Home at last

Howdy,

I have come to terms that I am bad at blogging and was pretty bad at updates, but I tried... At any rate, I'm home! I thought I'd share some final thoughts.

First off, I want to commend the airline industry. Although I had a few delays, for the most part everything was extremely systematic and arranged very well. I had doubts my luggage would ever be claimed, but was pleasantly surprised every time. I'm sure there is so much behind the scenes and much thought is probably put into every step. Sleeping is just very hard sitting up. Maybe planes should have people stacked lying down.

Traveling has been great. Although this security lady in London caused me to break some souvenirs, for the most part, people are pretty nice to foreigners. However, I knew I arrived in the United States when a TSA agent was being extremely rude to a confused foreign traveler. C'mon guys, let's not come off as rude and impatient. Also, British English is much harder to understand than I thought. I was listening to some Brits talk and initially I was trying to figure out what language it was until I realized it was english... haha

Living in Gaborone for a month has been a great experience. I think everyone at least once in their life should immerse themselves in a different culture. It puts things into perspective about what truly is important. There were quite a few times (especially the last week) where our power went out unexpectedly. People there just deal with it. Restaurants don't always carry what you want and things are very unexpected when you're trying to make plans. People are pragmatic and peaceful in Botswana.

Shout out to Sunday, PD, OG, OT, Nigel, and.... I think his name is.... Dreekey? Whatever, he probably wasn't important. (haha) Thank you so much for teaching us about your culture and being so protective of us. I know a few of you guys became good friends too on this project and I am extremely happy about that. Something about having friends way across the world is comforting to me. Play more mafia, spoons, and ultimate frisbee! I'll attempt to play soccer...

We're so cute

Also shout out to the US students Nicole, Sam, Melissa, Andrew, and Amanda. It was really neat experiencing and bonding a different culture with you guys. I like that we're literally scattered all around the country. It was amazing how well we got along.We'll chat often and plan our reunion in a few years! If you're ever around Case, let me know!

Here are some miscellaneous pictures I thought were worth sharing. 

Sam dancing at the cultural center

Check flabby sound!

I am terrible at soccer.

high fives!

Amanda, Nicole, PD, Dricky (fat.)

Dricky, OG, me, Melissa

Andrew, me, and Amanda

Nicole, and YOLO (melissa and sam)

Nigel, OG, Sunday

During the last week when we were all writing our final reports for our research projects, Dricky and I also compiled a movie where we interviewed each other about ourselves. I'm not the most camera-sexy, but enjoy it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFqpAx7ehDw

Tsetseng visit

Hey everyone,
So I just came back from a trip to a village called Tsetseng in Botswana. Gabarone is the really developed city I've been living in at the University of Botswana, but Tsetseng was and eye opening experience. I had an intuitive sense of what poorer villages lacked, but really seeing it brought me down to earth.

Another group is working on a developing a hybrid power supply system for Tsetseng and we all worked together to collect data. We surveyed villagers and asked them questions about the appliances they had, if they'd be willing to pay for electricity, and if they had it, what would they want it for. The clinic and school was also visited. The interesting thing about the school was that they have computers and pieces of technology that is pretty modern, but no electricity. I think a lot of people have this false sense that donation of things to Africa will really help, and as nice as that is, without infrastructure and electricity, what's the point of the high end pc that was donated?

School kids were so fun! More pics to come hopefully. I taught them how to do that flabby cheek thing I do so well...

Sam teaching the kids useful skills

I knew that I would grow to appreciate what I have at home by seeing the contrast, but I can't help but feel a little uneasy about the disparity in wealth. Everything back in the states seem so... excess. I really have to digest how I feel about it.

During one of the surveys, a villager asked Dricky and I to get the goats out of her yard before she answered questions. I can honestly say I had no idea what I was doing and was just randomly baa-ing at the goats. My partner Dricky says I'm crap at it haha. It was fun. 

Damn goats.

