Day 17

July 11
Very little happened today. Very little. Well, I guess that's not entirely true, because I'm in Botswana. Things are always happening. I guess what I mean is nothing very different happened today. We spent all day today at the secondary school, building our benches and tables.

Louie and Anahi working to finish the ditches

We've laid the bricks for almost every bench, and we've begun laying for the tables. We were there from 9 AM to 5 PM. It was fun, but it wasn't very exciting. I did a lot of brick laying. The benches have to be perfectly straight, so the people we are working with use a level for each and every brick. They make sure that the tops are completely even, but they neglect to check the sides of the bench, so the benches end up looking like trapezoids. Apparently, I have a good eye for judging whether the bricks are straight or not. Not sure when else this will come in handy, but it sure is helpful when there are two levels and three groups! Our group didn't need the level very often. :)

Me wheeling some rocks to the sites (it really is an upper body workout)

Amelia and Rheame, hard at work.....

We had tea and lunch at the school, and I only went home for dinner. When I got in, Masego asked me to go to the store with her. I figured why not, so I went with her to the store. Oh my goodness, am I happy I went. The stars here are absolutely incredible. I wish that I had a better camera to try and capture the beauty of the sky here. I could not have been more aptly named. My Setswana name is Naledi, which means star. Dinaledi are bontle here. The stars are beautiful here. You can see the Milky Way as clearly as the stars around it. And there is no shortage of stars either. If I could spend all night staring up at the sky here, I would.

Just look at that moon. Amazing.