Day 2 Namibia

Just a short snippet of my day; went on a trip with a tour guide to the black township Katatura again. My group member and I, a university student from Ohio, went with our tour guide to SWAPO (the ruling political party in Namibia) headquarters to meet with a youth league representative. It was a really interesting talk about the role of the youth league's role in SWAPO, as well as in Namibia.

After our meeting we went to our tour guides' friends house and got to see how the lower-middle class lived. We also went to a market and I felt as though I didn't belong. Most of the people looked at us as though whites didn't belong there, and a few people made comments to our guide that she "isn't white, so why is she pretending to be".

We also went downtown to get some lunch, and back to the center.

Our group went out on the town tonight, only gave a taxi driver the wrong directions once, and found a great hostel and bar right across the street from our center, which seemed to have lots of interesting people at it. That's all for today.

Windhoek

Some photos of the poorer townships where black Africans were forced to relocate to during the years of apartheid.

The more affluent areas in Windhoek where mostly white Namibians live.

Arrival in Windhoek

After 24 hours of travel from Budapest, I finally made it to Windhoek. I'll try and keep my blogs short this summer since I know they can get a little boring or repetitive. I flew from Minneapolis last Wednesday to Budapest, through Chicago and Warsaw.

Spent the weekend hanging out with my parents, seeing teachers from AISB, and eating and sleeping a lot!
I will be heading back to Budapest, on my way home from Namibia.

I arrived today at 2:30 with the sun beaming down, probably 75 degrees out; there are palm trees at the airport which was a nice welcome. After 30 minutes waiting in line at customs, I got my tourist visa and found my bag, and the driver for the Center of Global Education (my program) holding a sign, awaiting my arrival.

Windhoek is encompassed by some high hills-not so much mountains- but pretty rugged hills. I'm excited to maybe climb some of them this summer. Orientation starts tomorrow, including a meeting at the US Embassy about safety.

More coming soon- off to enjoy being in Namibia!!

A little more of Boston

A photo montage of my trip to see Chris. Weather was beautiful, kinda like it is now in Minnesota!!

Dropkick Murphys

Dropkick Murphys


On Saturday I went to see the Dropkick Murphys at the House of Blues in Boston with my friend Chris who goes to Olin College of Engineering.
There were two lesser-known opening bands, The Have Nots and Creepshow. The show was slightly awkward as it took place during the middle of the day and all three bands expected the crowd to be less rowdy. This performance was a few days before St. Patrick's Day in Boston so there were many people drinking copious amounts of beer and wearing green.
The first band of the day, The Have Nots, was a punk-rock-ska band consisting of a drummer, a base player, and two lead guitar and vocalists. I enjoyed this band because of their relatively simple show without fancy outfits or lighting, which allowed me to focus more on their playing. The guitarists were fun to watch as they play with a ska style so their fingers were moving quickly and hitting the fret board to make short and distinct notes. While this band was not well known, I enjoyed their style better than the second opening band.

Lead singer for Creepshow

Creepshow consisted of three males: a drummer, an organist/vocalist, a stand up bassist/vocalist, and a female lead guitarist/vocalist. While this band was a bit livelier than the first, and was able to get the crowd to mosh a bit more, I was not as big of a fan of their actual music. Their guitar and bass playing did not seem very complicated and I felt as if some of their songs were repetitive.

After 20-30 minutes of stage prep time, Dropkick Murphys started their performance. I was really impressed by the stage setup with a front curtain displaying illuminated Irish crosses, which was then pulled down by stage-workers at the start of the show; it was all quite dramatic. I was not very familiar with the band and was surprised to see how many different instruments were played throughout the show: bass guitar, electric guitar, drums, accordion, mandolin, banjo, whistle, acoustic guitar, and bagpipes. Also, during one song where all of the ‘lasses’ at the show were invited onto the stage to sing one of their more popular songs, a group of string players were also present on stage which included a violinist, a cellist, and a double bass player.
View from the stage as I sang with the song *Kiss Me, I'm Shitfaced*, one of the more popular songs by this band.

Playing in their hometown I think is always a good experience for this band since most of the people at the show knew almost all of the lyrics to each song and everyone appeared to be really enjoying the music. My favorite part of the show was being able to go up on stage and sing with the band and standing next to one of the guitarists, who happens to play a beautiful Gibsonguitar.

Andddddddddd... I'm back

Hi again to everyone who takes a few moments out of their day/week/month to read my blog! I have put off writing any updates for awhile, but hopefully you have spoken to me since August of 2009!
I am still at the University of Minnesota, 3rd year student, double-majoring in Political Science and Global Studies with a minor in French. This summer I will be studying in Windhoek, Namibia for two and a half months.

