3/10/2010

Today was a big day. We had lectures all morning to talk about our homestays and the villages we would be staying in. we also met our guides, who would be translating everything we needed for us in the three days. I hadn’t thought about that part before—silly, right? These people speak Venda, and most of them, especially the elder ones, don’t speak English at all. After lunch, we did a practice social experiment for what we will be doing in the village. It’s called a social map—people in the village draw what they think their village looks like, and talk about everyone’s status. After that, a bunch of us went to play soccer with some of the University of Chicago students who had just shown up today, even though really not many came. We ate dinner with them as well, and then we had a party tonight for Andrew’s birthday. In the end, there were a couple of cool U of C students, but most of them were kind of tools. I’ll tell people about the one girl not from U of C later.