Class & Life

So yesterday was the first day of "class" here. I conspicuously place class in quotations because it is that only in name.
I woke bright and early leaving plenty of extra time to find the class before it started. I circled the campus twice before finally pinning down the location of the building and room I was looking for. You see the campus is organized into numbered blocks, trouble is there is not a logical order to the numbering. For example 240 maybe quite a distance from 230 and 270 may fall smack in between the two finding my way is quite an experience. Anyway I found my way into the medium sized lecture hall about five minutes before class was to start and found a seat. The room slowly filled in but the lecturer didn't arrive until quarter past when the class was to begin at 8am sharp (again with this "sharp" word, it really has NO meaning at all here). He didn't even address the class until about 8:20. He talked for a while explained it would be a reading intensive class with three tests and no assignments. He asked if anyone had any protest to that and one student did but to no one surprise his pleas for more assignments fell on deaf ears. You see lecturers are not encouraged or inclined to yield to the requests of their students. After that the lecturer walked right up to me and asked if I would be with the class the whole semester. I responded that I would, I lied and claimed to be pursuing my Bachelor in law (in Botswana a Law degree is a five year undergrad program not a three year grad program). He turned to the class and said "Well it will be nice to have some color other than the usual blackness." The whole class laughed (I think at my expense) but I was just happy for the confrontation to be over with. We got out of class at 8:45 (five minutes early) and I began searching for my next class, Archeology.
As I was searching a girl came up to me and introduced herself. She said she would help me look but she had no idea where it was either. I searched until 9:15 and finally gave up. I exchanged numbers with the girl on the pretense of perhaps studying together. More about her later.
At 1pm I had my Economics class. This time I found the room with ease and saw many familiar faces in the class. Many of the international students are also taking the class. This time the professor was on time but class still only lasted 15 minutes. I think economics will be quite a good class.
At 2pm I had Setswana (my language class) I arrived on time only to see a group of international students telling me that the class had been canceled (seeing a trend?).
So we all went to the international office as we had been asked to do with the promise of finally being registered and receiving our schedules and student ID numbers. No luck! "Not till tomorrow" is becoming a common chorus.
So I decided I would return to my room for some rest. The girl I had met early had already called and texted me four times. Asking to meet my friends, share dinner, go to the mall and all of these types of things. Apparently she had a different impression of our relationship than I did. This encounter reminded me of the encounter I had had on Friday at the night club.
At that time a girl had approached me to dance. I obliged figuring an innocent dance would do no harm (I had permission from Whitney in advance). But after the dance the girl followed me around the club the rest of the night like a sad lost puppy, asking me to buy her things, groping me inappropriately or to go back to her place (ok, so not like a puppy). I told her I had a girlfriend but that didn't mean much to her. Long story short, girls here and persistent to a fault.
I promised to also write in this entry about my living situation. I am in the graduate "hostels" which is just their word for dorm. This means that I am in a suite of six rooms with a kitchen, sitting area, shower, and toilet room. Each person has their own room. It is really very nice, much much nicer than the alternatives in the undergraduate dorms. I quite enjoy the privacy. I have five roommates including two Americans and three Batswana. Matt, Brian, Ketumile, Puso, and Bikki. You can figure out which ones are American for yourself. Dylan lives in the next building over but his roommates are actually faculty and are a little cool to the idea of living with an international student so he spends most of his time in my room, which is ok with me.
I should also mention here my good friend Onkabetse Nkane. He is obviously a Motswana but he studied at Kalamazoo College and while there became quite good friends with Dylan and has been a great asset here because he understands our minds and is able to show us around and help us out. He was the one who explained how much average salaries and average housing cost here. He has also been gracious in helping us through some of our complaints as well as sympathizing in many cases. I am sure I will mention him many times in the future and I may refer to him as Onkabetse or Onky (my personal nickname for him).
Well that is plenty for now.
Love to all, as always,
Tommy


P.S. Skype is working now, my skype name is tcmturner