Sitting on my suitcase...

My strategy for packing: 1) stuff the suitcase until you can't possibly fit anything else in, 2) zip it up, 3) sit on said suitcase for about half an hour while you blog to your friends and family about how exciting it is to sit on a pile of clothes in a bag, and 4) Et voila!  More space is available and you can repeat steps 1-3! 
Packing for about nine weeks is always going to be hard, but it's particularly difficult because I have to squeeze in the coats and sweatshirts that will probably be necessary in the nippy Botswana evenings, things one should never have to pack in June.  The temperature right now in Gaborone is 45 degrees Fahrenheit and I've been told to expect colder...brrrr.  That said, the forecast for the next week has daytime temperatures in the seventies!  Basically, I'm fairly confused as to what clothes I should be bringing.  Last year in Johannesburg, which is only about 200 miles to the southeast of Gaborone, I had to deal with significant temperature swings too, but it seems like the difference from day to night might be even more extreme in Gabs!
Anyway, nothing can stress me out too much right now because I am SO SO SO excited for the summer ahead!  My journey begins bright and early tomorrow (Monday) morning but it will be Tuesday afternoon when I finally reach my destination of Gaborone, the capital city of Botswana.  There, I will spend eight weeks working in Maru-a-Pula High School with five other Harvard students in a range of activities like SAT prep tutoring, mentoring students through their college application process, and participating and assisting in the student activities that most interest us, from sports (tennis!) to music and to community service.  It sounds like a pretty amazing school with a huge amount of opportunity available to its students and I'm really looking forward to seeing what education at its best is like in Botswana.  I have very little idea of what to expect in terms of how the school will compare to my high school or my conceptions of the typical American school.  From what kind of perspective do students in Botswana learn about the rest of the world?  What do they think of their own country's place in the world?  Botswana is currently one of Africa's rare success stories and, although it still faces a lot of poverty, its economic growth since independence has been unparalleled by any other country over the last 40 years, so it should be really interesting to get to know the students who could define the country's future!
 
To do immediately upon arrival in Botswana: Find out whether the seventh Harry Potter movie will be coming out in this country anytime this summer or whether I will have to cross national borders to see it!