I'm finally in Namibia! It took a 21 hour bus ride to get here but I'm finally in Windhoek (pronounced "vindhook"), the capital of Namibia. I'll fill you in on the past few days first though.

On thursday, Alison, Sarah, Jonathan, Vincent and I went on a wine tour down the Cape Peninsula. We hired a driver named Charles and he took us to four vineyards in the Stallenbasch region. First he took us to some place that was incredibly boring, where didn't actually taste any wine. I have a feeling he made a commission off taking tourists to this area because he kept telling us how we should come back and eat at the restaurant at night for a fancy meal. Then he took us across the parking lot to a Cheetah sanctuary. We only got to see one cheetah that could be viewed without actually paying the admission fee. We stood there for about 30 minutes just watching it walk around. AND THEN!! his trainer came in and walked right up to it and embraced it for about 30 seconds. Needless to say, it was the cutest thing ever, and I got some quality photos of it. The cheetah even started purring! Cheetah purring sounds half like a cat purr and half like some weird bird chirp. Very cute. Then the trainer walked away and sat on the ground to tie his shoes and the cheetah walked over and lay in front him for some belly scratches. Basically, I'm totally over domestic house cats and want a cheetah. (Hannah: would you be willing to get rid of Caramel while I try and bring home a real cat?). The trainer told us we could pay 10 rand (around $1.50 canadian) to see the other cats and animals, but our driver told us, and I quote, "you've seen one cheetah, you've seen them all). I think the rest of the group agreed to get on with the wine tour so I reluctantly left the sanctuary to head back to the van and drive to the next vineyard.

Enough about the cheetah though. I'm sure It's pretty boring to hear about. Next, Charles drove us to three more vineyards and we got to taste a total of 13 wines. I learned how to taste wine properly, but I'm still not sure what I'm supposed to be noticing when I swirl the wine in the glass. However, it looked pretty fancy when I swirled the wine, so I kept on doing it. The wine was excellent and I felt pretty proud of myself when I noted to Alison that one wine tasted oaky, and we read the label and found that, indeed, there was an oaky flavour, or undertone, or something in the wine.

We shared a lunch together with Charles at the last winery, and got to try some fresh goat cheese. I have a pretty horrible story about goats that makes me not want to eat their cheese every again. But I'll save it for another time. Let me just say, animals that drink their own pee are gross.

The Stallenbosch is a pretty beautiful place but it is overwhelmingly a rich, white population. On the outskirts of the little towns in the areas, there would be a clustering of townships that just remined us how segregated SA still is. That kind of disparity is obvious in almost all the places I saw while in SA. In fact, Charles referred to the townships as housing "coloured people."

On a lighter note though, I had a really great time in Cape Town and I'm really looking forward to coming back in August after my internship ends.

After we got back to the hostel after the wine tour, we met up with the rest of the group and went for dinner at a nearby restaurant. We went back to the hostel and pakced our stuff, played some Big 2, drank some SA beer and went to bed.

The next day we took our 21 hour bus ride to Windhoek. The first 10 hours were fine, the bus was nice and cool and the seats were comfy and reclined really far back. We all had a chuckle when they started playing this safety video for the passengers on the overhead TV's and the video included a prayer to Jesus that he would guide us to safety and make our journey safe. And it went on for a good 5 minutes, while we all kind of sat there stunned by the outright religiousness. By night time, we had gone through border and our visas were approved. We all settled down for what we expected to be a nice sleep on the bus, however, they pumped up the heat really high and none of us could manage to fall asleep in the heat. So I guess that meant we got a really nice view of the Kalahari at sunrise. It's beautiful, but I think it would have been better with more than three hours sleep.

We got into Windhoek at 6:00am and met Richard and two guys that will stay with 6 student who have internships in the city. We got some breakfast and each of us bought a Namibian cell phone (yay!!). Then we moved the Windhoek interns into their compound and Richard brought us (the Oshikati interns) to a separate compound. In the afternoon the entire group met the two University of Namibia (UNAM) professor who worked with Richard to create this program. They talked to us about Namibia's demography and the impact of HIV/AIDS on the country. But, once the professors found out we had just gotten off of the long bus ride they cut the meeting shortly and told Richard that he should let us sleep for a full day before getting us to sit through a meeting with them. They were really sympathetic to our situation, and all of us were really thankful for that.

We went for dinner after the meeting and had a really good time. The group is really meshing well and everyone is very friendly and funny. (my two favourite characteristics).

We all headed home and pretty much passed out for 11 hours.

Today Richard gave the UNAM and Oshikati groups a short tour of Windhoek. The city is really cool. The houses here are really colourful and the architecture is so cool. Kind of reminds me of South American housing. We have another meeting later today, and then a group dinner.

SO far I'm having a really great time here, but I'm anxious to get to Oshikati (another 9 hour car ride) and settle in there. I wonder what it will be like up there and what our living quarters will look like.

So my phone number here is: 081.447.2234, but if you're calling me you have to put: 011.264.81.447.2234. I don't expect any calls from friends cause it's crazy expensive. But family members have to. If you skype me, its free for me and about $0.02 canadian dollars/minute for you. (Ar, maybe when you go home you can set that up for M and D?)

Miss you!