Just finished with staging and tomorrow, we get our shots ("the pincushion treatment") and fly to Johannesburg for an overnight layover before flying to Windhoek.
Staging was tons of fun, and facilitated meeting and getting to know all (70!) of my fellow volunteers as well as learning about various Peace Corps policies. There was also a lot of reinforcing different approaches to being a successful volunteer such as being flexible and patient and being aware of one's own culture to start understanding others. I was generalizing there, but we did have some specific, practical case studies and people were asking lots of good questions, which were answered honestly to the best of the staging peoples' abilities.
There were summer camp style group activities and I usually take those kinds of things with a grain of salt but the staging people really tied it in well with what they were trying to get across to us.
Good start! Gotta be up at 4:30 tomorrow -_-
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Monday, October 8, 2007
New Camera, New Shades
Who is that mysterious, handsome man? C'est moi, of course. I am wearing my new prescription shades from Opticus, a darn fine lens crafting service, where I had to call and talk to an actual person, who was genuinely knowledgeable and concerned about getting me what I needed. So, besides making me look like a cliched movie villain, what do these specs do for me? Well, my poor computer-scientisty eyes are quite sensitive to light and Namibia is mostly desert and steppes, so I went as dark as possible and got side shields for even more protection. The frame model is by Mountain Shades and is called Zermat.
As for the camera, it is a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ8 and I have been very happy with it these past few days. It's packed with the features you expect from an SLR-like camera, but the menus are easy to navigate, and there are quick buttons for all the common options. It's 7 MP, which is plenty, IMO, and image quality is excellent. 12X zoom, light, sturdy, image stabilization - I could go on, but anyway, good camera. Hope I get plenty of chances to be a shutterbug in Namibia.
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