Day 22

July 16
Can somebody say three weeks??? That's right, it's been three entire weeks that I've been in Botswana!! Wow. Let me just say, three weeks can fly by. I can't believe that I only have two weeks left in Botswana. It still feels like I just got here! I don't even want to think about leaving my family, but I have only two more whole days with them. I'm excited to start my safari and to stay in Gaborone, but I really will miss my Botswana family.
In addition to the fact that today marked three weeks, today brought a great change. We continued to work on our tables in the morning, and when we arrived at the secondary school, we were met with a pleasant surprise. We were sent a new crew from Gaborone, and these guys really know what they're doing. They went to school for architecture at the University of Botswana, located in Gaborone, and they're saving our project. See, we had forgotten that the tables and benches needed to be plastered as well as built, and if the Architect and Corona couldn't even build the tables and benches, we had no idea how they would plaster them, so, we were very lucky to get these new recruits.

The University of Botswana: the haven of good architects

With the arrival of the new guys, things are going quite smoothly. We were shown and taught how to plaster, and I even got to try some plastering myself! I don't think that I should plaster any more, however, as I am not very adept at the art of plastering. With the help of the new guys, we were able to finish plastering one set of benches and tables today. That set looks absolutely amazing. If the rest of the benches and tables come out looking like this first set, I think we'll be in very good shape and we'll leave a very nice legacy. We're going to finish strong tomorrow, I'm sure of it.

Just look at that perfectly plastered beauty!!!

After lunch, we did some more work on our final performance with Banki and we learned some songs to sing at the performance. We already knew the national anthem of Botswana (Fatshe Leno La Rona), so Banki taught us two new songs: Silang Mosoko and Tsatsi Ke Lele. I kinda love these songs. The first is a children's song that is usually sung with either a hand game or with a dance. We learned the dance. I think I've sung that song maybe 50,000,000,000 times. The fact that the dance is so much fun doesn't hurt, either. I'm really excited for this farewell performance. We're going to rock it!!

This is Tsatsi Ke Lele, sung by me! If you're interested in saving your eardrums for later on in life, please skip this song. Tomorrow, I'll post a video of the song and dance to Silang Mosoko!

Tonight's dinner was the best dinner I've had so far in Botswana. Oh my goodness gracious. I'm still salivating just thinking about it. We had a brie tonight, which is basically a Botswana barbeque. Boy, do they know how to brie in Botswana!! The meat was cooked to perfection, with a nice hint of smokiness. The sausage? Oh, don't get me started on the sausage. Absolutely amazing. Tonight was the first night that I actually wanted seconds!! It was a great way to end the day.

I was too busy eating to take a picture of my food, but here is a general picture of what I probably looked like after every bite