Ascension Day

Today was Ascension Day, so naturally we had a holiday.

I celebrated by sleeping in and almost missing breakfast.  Mostly I worked on my questionnaire for my project and some other odd job things I didn't finish before leaving the States.

In the afternoon, the research group had a small group meeting with US and Botswana research students.  It was cool to hear more details on all the group projects.  The projects are kind of all themed on using resources native to Botswana. One uses sweet sorghum for energy; another uses nut oil from indigenous plants for bio-diesel; one uses fruit dyes inside of solar cells; one is attempting to recycle ambient light and street lighting; and another wants to use plant fibers from a common plant to be a substitute for metal composites.  All of them sound very interesting and I'm excited to see how each group's progress over the next month.

After the meeting some of the researchers (US and Botswana) played a game of a 4vs4 football.  The Botswana students are definitely superior to the US.  After a break, we tossed around a frisbee which some of the Botswana students hadn't seen before.  Zee's comment when he piked it up was "will this comeback to me if I throw it??" We kind of chuckled and then said no.  Leslie, a US student who attends Rice University, explained the rules of Ultimate Frisbee to the Botswana students since she is an expert, but we only circled up and tossed it around.

After dinner, I went back and attempted to sleep because I had a migraine, but the other US researchers got together to  watch some YouTube videos that we had discussed throughout the day including Australian Football, Yale pranks on Harvard (Maren attends Yale), and the water buffalo, lion, and alligator video.  If you've never heard of the last one, you watch it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM.

I'm off to bed so I can wake up early and go meet the village leader tomorrow!
I'll leave more pictures next time because I'm too lazy right now.
Until then,
M.E.