KalahariLog

We signed up for the local gym. It's a couple of minutes walk from our flat and it is a better place for a run than the streets of Gaborone. To quote the previous Fulbright scholar who lived in our flat in response to my question about bicycles and rollerblades, "pedestrians are like hunted animals here". The gym is small by US standards but fairly well equipped: there are 3 nice treadmills, 4 ellipticals, about a dozen bikes, a couple of rowing machine. There are free weights and the usual machines for strength-excerices. Better yes, there is a swimming pool, but it still too cold as it is unheated. It is fun to see a regular in a wet-suit brave the winter chill. With the rains come the frogs. We've been hearing that they need a full-time guy to fish them out of the pool -- that ought to be fun to see, so we are hoping for a rainy wet season. Squash and basketball courts are also available, as well as an equipped room for spinning (whatever that is) and aerobics, etc. In short, it's quite nice and an interesting place to see equal measures of expats and locals. On weekends it's not as busy but on weekdays, even at 5am it is packed. With membership about 40USD per month for the two of us, it is a done deal.

In the first internet-less few weeks, we watched a little of the local TV station, BTV, that comes on in the afternoon and turns into BBC at midnight. When it is BTV they seem to have equal doses of English and Setswana broadcasts, including 20-minute news in each. We get this station on the air with an antenna and BBC with the morning tea is a good way to get going. We could get more channels with a satellite dish but with podcasts, RSS feeds, and so on, we haven't felt the need.

I have also been spending some time playing with the music software that came with my laptop. It's called GarageBand and for free-ware it is very nice. Among its many features, it let's me turn my computer keyboard into a piano keyboard, record different tracks, use various software instruments. It's been a while since we've been near water and I am dreaming of beaches, which explains why all songs have beach names.