What was also eye opening was the lifestyle of people. Without internet or even snail mail, it is very hard to get anything done. We talked to an older lady and she was taking a nap outside in this small fenced off area on her property:

Dricky interviewing a napping lady

I'm pretty tired from walking around in the sand all day, so I'm gonna cut this one short. Hope you guys enjoyed this post! I think I have a few unresolved feelings about what I saw today and it was kind of overwhelming. Save for another post perhaps.

Ciao,

Richard

Safari in South Africa

Yo,
So the last 3 days I've been in South Africa at the Tau game lodge getting pampered essentially. It was absolutely ridiculous. I brought toilet paper and everything, thinking I'd really rough it in the wild while seeing animals, but the lodge was better than any hotel I've ever been in. Here are some pics of the huts we got. Each pair of students got one hut.

On the porch, I could nap while elephants were drinking water from this close by creek:

I'm pretty happy with this silly group (minus Andrew taking the picture)

The entire experience was almost surreal. I couldn't believe that we were just riding in vehicles up to animals that I have only ever seen on animal planet. There were impalas, elephants, giraffes, cheetahs, kudos, colorful birds, rhinos, and a whole bunch of other animals I can't remember the names of. We saw a lion eating the remains of a wildebeest and then just veg out and sleep. I don't know which pictures to post! But I'll just post a few here:

lion eating

monkeys being annoying around our huts

This was absolutely one of the most fun experiences I have had the pleasure of being on. I think anyone who can make it out to South Africa for a vacation should most definitely.

Now, as promised, here I present our research mentor with a silly face:

Dr. Mpholo

Friends and Life in Botswana

Research is going well! It's not that windy in Botswana, but we're hoping to see wind patterns that will help with the power shedding during peak hours. After being here for about a week now, the research students and I have come to really appreciate the lifestyle here. People go to bed relatively early (10PM) and wake up early (6-7AM). The sun rises and sets extremely quickly and people maximize the daylight (it is winter right now here).

I think what I'm pretty surprised about is my lack of culture shock. The college kids here are just as funny and goofy as a lot of my friends and people are very similar. Strangers are actually really kind to foreigners here and like to strike conversation (as opposed to the xenophobic tendencies of Americans). Our university of Botswana students really like soccer and video games and when soccer is broadcasted, life pretty much stops. The only thing that is sort of hard to get used to is the laid-back lifestyle. People take their time in doing things and perhaps that's more important, as it allows us to really live in the moment. People are also very pragmatic it seems. The grocery store charges for bags you use (I know some states are doing that now) and water schedules are sent out to the public to reduce consumption. Hot water for showers are heated up by the sun with these heaters on the roof. Energy is shut off at peak hours sometimes to conserve energy. People here expect it and know how to deal with it.

It's nice being away from the fast paced engineering/college world I've put myself at home. We're going to hang out in a village next weekend hopefully, and I think perhaps there will be more of a cultural change. As for now in Gabarone, I'm getting better at Setswana but am still really bad at navigating the roads here.

Here's a picture of our research group and Dr. Lacks! We climbed this hill overlooking the entire city and the view was fantastic.

We're missing a few of the UB students, who were probably playing soccer on the weekend

 So the washing machines aren't open on the weekends and a lot of people seem to do laundry the old fashioned way so we decided to clean our clothes and hang it. Luckily, it's pretty dry and hot here during the day so clothes dry really quickly

my dirty clothes

Andrew trying to get to the critical micelle concentration with his detergent

We've been trying to venture out into the city areas when we have the time. A lot of the shopping areas are very commercial and anything we need to buy is pretty readily available. Cabs and little white vans pick people up and transportation is pretty cheap. I've had ostrich jerky which wasn't too bad and I also had these tasty little worms:

Eating mophane (Dried worms?) with Amanda and Ogie

Last night, we taught a lot of our friends how to play mafia and they really enjoyed it! UB students also taught us how to dance because Americans don't have rhythm (at least I don't haha). We ordered pizza and hung out and it was a very typical college hang out.

