Cheers to Weekend #1
Friday, Saturday, and tomorrow are "lazy days" of sorts. We don't work on weekends and I just have to do my readings -- but it's both good/bad. Good because it's nice to have the chance to relax, but bad because I don't have any assignments to do once I finish. It's a fairly large campus, but it was easy to tell that it's dead on the weekends. The school here is empty for the most part, the workers go home, even the Guest House is quiet. We met a nice man from Ghana a few days ago at dinner and he works in town and sleeps at the icipe Guest Centre. Currently we're sitting in like a lounge area of the Guest Centre watching football, and by football, I mean America's soccer. It's nice to have one friend that we can hang out with, but otherwise there isn't really much to do. Once we get started, we'll have more excursions and activities planned for the weekend but today we did nothing. Eventually, I would like to go out on the lake but you're advised not to take small boats because of the hippos and crocodiles. Program rules are strict as to who we can go places with and what we can do; we don't know any of our mentors and partners yet so we didn't have a chance to do something this weekend.Because I didn't have anything planned today, I was able to focus on me! As some of you may know, I am planning on competing in Miss Missouri local preliminaries this upcoming pageant season. With this, I will be competing in talent, swimsuit, interview, evening gown, and onstage question; however, my brand, community service, Children's Miracle Network, fundraising, etc. are all very important components to being a well-rounded titleholder as well. Needless to say, I have a lot of work coming my way and I can't risk waiting until late August to begin preparations. This has been a huge dream of mine for quite some time and I will not let myself push it off another year! Today's prep included two short workout exercises on my computer, answering sample interview questions, listening to a Pageant Junkies podcast, and going through my Exclusive Content Subscription videos from DEFINE MMM. I ended up having a lot I could do, in addition to reading my materials, so that was nice. I'm not sure what I'll do tomorrow!
Here are some photos of today's lunch and dinner. Dinner was pretty good...I've been skeptical of some of the meals and have tried, as much as it kills me, to stay away from the meat. I also got to video chat with my parents and show them Rico and our Ghana friend, as well as the cafeteria area. If anyone wants to video chat (free on wifi on Facebook!) or Skype me (I have international credits), message me or leave a comment and I can give you a walking tour of icipe and introduce you to my new friends. Bye for now!