When Was the Last Time You Used Dial-Up?

This entry will be TEXT-ONLY. It took ten minutes to load this page. I'm not taking any chances. I should get to a faster computer tomorrow or Monday or later. The next entry will have lots of pictures

Apparently cell phones are stolen pretty often in Gabs. Mine wasn't, but my host-sister had hers stolen, and her response was, "Yep, that's why I have a cheap phone. It's good I only had a 200p one instead of 2000p."

My host sister and I got along great. We were watching a bad movie, and a character shouted, "It smells like methane gas." My sister and I responded with the following:
"Methane. CH4."
"High energy."
"Not very reactive."
"Because it's a saturated hydrocarbon."
"So you can't really do anything with it."
"Except blow stuff up."

Mmm. Scienc and blowing stuff up. When I grow up, I want to work for Mythbusters. Or the Vogon Construction Fleet. But only blowing up uninhabited planets. Now that I think about it, many of my favorite books involve blowing stuff up. Especially planets. In the book I'm reading now, they blow up people on a molecular level. (Diamond Age by Neal Stephensen. Way better than Snow Crash; in this book, people blow up and there are fairytales.) I'm also reading a book on the history of Africa since the age of independence, but I won't go there.

One year ago, I was probably studying for an orgo midterm. This year after our (one) midterm, we're on vacation for a week. Oh, it'll be tough getting back to school.

Zambia Zambia Zambia. Tuesday morning, after being picked up by an air-conditioned bus, we took a boat to Zambia. I saw a vervet monkey and her baby. It kind of validated my life goals.

Then Victoria Falls, named by Dr. David Livingstone (I presume), the first white man to see the falls. Before that, they were known by some Bantu translation of "Smoke that Thunders." Since it's been the dry season, the falls were pretty dry. We saw a sheer face of rock, 1.5 km long, that is covered by a falling sheet of water for half the year.

There were so many souveneir stalls, it was even overwhelming to me. And they were all selling the same things, and using the same marketing script. Accepted currency: US dollars, pula, pens, hair ties, bandanas, apples...they'd trade anything. I think they sold the same mass-produced "Arica" goods as on the New York City Streets. I'd rather save my money for real hand-made stuff, if that even exists anymore.

This place looks a lot like Disneyworld.

Then we went to a restaurant called Tourists Eat Here! (Not really, I don't actually remember the name, but that's what I would've called it.) The food was incredible. I had bread with olive oil and so thoroughly enjoyed it I almost didn't order lunch. Side orders shared included rosemary roasted butternut squash and ginger-honey carrots. The conversion between Zambian currency and US dollars is about 1:3,900, so the bill for sixteen of us ws over half a million in their currency.

Then there was the David Livingstone museum. Very interesting, a bit of natural history and colonial history and local history. They had an "Our Village" exhibit and a "Their Town" exhibit, and did a very good job of explaining why big buildings and money are not synonymous with happiness, and how nice everything was before the Europeans showed up. Then there was a natural history room, Hall of African Mammals style. And a room dedicated to the history of Dr. Livingstone, the first big missionary to explore Southern Africa. Last was an exhibit describing the history of Zambia. The museum has a collection of seemingly contradictory exhibits, but I guess that makes sense in a country of starving people, internet cafes, locals begging tourists, and Subway (Eat Fresh!). Zambia is fun. I'd like to go back sometimes.