Etosha and more

As I hope the pictures below show, Etosha was amazing. We went in the rainy season, which is not supposed to be so good, and still saw lots of animals. We quickly got jaded with zebras, giraffes, wilderbeests, springbok, and other antelopes and drove by them in our search for the more elusive elephants, rhinos, and lions (We saw one rhino that almost charged our car, the rear end of one elephant at a distance, and no lions). Etosha is a beautiful place, centered on a huge ephemeral lakebed/salt pan that still has some water in it this time of year. It is remarkably different from where we are living, and it is cool to see what the landscape would look like without a human influence (though some would say the National Park isn't entirely natural either). It was also great to have a few luxuries, particularly a swimming pool, that we don't have in daily life here. I'm very excited to go back in May, when my parents and brother are coming out, and see how the park looks in drier times (and hopefully see some elephants and lions).

Meanwhile school is going well overall- there are only three weeks left until the end of the term, so it really is the final stretch. After that Sinead and I are heading to South Africa for what we hope will be a really relaxing holiday. I am no longer nervous heading into my classes, which is really nice, and I'm starting to notice some improvement in most of my students, though it is hard to say how much. My tenth graders are starting to get algebra a little more. The one thing that made me nervous this past week was that the principal observed two of my classes- I think they went pretty well, though it is hard to know. I had to scramble to get all my paperwork up to date because he was checking that as well.

These days my only complaints are having no water, which has been out for two weeks now, and the endless rain, which is making the roads really awful. I thought it was bad of me to complain about the rain because this is such a dry country, but someone told me recently that it is too much rain for the crops, so I don't feel bad anymore. They say it hasn't rained this much for 30 years. So that's my life here at the end of the first term- overall I think I'm settling in nicely.