Gaborone, Botswana: Frustrating evening

I did some more work on the website today before my meeting at 12:30 with Priya and at 1pm with Dr. Thapelo. He is going to pay for the domain name registration and one year of hosting. We’re pretty excited about that. I gave Priya the my revisions and she’ll work on the smaller details tonight. It’s actually looking quite good. By this weekend or early next week, we should have it up and running and then I can send the web address so everyone can visit it.
I asked Emily to take pictures of all the fresh flowers and greenery that arrived today so we can create a teaching album for floral design students to identify the different kinds of flowers that they use in the various arrangements. Because Botswana is mostly desert, almost everything needs to be imported so very often the students are not familiar with the flowers they are using in the arrangements. Most of the flowers are imported from South Africa. The floral design students are really working at a disadvantage because they have very little to no resources. The cataloguing of the flowers will help them with their learning. I did the second part of the Employment Preparation workshop this afternoon. The fashion design students did not attend because they only come every other day and today was not their turn. I was asked to cancel the workshop but I went ahead anyway because I was really doing it for the catering students in the first place and the fashion design students attended too. There were a couple of other people who attended – one of which was not a graduate but she heard about the workshop via the grapevine and decided to attend.We did a bit of work on material for the CV that they will be creating tomorrow. Most of them didn’t think they had anything to write but after some brainstorming and thinking, they actually had some things to put on the CV. They were pretty happy about that. Tomorrow we are going to spend some time in the computer lab doing the CV and they’ll have something at the end of it. Then it’s the mock interviews. Tonight I was upset with myself. I was in the process of recharging my Palm Pilot and I inadvertently plugged it into an adapter instead of a converter and of course you can guess what happened. I messed up my re-charger. It is sometimes so confusing to remember what I need to be doing. Before I left Canada, I went into CAA and found what I thought were the right adapters and converters for Botswana. Well when I arrived here, the outlets were for Botswana (square holes) but most of the appliances come from South Africa (round holes) so almost everyone needs adapters for the appliances. Then there is the adapter for Canadian appliances that I have to use for my laptop and digital camera which have built-in converters and my palm pilot which needs a low wattage converter because it doesn’t have a built in one and my blow dryer which needs a high wattage converter. Now I’ve managed to confuse myself even more but it’s true. You can just imagine what the outlets look like with multiple adapters and converters plugged in and of course there is the power bars which have several things plugged in to those. It’s a giant mess really. So if anyone can find a replacement palm pilot cradle/charger, for a Palm IIIc model, please let me know otherwise it’s a whole new unit (which Robin said not to buy here because when I return to Canada I’ll have the reverse problem). Well tomorrow I move into Kathy’s house for two weeks. I went over to meet another family who will be going on vacation for 4 weeks and is looking for someone to house sit. The house is really big – 4 bedrooms, two living rooms, a big kitchen, and a swimming pool. They also have a cat and two dogs. I may decide to house sit but I’m beginning to feel like a rolling stone – three weeks at one house, two weeks at another, three weeks at a third….