The School I go to in Botswana

I am in standard 2, which is second grade. All of the standard 1's and 2's have assembly first thing on Wednesday. At the assembly you like practice songs about different things. One song is about saying hello in different languages. It goes something like "hello, bonjour, buenos dias..." but I don't remember the whole song. Sometimes the standard 1 or 2 class sings a song at assembly and sometimes we get awards. My teacher gave me an award for "Super Work." It said on the back: "A very creative shield and castle! Well done. You are also trying very hard to improve your handwriting. You read so beautifully!"

The standard 2 classes sit in lines before class starts

Each class gets up to walk to the classrooms

My class walking to the classroom

Well, we are learning about castles and knight. One thing I am doing in class is making a castle out of lots of milk cartons and cereal boxes and stuff. I also made a picture of a knight and a shield and a knight jousting. Jousting is something where knights have these big poles and they're on horses and they try to knock each other off the horses with the poles.

A knight that I colored

I also have these handwriting books that I practice cursive in. The school thinks that having good handwriting is very important. I also do this thing where I write about what I did on weekends and draw pictures to go with the writing. I have this math book too that I do times tables and stuff in. In music I practice the songs that I might do at assemblies and the songs that everybody does at assemblies. I also play "boom-whackers", which are these plastic tubes that you hit on your hands to make music.

The swimming pools

We swim a lot at my school because it is hot here. The pool is outdoors also. When I swim, I practice like breaststroke and diving. Sometimes I have to swim across the pool the long way, which is like 100 feet.

Swimming class

Swimming class

In computers I play different games on the computer. One of them was called "Globs." In Globs there's six different colors; the first one's green, then yellow, then blue, then purple, then orange. Those colors were spread out across in different places, so you had to connect the globs by clicking on the different colors and getting them to squish together.

My class lining up for Setswana class

We also have Setswana class. Setswana is the native language of Botswana. I practice songs in Setswana and learn some words. This is how you say hello to boys: "Dumela Rra". And this is how you say hello to girls: "Dumela Mma". We also have library and PE.

The library

Outside of my classroom

In the afternoon after school on Tuesdays and Wednesdays I do afternoon activities. On Tuesdays I play like chess, tennis and basketball. On Wednesdays I am learning cricket. I have learned how to bowl, which is where you like pitch the ball to the batter.When you bowl, you have to keep your arm straight. You also have to make the ball bounce before it gets to the batter.

Cricket lessons

There's four different playgrounds at my school. Me and the rest of the standard 2's go in one of them. There's a game called "stuck in the mud" that we like to play. There's two people that are the mud, who try to tag you. If you get tagged, then you get stuck in the mud and the people who are the mud try to tag all of you, and if somebody gets to you and tags you is not a mud, then you are free. If you get tagged three times, then you are permanently stuck in the mud. Then when the mud gets everybody, the game is over.

One of the playgrounds at school

Playing in the playground

Near the front of the school

My teacher is Miss Mackay. She is from South Africa. She is really nice and has helped me a lot with my handwriting. Some of my friends are Tokelo, Nicholas, and Rhaino.

Miss Mackay

Me and Elliot getting ice cream after school

Biking in Botswana

Me and my brother's bikes

To get to school and stuff in Botswana, my dad got bikes for me and my brother.Our bike ride to school here is different from our bike ride to school in Seattle. First of all, we have to get up really early if we are going to bike to school because school starts at 7:15 AM. Coming home from school on our bikes, it's really hot, so I get tired and bike slowly. Today it was 90 degrees coming home!  In Seattle it totally isn't as hot as it is in Gaborone, but here there are no steep hills to get up like there are in Seattle. Another thing that is tricky is that people drive on the other side of the road here. When you are crossing streets, you can forget which way to look, so you have to be careful and listen to your dad.

 Me and my brother on the street in front of our house (this street is being widened)

This is me riding on the side of the street called Independence

We ride on the edge of the street, the side of the street, and on the sidewalks mostly, but the sidewalks are not really sidewalks because they are like sandy dirt paths. When it is windy, sand gets in your eyes.

