our new home...

dumela! that means "hello" in setswana, and so far it's the only word i know...lucky for me everyone speaks english, cause setswana is not what you would call and easy language to learn! the words are all 10 letters long and involve a lot of consonants. for instance, we live on phuthadikobo road, i think.

so leigh (my friend from residency who also came to botswana with the same program, now my roomate) and i have arrived safe and sound in gaborone. we did have a harrowing adventure in the johannesburg airport, but other than that are unscathed :) the adventure probably had something to do with the 5000 lbs of luggage we came with (see above picture, that's our combined stuff, and i'm hiding a bag). turns out that getting to the airport at 4:15am for a 6:15 flight is not early enough, at least not in johannesburg where the ticket agents don't arrive till 4:45. we'll just say after spending 2hrs in line, we finally got to our gate and the plane took off 20min early, without us. don't worry that we then had to trek back through the airport, customs, baggage claim (to reclaim our combined 8 checked bags, which we were not excited to reunite with), customs again, and then back to the ticketing line where we had to get a new ticket and recheck our bags. all and all that little journey through the airport took a mere 5hrs...which after 24hrs of traveling already, was not awesome! it didn't help that there are guys everywhere trying to help you...for a fee. you have to tip someone to push an elevator button, it's ridiculous! apparently pushing it yourself is not an option.

after all that we got to gabs a little later than expected, but were able to get in touch with the clinic so still had a ride to our apartment. which by the way is AWESOME! as you can see in the pictures (living room, kitchen, my room) it's much bigger than my condo in the states (who knew i had to come to africa for space/storage??), and it's pretty and clean with a garden in the back. it's safe too with a 24/7 security guard, security gate, and alarm system. we live within walking distance of the clinic, the grocery store, and a mall. it's great! we have the weekend to get settled in and then start in clinic on monday...giddyup!