I am currently at Franklin Olin College in Needham, Massachusetts visiting my friend Chris who is a sophomore here- we've been friends since high school (his family also lived in Budapest). The campus is small and beautiful; Chris has a view of woods and the open areas of the campus which is a pretty sight from his bedroom. Currently raining, just like Minnesota so I can't complain too much.

Later today we will be going to a Dropkick Murphys concert(pretty famous band out of Boston). Will write more soon, off to have some spring break fun!!

101 books from Collegeboard.com Updated March 13th

Author Title
-- Beowulf- READ
Achebe, Chinua Things Fall Apart- READ
Agee, James A Death in the Family
Austen, Jane Pride and Prejudice
Baldwin, James Go Tell It on the Mountain
Beckett, Samuel Waiting for Godot
Bellow, Saul The Adventures of Augie March
Bronte, Charlotte Jane Eyre
Bronte, Emily Wuthering Heights
Camus, Albert The Stranger- READ: english and french
Cather, Willa Death Comes for the Archbishop
Cervantes, Miguel de Don Quixote
Chaucer, Geoffrey The Canterbury Tales
Chekhov, Anton The Cherry Orchard
Chopin, Kate The Awakening
Conrad, Joseph Heart of Darkness
Cooper, James Fenimore The Last of the Mohicans
Crane, Stephen The Red Badge of Courage
Dante Inferno
Defoe, Daniel Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Charles A Tale of Two Cities
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Crime and Punishment
Douglass, Frederick Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Dreiser, Theodore An American Tragedy
Dumas, Alexandre The Three Musketeers
Eliot, George The Mill on the Floss
Ellison, Ralph Invisible Man
Emerson, Ralph Waldo Selected Essays
Faulkner, William As I Lay Dying
Faulkner, William The Sound and the Fury
Fielding, Henry Tom Jones
Fitzgerald, F. Scott The Great Gatsby- READ
Flaubert, Gustave Madame Bovary
Ford, Ford Madox The Good Soldier
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Faust
Golding, William Lord of the Flies- read
Hardy, Thomas Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel The Scarlet Letter
Heller, Joseph Catch 22
Hemingway, Ernest A Farewell to Arms
Homer The Iliad
Homer The Odyssey
Hugo, Victor The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hurston, Zora Neale Their Eyes Were Watching God
Huxley, Aldous Brave New World
Ibsen, Henrik A Doll's House
James, Henry The Portrait of a Lady
James, Henry The Turn of the Screw
Joyce, James A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Kafka, Franz The Metamorphosis
Kingston, Maxine Hong The Woman Warrior
Lee, Harper To Kill a Mockingbird
Lewis, Sinclair Babbitt
London, Jack The Call of the Wild
Mann, Thomas The Magic Mountain
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia One Hundred Years of Solitude
Melville, Herman Bartleby the Scrivener
Melville, Herman Moby Dick
Miller, Arthur The Crucible
Morrison, Toni Beloved
O'Connor, Flannery A Good Man is Hard to Find
O'Neill, Eugene Long Day's Journey into Night
Orwell, George Animal Farm- READ
Pasternak, Boris Doctor Zhivago
Plath, Sylvia The Bell Jar
Poe, Edgar Allen Selected Tales
Proust, Marcel Swann's Way
Pynchon, Thomas The Crying of Lot 49
Remarque, Erich Maria All Quiet on the Western Front
Rostand, Edmond Cyrano de Bergerac
Roth, Henry Call It Sleep
Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye- READ
Shakespeare, William Hamlet
Shakespeare, William Macbeth- READ
Shakespeare, William A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare, William Romeo and Juliet- READ
Shaw, George Bernard Pygmalion
Shelley, Mary Frankenstein
Silko, Leslie Marmon Ceremony
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich- READ
Sophocles Antigone- READ
Sophocles Oedipus Rex
Steinbeck, John The Grapes of Wrath
Stevenson, Robert Louis Treasure Island
Stowe, Harriet Beecher Uncle Tom's Cabin
Swift, Jonathan Gulliver's Travels
Thackeray, William Vanity Fair
Thoreau, Henry David Walden
Tolstoy, Leo War and Peace
Turgenev, Ivan Fathers and Sons
Twain, Mark The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn- READ
Voltaire Candide-read (French)
Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. Slaughterhouse-Five- READ
Walker, Alice The Color Purple- READ
Wharton, Edith The House of Mirth
Welty, Eudora Collected Stories
Whitman, Walt Leaves of Grass
Wilde, Oscar The Picture of Dorian Gray
Williams, Tennessee The Glass Menagerie- READ
Woolf, Virginia To the Lighthouse