Today is Sunday... 1535hrs to be exact... Which means it is about half 8 for (most) of you back in the States reading this. And in exactly seven days I'll be at Dulles Airport (or slightly above it) making my way back to Burtonsville. Woah. I'm definately not looking forward to 7 hr jetlag.
Anyways, the reason I was able to write today is because today I'm on base duty. It means that today I (and one person from each of the other two teams) get to clean up base, cook the meals, and input all my data from yesterday (when I was on data duty).
...it also means that if the meals aren't too intensive (which this evening is Mac-n-cheese... aka. pasta and cheese sause which is uber easy to make) then when I'm finished my data then I can get on the internet! YAY!
I'm actually almost sick of the computer cause I've been working on a prey count excel worksheet for the past three house and I think my brain has been fried from the screen. Blah. Prey counts are kinda fun though, well... at least (mostly)easy if not heaps of fun. You pretty much drive along a specific route in the North or South of the reserve and count every prey animal that you see. Sounds good. The only problem is when you hit the Northern herd of impala which is somewhere around 70+. Then everyone scrambles to count, sex, and age the herd as they run away. :p Meh!
We also are doing "Safari Spot" which is a game (of sorts) where you get points for spotting the most species on your drives. There are both individual and team awards for most points and certain species (like rhinos) get more points than others (like impala). It's fun and hopefully I'll find a pangolin or something really rare so my team can win.
Anyways, I still haven't heard anything about Shiloweni's root canal as far as dates are, but apparently Discovery Channel and National Geographic (as well as some other people) will have t.v. crews at the operation so I'll still be able to see it.
And yes Laura, you shouldn't be suprised that I want to pet a leopard. He is my baby. There is actually a "Wish List" of all the things the volunteers want to do during this last week (ex. Have a sundowner on Beacon Rock, Watch the Eles all day...etc) and the only thing I wrote down is "Pet Shewie... preferably during his root canal but I'm up for whatever." :D
Hehehehe.
This week is going to go by way too fast. Tuesday we have a volleyball tourney with EcoTraining (they study trees and stuff)... we beat them last time so I'm looking forward to it again. Alost there are plans for party night on Wednesday and the staff and volunteers from all the other lodges and training facilities (we are the only research team) are coming over to GVI House (that's here) and we are having a international world cup of sorts. There are only three Americans here (Shannon, Jake, and myself) so I think we are coloring white t-shirts with Sharpies and drawing American Flags... and lots of "Team America" quotes. :p Then Thursday I'm pretty sure that we are going to Moholoholo Rehabilitation Center to check on the baby rhino that we sent them almost four weeks ago after it was attacked by jackels. Then Friday I have a lovely six hour drive to Joburg (and my closest amigos here- Shannon, Chris, and Mark) are leaving me half way through to go travelling. Bah, I'm jealous. Oh well, at least Patty (a girl in my group who lives in Ontario) is gonna chill with me at the airport till our flight at 10pm. Then after a solid day and a half of travelling and obscenely long flights, I'll be back in MD. Give me a day or two to recover (I'm almost positive I'll take a small coma upon my arrival since I really can't sleep on planes) but then I can't wait to see you all and sort out my pictures.
Ok, well it's now 4 so I should start checking things for dinner and making sure everything is prepped.
All my love from the bush,
Mia