Beer and Cigarettes

This morning at the gym I saw the following crawl across the bottom of CNN World News: "Zimbabwe is 'surviving on beer and cigarettes'" This is precisely what my German friend Rupert told me as well. This weekend I am journeying to Zimbabwe (well, Victoria Falls) but I am more than curious to see the state of such a perilous country. I am leaving tonight via an overnight train to Francistown, Botswana and I will arrive there around 6 am Friday morning. From there, we are taking a bus to Kasane, Botswana where we will stay overnight. On Saturday, we are travelling to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe (and Zambia!) with a guide. It's only about 1 and a half hours drive to Vic Falls from Kasane, so it's really convenient. On Sunday, we are (hopefully) going to take a river cruise down the Zambezi River in Chobe National Park (tons and tons of Hippos and Elephants). It actually has the largest amount of free roam elephants in the world. We may also go for a morning game drive as well there depending on how things work out. On Monday we begin our trip back, bus then overnight train back to Gaborone, arriving about 6 am Tuesday morning here. I am very excited about this trip and will be sure to post pictures as soon as possible.

As for my crazy kitten, he's doing very well. He seems to be really healthy and very active (almost too much) but it is quite entertaining. I will post some pictures just now of some of his antics.

For school, not much has happened. So far I have been thoroughly unimpressed by some of the students here, and their seemingly lack of motivation to do well. Don't get me wrong that some do very well and work very hard, but there is a large minority that seemingly treat college as work, and just that. Quite an interesting dynamic created by having the government pay for schooling.