Another weekend of good friends and good times

This weekend was our last weekend with Franco. We spent it trying to have as much fun as we possibly could. We accomplished this task by going to the movies, having dinners, sitting around talking…basically, soaking up as much time as we could get together.

One fantastic thing that we got to do was go see the movie "Blood Diamonds". Anyone who hasn't seen it should know that I really do highly recommend it! It produced, in my opinion, one of the best lines of a movie that I have heard in a very long time. It's actually kind of hard for me to say that because this movie line came from the mouth of one Leonardo DiCaprio, and yet it was a good line nonetheless (actually this year seems to be kind of a DiCaprio year…I have heard that The Departed is fantastic too…so, good for him). Anyway, let me try to recreate the scene: Leonardo is trying to hit on some woman in a bar and in doing so tries to guess why she is in Africa. He states, and I quote, "Are you one of those Peace Corps types? You, know, the kind of person that comes over to Africa with your laptop computer and your hand sanitizer who stays just long enough to realize that you're not going to change anyone." Well, in our little world of Botswana this line was delivered to a group of Peace Corps with their laptops stowed safely underneath their movie seats (likely with a foot through the laptop bag's handle in order to prevent theft), and hands freshly sanitized with sanitizer smelling of fresh flowers or clean fruit (take your pick)…and yet, this line was received with a ready laugh and acceptance that partly this movie line was fairly dead on….but for me, and I may be speaking for myself, but I do think that we change the way that people think, and I'd like to think that we get to see that change before we leave I just think that sometimes we change the people we don't even expect to see change from, and if we just step back from ourselves we might even surprise ourselves by the amount of people that we have changed…and who has changed us.

One thing that Franco gave Dereje before leaving was a football (or soccer for you American types) game for the computer. I think that Dereje now has a mission to provide a little bit of competition for Franco when they meet again.