The Ups and Downs

The agricultural show was great, I saw many HUGE cows and traditional farming equipment. It was a lot of fun with the grade 7's too. After this me and Jamie stayed overnight in Windhoek at the cardboard box hostel and the school went home. The next day we got up at 6 and got a taxi to a combi meeting place. Once here we got a lift straight away to Swakopmund for a reasonably cheap price. It was a long journey and very cramped, but 4 hours later we arrived in Swakop! Wow! It was windy and cool, very similar to England! We walked around a bit and found some accommodation, Desert Sky Backpackers. Funnily enough this was where Mary and Fran were staying (otjikondo volunteers) and we booked into the same dorm. We went out again and walked to the sea, it was very choppy and freezing cold so I decided not to swim. We got a surprised call from the others and went back to meet them. It was very good to finally meet some other English people again and talk! We went out for a pizza altogether that night. Something about 4 volunteers in the middle of Namibia just chilling and eating a pizza gave me that warm glow inside.
    The next day we said our goodbyes to the others (they left) and me and Jamie went on a desert tour for 6 hours. It was very interesting and we saw some amazing views of the famous moon landscape and the towering sand dunes of Namibia. We also drove through a current film set for Mad Max 4 being filmed in Namibia so those people in England, watch mad max 4 when it comes out! After a tiring day we headed back and walked to the pier at night. It was nice to get that sea breeze on my face - nothing like this at  gqaina. The next day we booked some sand boarding... Wow was that fun! The dunes were beautiful and perfectly golden. The boarding was very thrilling even if i fell over a lot and I reached 74km p/h when lying down. One thing that wasn't so good was getting a mouth full of sand after facepalming the dune after a jump!
 Then that night we got an old steamtrain back to Windhoek. It took 10 hours; it was sooo slow and uncomfortable - ill never complain about British rail again! Eventually we arrived and hitched back to gqaina via gobabis, just in time for bed on Tuesday. Altogether it was a great mini holiday!

After all that excitement there was bound to be a down... And it came. My famous ingrowing toenail decided to make a guest appearance and eat my toe. After much re arranging appointments I finally got the operation booked. It was very bloody and I have stiches in my toe now which are most uncomfortable! The op was on Thursday and I still can't walk. I won't go into details but I had to change the bandage myself today and well , the toe was... Er... A mess. And to make matters worse one of the teachers invited us to go to their farm this weekend to go horse riding and hunting and braai-ing. But I couldn't go :( so we stayed!
My chin is up though and should be limping tomorrow!
One of the teachers is away next week so me and Jamie will take the grade 2 ourselves all week! That's something to look forward too!!

Apart from this I'm all okay! Hope you are all well!
x

Long Weeekend!

Today is my first long weekend: I get Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday off!! Ahah more like a week off!
Tomorrow we are going with the grade 7s to Windhoek for an agricultural show - which is meant to be a great event! Then we are staying overnight in Windhoek and hitching to swakopmund on Saturday. Really looking forward to it as it is known as the 'adventure capital' of Namibia. Might go for a skydive or water skiing!
Then we're going to get a train back on Monday night to Windhoek and then return home on Tuesday!
We managed to contact other volunteers in otjikondo and will hopefully meet them in swakop!

Can't wait for this weekend, it's going to be very fun! Will take lots of pics!
Hope all is well in England!