Ludapalooza!

From Swakopmund 11 of us headed down to my house in Luderitz for the rest of our holiday! I was reminded of the intense heat of the south during the 2 hours we spent in the glaring sun in Keetmans [least favorite town of Nam] waiting for our last ride to Luda. Phew, my site is really the best! Once in Luderitz, we were sitting for a while thinking about what to do for the rest of break… since most of us had sadly already spent the majority of our money in Swakopmund. From this conversation came the best idea ever: each day for the next week two people would be exclusively in charge of fun activities for the day, holding the title of FUN CZARS. What followed was an epic week of fun. It included several braais [barbeques] in my backyard, a scavenger hunt/amazing race through Luderitz, singing and dancing on Shark Island and wrapping paper modeling, a Mexican feast, Christmas cookie making, Father Christmas coming over [in the form of a security guard], and delicious pancakes.

One of my favorite pictures from Bryfi, us watching the sunset over the ocean from the cliff behind my house, which we climbed a lot

 Then came Christmas Day!!! This day was exempt from fun czars obviously. We woke up to seeing that Santa came [in the form of my mom who sent quality American candy and stockings for everyone], and ate homemade coffee cake for breakfast! 

with our stockings!

our beautiful tree!

 Even though we had already done a white elephant Christmas in Swakopmund with 25 of us, we all decided to do a secret santa among the now 13 of us, that would be complete with nice cards. After breakfast we opened these, which held storybooks, poems, and really thoughtful cards in addition to great little gifts. Everyone had something under our makeshift tree, which was made of Hunters Dry bottles, cardboard boxes, and construction paper, and topped with tinsel and an angel! After this we went to the Nest Hotel, which is really close to my house, and enjoyed a scrumptious buffet lunch – with turkey [ahhh!], ham, all sorts of other meats, sides, and desserts! YUM. After this 2-ish hour meal we took our Christmas picture in front of the water! Also the only place in this town that has grass? 

It wasn't a White Christmas, but this weather worked just fine!

The 27^th was arguably the most epic of the fun czar days, so I will recount the story. It was KJUDI’s day – one of our awesome married couples, we just refer to them as the single entity kjudi. This day was themed after them, aka married couples competition style, so they split everyone up into couples and one threesome. To start the morning off the teams were separated, and the girls were told to prepare a breakfast dish with anything in the kitchen, as long as the main ingredient involved eggs. After we prepared it, we were sent to the bedroom and the boys were brought out and told to cook whatever was in front of them with no directions. It was TopChef!!! Some boys ended up slightly confused by what was in front of them, but they made it work, and we all were brought out to taste and vote on each others dishes, one of which involved green apples and ramen eggs [actually tasted pretty good!]. KJudi’s day had an added incentive to not losing – whoever was in the lowest points-wise throughout the day had to wear a dog collar [‘because sometimes in marriage you’re in the dog house’].  The losers of each challenge incurred an additional punishment, and whoever was in last place at the end of the day had to eat dog food – needless to say, everyone was very inspired not to lose. Anyway, after the breakfast competition, we proceeded to an epic catchphrase tournament that got extremely heated, and my team of three won! We spent the afternoon competing in a series of field games on the waterfront, jumping into the ocean, and completing a challenge of taking wedding pictures [in which my team earned creativity points for our Aladdin theme]. That night we had an intense three rounds of the “Newlywed Game,” and at the close my team was in last, noooo [this can partially be attributed to my inability to walk in straight lines and chug]! Luckily, there was a final jeopardy round in which we wagered points off of a very general “Namibia” category. The question was to spell the Namibian President’s name properly – my team was the only one to get it right and thus move from last to first place, thanks to Bryfi! No one else knew his first name: it’s Hifikepunye Pohamba in case you were wondering. As we watched Totty and Laine eat dog food, it was a great end to the week of fun czars.

After some down time for the next few days, we rallied to actually stay up late enough to go out on New Years Eve. Thank God none of us died, because due to someone’s desire to see fireworks, we all climbed the massive cliff behind my house in complete darkness before midnight struck… we only saw one firecracker, we were too far away to see the others I guess. Worth it? Debatable. We then went out to a packed club and danced until the early morning. It was so sad to see everyone leave on the 2^nd – it was definitely impressive that after 4 straight weeks of spending all our time together, I was not sick of a single person! I had definitely gotten used to being with my namfam, and saying goodbye almost felt like leaving all my friends and family in the US again, because this time I’m really on my own for a good chunk of time... 3 and a half months to be exact. Good thing there are other volunteers in Luda, this place is too far away from other towns for weekend trips sadly! Anyway, that put an end to my incredible month of vacation!