessons. I was like "A hand on the head? Really?!" but apparently it's what all the cool kids do.

Pondering the meaning of life. Or maybe what beer to get next :)

Kate fell in love

The life of the party, obvz

Hiiiiiii

New BFFs

The dance floooooo

Oh hey

We stopped in to another (much sketchier) bar in Mochudi for a quick jaunt in the "VIP" section (a sketchy back room), and finally tumbled into bed at 330. It was awesome! All in all, a solid weekend was had. Kate even baked me a delicious cake!!!