For more pics of our UB friends, check out my album on facebook!

Lastly, Dr. Lacks likes to bring tennis gear and donates it to the local tennis club in Gabarone. The little kids are really good! We brought over a lot of rackets Dr. Lacks acquired and hit with the children there for a little bit. I got to play my favorite sport in Africa--not what I was expecting!

I'll post pics of the safari once we come back on Thursday! Thanks guys, ciao.

The project

Alrighty! In Africa I found one should just expect the unexpected. We didn't have enough rooms for all the guys so we had to be moved around, but I finally was able to settle into the room I'm in. What is kind of awesome is that all the college kids actually are very expectable. My partner and I share very similar humor and everyone is so funny. I'm also learning how to say GURLLL in Setswana (you know, the important things). But I'll have a separate post about people later.

So the project. My partner Hendrick (Dricky) and I are working on analyzing the wind flow in Botswana and the feasibility of wind energy as a sustainable resource. We've set up two fans on long poles to log data to see what the wind patterns are like and the velocity of it.

Our data logger continuously takes data on wind velocity and gust

Dricky and I under the wind logger

Doing some work.

Dricky and I are also working with Dr. Mpholo from the landlocked country of Lesotho. He has a PhD in EE from Cambridge and is a professor in Lesotho. He travels to Upenn frequently and it's pretty neat listening to him talk about his wind research and travels. I'll try to take an awkward photo of him and post it haha.

The first two days has just been trying to set the wind loggers up and get the software working. Tomorrow is our third day and we'll be doing some reading and research on theory as well as figuring out how much energy is actually consumed in a typical building in Gaborone. We're slowly getting our work done and set up.

The people and culture seem pretty relaxed here (or it's just us lazy college kids). Things are a bit slowed down, but everyone is extremely intelligent. The change is really different from American culture, but yet it's extremely similar. People like Game of Thrones, the NBA, WWE, and TAYLOR SWIFT. YES. MY PARTNER LIKES TAY TAY. We're feeling 22.

So that's pretty much the intro to the next month of my life, and I've not had this much fun in a really long time. It's really empowering and makes me think that if there is something that needs to be done even globally, we really should just invest the time and effort to go do it. The world is vast and I'm happy my first stop outside of the United States (Canada doesn't count) is in Africa. There is so much to see and life is only worth living if you are grounded in how you relate with all life and people everyone. Well, with my 2 cents of wisdom I'll talk to you guys later!

I leave you with a picture of a grumpy technician who called me a woman because I couldn't bend metal with my bare hands like he could.

"You are a ngwanyana"

PST MAYNE. 

Quick update

Sorry guys, finding internet has been kind of hard. Once I have a more stable connection I'll post more regularly with all the great pictures I've taken. It's been really fun and I look forward to updating this blog retroactively. Peace!
Richard

Traveling time and ostrich wraps

It's my first time out of the country (Canada doesn't count) and I'm excited! I somehow ended with the worst of two situations: long layovers AND long continuous flight. I'm flying from CLE to IAD-Dulles to JFK and then to Johannesberg and then one more to Gaborone. I'm currently at JFK in a random corner for the night because my flight is in 10 hours.

Here is a picture of my cute corner

I also managed to be a creep and take pics of people sleeping:

I guess people do this a lot. 

I really like talking to strangers and on my flight from DC to JFK, I sat next to a woman that was reading the constitution of Zimbabwe. She is working for the UN and her specialty is policy, specifically women's rights. She told me all about her travels and I commended her by calling her a badass. She liked that compliment. When I arrive in Jo-berg, she also recommended that I get an ostrich wrap at the food court. I'll take her up on that. It'll be an odd breakfast since I'm arriving at 8 AM in Jo-berg.

Traveling alone is kind of nice. I really have time to do whatever I want, but I found if I'm not deliberate in planning what to do, I kind of get flustered. Alrighty, I'll try and do blog posts regularly, but I'm sure it'll devolve into just pretty pictures and captions. Or more creeper pics. Deuces.