We are here!

We are finally in Namibia. It feels like we left America a long, long time ago. It will be nice to be grounded in one spot.

The flight was long, but everything went well. We left downtown Munich around 15:00 ( I am getting so continental) on Wednesday. The weather was very cold so we opted to spend the early afternoon in the very cool Germany museum. It is a science and engineering museum that teaches and displays how things work. It was like walking into the the book "How things Work" if you are know it. It was very interesting and I wish someone in the states would open something similar. The exhibits would be great teaching tools from K through college. As a matter of fact, there was a group of college students there learning about mechanical engineering and processes.

We boarded our flight, spent the night on the plane and arrived in South Africa around 8:30 on Thursday. It is an interesting airport. You must go through security and have a bioscan even if you are not leaving the secured part of the airport. After that, you stand in line yet again to go through the ex-ray machines. Then you stand in line and get your passport stamp saying that you were in the airport. We had a four hour lay-over, but ended up only spending about 1 1/2 hours waiting for our connection. The rest of the time was spent standing in lines.

The Windhoek airport is about 40km outside the city. When we were on approach to land, you could not even see a city. We literally landed in the middle of nowhere. The only thing in sight was the terminal.

The country is greener than I expected and very beautiful. It reminded both of us a great deal of Nevada in the spring. It is clearly a desert, but there are some trees ( I don't know what kind, I asked our driver, but he did not know) The sky is an amazing blue and clear and bright. On our drive into the city, we saw springbok. I am not sure, but I think that is a lot like seeing antelope in Wyoming or deer in North Carolina. We also passed a security point on the road. Our driver said that they are checking and looking out for poachers. I guess that last week they arrested two Chinese with rhino horns. Namibia takes poaching very seriously and are aggressive in prosecuting them.

We will be living right in the center of the city. Our apartment in on the seventh floor of one of the tallest buildings here. We have amazing views of the city from our balcony. Although it is hot, there is a breeze and sitting out on the balcony is lovely. I told Bruce we could get rid of the dining table and eat out here all the time. Actually, I am sitting out here typing now with a cold drink. I think I could get used to this.

The apartment is fine--not fancy or pretty, but perfectly functional. We have an open iron work door that opens with a skeleton key. It took us five minutes to open it last night. Behind that is a solid wood door with a dead bolt. As you can see, we should be very safe unless we have to get out of the apartment for an emergency. That skeleton key takes some practice getting it to work. You walk right into a small dining room. All the rooms have doors and are not open to each other. The kitchen is off to the right. The fridge is small, the sink is small and there is a clothes washer next to the fridge, which you hook up to drain through the sink. This washer has been my downfall. We needed to do laundry since we have been on vacation, so I bravely threw in a load of whites, filled up the slot with detergent and turned it on. About five minutes later, water started pouring from the door. It went all over the kitchen floor. I turned off the washer. I had not turned off the water from the sink to the washer, so the water backed up. Cleaned it all up. Second try. Turned on the machine. Door leaked just a little, so I put a tray under it and let it go. After a couple hours, the finished light came on. Opened the door and water poured out all over the kitchen floor into the dining room floor. Turned off the washer and cleaned up all the water yet again. Bruce talked to the international staff who are looking out for us,. They will have someone out on Monday to try to fix it. In the meantime, I have to take out the white clothes and wash them by hand. Bruce is being very sweet and says he will do it since I have cleaned up enought today. The dryer is a clothes line on the balcony. Once we get the washer working, I will get to have the sweet smell of air dried clothes. The apartment does not have heating or air conditioning. We hope to get a couple of fans today. Each bedroom has a queen bed and dresser. The bath is between them. The most interesting thing about the bathroom is that the water heater for the bath is a round metal heater hanging in the shower. The living room has the ugliest furniture I think I have ever seen, but again it is very functional with a sofa, loveseat and two glass book shelves. The shelves held the only decorations in the apartment--a gathering of about 15 rocks.(I know that Jon Mitchell would approve.)

There is a huge supermarket just across the road in the mall that has just about everything except salsa, so food shopping will be easy.

The next few days will be busy as we need to get cell phones, figure out transportation (to buy or not buy a car--that is the question) We also need to find the church. Monday morning we have a meeting at the US embassy.

Anyway, Bruce has the laundry ready to hang out to dry, so I will sign off for now.