This is a little dirt path that we take to go back to our house

This is on a sidewalk next to the street.  The wall you see is the wall around our apartment complex.  The big tower of dirt you see is a termite mound.

This is a dirt sidewalk near our house

The president's house is near our school. The street I like riding on the most is the one that goes to the president's house because there are like no cars on it (because only people that live in the house can go there). On that street, you don't have to watch out for traffic and stuff.

Another place we ride is this like long grassy area with dirt paths that go through it and trees, but no cars go through it.

One day before you guys did the Move-a-thon, me and my big brother did the Move-a-thon. I rode 27.9 miles and my big brother rode 32 miles.  We biked around our school. We counted by kilometers, not miles.

Me and my brother doing the Move-a-Thon

Me and my brother after the Move-a-Thon

Khama Rhino Sanctuary

White rhinos

Last weekend I went up to a rhinoceros sanctuary. There is a sanctuary because lots of people hunted rhinos to get the medicine that is in their horns and left the meat to rot. The rhinos were almost extinct before people made the sanctuary. Now there's like twenty-seven white rhinos and three black ones.

White rhino

White rhino resting when it gets hot

The difference between them is that the white rhinos are whiter and the black rhinos are darker grey and black rhinos eat leaves and twigs from trees and white rhinos eat grass.  So if you see rhino poop, you can pick it up and break it to see if there is grass or twigs in it.  If it has twigs and leaves in the poop, then it is a black rhino.  If it has grass in the poop, then it is a white rhino. White rhinos are stronger than black rhinos, but black rhinos are faster.  White rhinos can run 45 kilometers per hour, but black rhinos can run 55 kilometers per hour, I think.  When the rhinos poop, they scatter it around to mark their territory.

White rhino poop and dung beetles

The beetles you see in the rhino poop are called dung beetles and they like to eat the pieces of grass in the rhino poop.  They have little wings that come out of their body and when they fly they make a buzzing sound like a humming bird.

A dung beetle in my hand!

Our camp site under a baobab tree

Victoria Falls

Victoria Falls (this part is solid water during the rainy season)

These are the biggest waterfalls in the world.  They are called Victoria Falls.  There’s like 10 other parts of Victoria Falls.  The first one would be like to the left about 5 feet off of the computer screen.  And that one was separated from the others by a big stretch of land. And then there’s like 5 others that are separated by little rocks.  Then there’s one that is by itself a little farther down to the right.  And then there are 3 separated by land and then there are the ones in the picture.  Victoria Falls has a big spray that gets you when you’re at the gate.  Then when you look out at the waterfall about ¼ mile from the gate, it sprays you like it’s raining when you look out over the falls.  

Me at Victoria Falls

Victoria Falls

My family at Victoria Falls

You can see tiny people in the upper right

Victoria Falls

This was a shear cliff without railings!

At the gate there were lots of monkeys and baboons.  A baboon and 2 monkeys had babies and the babies held on to their moms’ stomachs.

Vervet monkey

Vervet monkey mama with baby

When I went to Victoria Falls I had to go into Zimbabwe.  In Zimbabwe you used to need lots of money to buy stuff so a 100 trillion dollar bill was worth like a gum ball.  Now they are using U.S. dollars.

Today at the Japanese family’s house where I do Japanese I collided with Elliot while going out the gate.

Just kidding!

The Trip

Here is the flag of Botswana at JSIS.

 

The plane ride was really long but fun because I got to play my DS. The food on the airplane was kind of good.  It was really bright when I got off the plane, so my eyes hurt.

I think all of the animals get mad if you bother them, but if you bother the "big five" they will attack you! The animal I am most excited to see is the lion. The thing I like most about the lion is its mane because it makes it look cool.

This is the house where I am staying. There are two apartments in this building and about 15 in the whole place. It is pretty nice except for the fact that the plants are poky.