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.