Craving some biltong

Well I presented my Indep. Study Project stuff (again) for a special research symposium at Smith last weekend... Looking over that thing that dominated my life last semester brought back all those great memories, and also the not-so-great ones (um, bedbugs anyone?)...
I have this list of all these South African idiosyncracies that I miss and that I think we all actively need to work on bringing over to the statess... For example, integrating "hectic" into our everyday vocab, calling traffic lights "robots" (because they clearly are), walking around barefoot--everywhere, calling napkins serviettes, and systematically removing all trash cans (or "rubbish bins"). There are obviously some things that we all love about South Africa that will never hit it big here, like putting mayo on everything (including pizza--yummy, *gag*), making cream soda the color of fluorescent nuclear waste, making people pay for plastic bags at the supermarket, and, of course, minibus taxis.
Otherwise life has been pretty decent, particularly the last week since the weather has finally decided to cooperate. Unfortunately, the nicer the weather, the less work gets done... which is tough considering how much work there is at the end of the semester-- ugh.
Anyway, I actually have a pretty cool summer lined up so far. I'm taking a bit of a break after classes end and traveling with some friends to Reykjavik for a week, then visiting a friend who's abroad in Italy for a week... After that I'm interning at this foundation called Africa Now that's based in Oxford, England. They do some pretty cool work and it's a pretty small org (at least on the British end) so I'll hopefully be able to actually do some real work for them. Anyway that lasts abour 6 weeks and then I'm going to Sierra Leone (and possibly Liberia) with a few kids from Amherst because we've started an org and raised some money to build schools for girls. I'm really excited about that trip, though my parents are clearly freaking out about security. It's all good though because we're going under the auspices of UNICEF so we'll have a UN security detail (sounds pretty hardcore, right?)... That takes us to the middle of August and then... I dunno... probably just relaxing :-)
I hope you're all well and that the end of the year isn't too hectic!