My summer got started at 11:15 Wednesday morning when I took off from JFK on a 15 HOUR flight to Johannesburg, South Africa. The flight was long, but South African Airways is awesome. I was seated next to a nice guy wearing an All Blacks jersey, so we talked about New Zealand. I couldn't sleep very well, so I watched a ton of movies including some South African movies which was an experience.
I was flying with another intern on our program and caught the connecting flight to Gaborone in the Johannesburg airport. It was on a small propeller plane but it was only an hour flight and had a beautiful view of South Africa.
I arrived in the Sir Seretse Khama airport in Gaborone, which is smaller than Bradley International and almost completely empty. It took all of 10 minutes to go through customs and grab our bags and then we went outside and met the people from the Botswana-UPenn Partnership that came to pick us up. One of them was the student guide, Carol, who is amazing. She gave us our local cell phones to use and took us to the bank to take out some cash.
Money Matters
The currency here is pula, which is hands down the coolest currency I've seen so far. Pula means "rain" in the Setswana language, which goes to show how important it is in this desert country. Its pretty colors (purple, red, blue, green) and has beautiful pictures of zebras and Batswana (people from Botswana) on it. The conversion rate is about 7 pula to 1 dollar, which was very useful to figure out.
Dorms at UB
We got to the graduate student dorms at University of Botswana where the interns are living for the summer. The campus is nice and pretty big. There are two suites, each with 6 single bedrooms, a living room/kitchen/and bathroom. Its a really nice dorm! The shower beats most of the showers I've taken at Penn. I love my bed, which is really soft and doesn't seem to have any metal springs in it. That first day, after I brief trip to the mall, I got back to the room and slept for about 16 hours, so the bed is great!
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