What I'm doing for my birthday

I'm going to try my best to find one of these. Something tells me it won't be quite the same as it was when I was 8. But then again, even when I was 8 it wasn't as magical as the commercial.

We're gonna set it up in the back yard and slide away. Let me be specific, we're gonna put the end of the slide AWAY from the giant cactus...

Ireland, When Animals aggressively-demand-attention edition

Dingle Way, Day 1
2 July 2010

Fred and I got up early, left our hostel in Dublin and hopped on the bus to Limerick at the Busarus. That's the Irish word for Bus Station I guess. I like to say it in my head like this "Bus R Us" but that's not right.

I quickly learned that Irish busses are among the most sinister car-sick-inducing torture devices in the world. The seats are very tall and so it's impossible to see out the front window from any seat besides the very front. Irish roads are narrow and windy. Irish bus drivers seem to enjoy playing Billy Joel at very loud volumes. I knew I wasn't going to make it if I stayed in the back, so I had to move right up to the front. Right up there, next to the chatty old people who cross themselves whenever they pass a church, and there are a lot, so it's more like an episode of Sit-and Be-Fit than a calm, silent, still bus ride.

And I think I might die.

For 6 hours I focused on not puking, or trying to devise a contingency plan if I do. I decided that in the event of an unexpected voiding of my stomach I would try to aim it for the space next to the door, then at least they could hose it out easily.

Luckily, we made it to Limerick and then to Tralee (which is pronounced Truhhh-lee, not TRAY lee) without any vomiting. From Tralee we got on another bus which we thought was going to take us to Camp. But it didn't. Fred told me "doesn't that sign say Camp? Shouldn't we get off? Maybe you should tell the driver we want off." I said "Relax Fred, calm down. The bus will stop and then we'll get off. We'll know when we're there." But I was wrong. The bus did not stop. In Ireland, you must jump up and down or wave or holler to signal your intention to get off the bus, wherever. Stops listed on the schedule are just suggestions. When we realized that we'd driven past Camp we started to get anxious. When the next-town-looking place rolled around we stood up, and sure enough the bus stopped and let us out.

In Annascaul. This not where we planned on being. We meant to walk from Camp counter clockwise around the peninsula. Now we're forced to go Clockwise.

At least we've finally made it to Dingle.

The first thing I noticed about Dingle, is that it is cold and windy. It's also much more mountainous than I expected. From the map, from home, Ireland looked flat-ish. 950 m Mountains are not really mountains, or are they? They are. Especially when they grow directly from sea level.

I know that I have underestimated this place. We stopped in a small park with the statue of some antarctic explorer. Tom Crean. He went with Shackelton and stuff...and he's from Annascaul. Fred and I hadn't eaten since breakfast and now it's 3 pm and we need to hike at least 6 miles, preferably twelve before we sleep. I pulled out a loaf of soda bread, a chunk of cheese and began to chow down, whilst contemplating Fred's "10 pound more awesome" bag.

I wonder if he can really make it 90 miles with all that Stuff. Who brings an iPad backpacking, anyway?

After we finished eating we cinched up our bags and headed off. Over a bridge, across a road and then Up. We walked up for quite a ways, until there was no more Up and then we could see the ocean, and we walked Down for a while. It was warm enough out to walk in just a long sleeved shirt and it wasn't raining.

So Far So Good.

We came across a beautiful bouldery-beach with a castle.




Thanks Ireland, that'll do nicely.

Then, there was more up. We were mainly walking on narrow farm roads, which was not very exciting at all. There were nettles and whoever was in the back was in charge of hollering "Car!" so that we could dive, quickly, into a ditch or press ourselves up against the nearest nettle-infested garden wall. And it was a windy day, so there were lots of false alarms. We did manage to entertain ourselves though, playing with the local fauna--farm dogs--and arguing about whether Cromwell built the castle or knocked over the castle.




The sheep dogs in Ireland are very friendly. They are generally allowed to roam and seem to generally stay where they're supposed to. More than a few times we were followed for quite-a-ways by friendly dogs. This is the first one we encountered. In DunQuin we were followed all the way home from the pub by a dog. On the other side of Mt. Brandon we were followed for about a mile by a dog who liked to play 'fetch' with rocks that we kicked in front of us, until someone drove by in a car and stuck their head out the window "Bella! Come on!" and the dog turned around and trotted after the car.



After about 6 miles, we spied a gas station. Since I refused, on principle, to pay 10 Euros for white gas in Dublin we decided to just fill the fuel bottle with gasoline at the first opportunity. So we stopped at a gas station that backed up to a really nice canyon that was bridged by an old rail-road viaduct. I filled up the fuel bottle and went inside to pay the 45 cent bill. The man behind the counter looked at me funny and said "Very small car?" I held up my fuel bottle and said "Yes" I bought a postcard and a candy bar and went back outside to see what Fred was up to.

He was lounging against his 10-pounds-more-awesome bag with the nastyiest-pus-ridden-flea bag tom cat I've ever seen in his lap.






I loaded up the fuel bottle and looked at the map for a bit. "Fred, how much further do you want to walk?" I was nervous about where we'd stay, and since there was 6 more miles to Dingle Town I didn't think we'd make it before it got dark.

I convinced Fred to go inside and ask the man behind the counter if there was any place we could stay around Lispole (where we were). Fred came back out with a bottle of water and the message that Dingle Town was the closest place with accommodations. "Did you ask about camping, or bed and breakfasts?" He said he didn't know and I shook my head. It was already 7 and I didn't think we were going to make it to Dingle. I went back into the shop myself to ask the man specifically about camping. I was a little embarrassed because by this time we'd been hanging around in his parking lot, petting that nasty-pus-ridden-flea-bag cat for like 15 minutes. "Do you know anywhere we can camp around here? I don't think we can walk all the way to Dingle Town tonight" The man didn't even pause for a second before he said "Sure, camp across the way in my field. There are no animals in there and the electric fence is off". Of course, it took a few iterations to get the message across--so thick was his accent, or my brain.

Awesome! Our first experience with Irish hospitality. It was easy. The man showed us his field and we set up our tents in a flat spot behind a nice church.





We had a quick dinner. Though we were tired we walked a mile down the road to the nearest pub. The man behind the counter was probably about 80 and by the looks of the decor, was named Tom and had been running the place since the 40s, or whenever he stopped playing rugby on his local team (Go Kerry!). We were the only people in the place. We tried to have a conversation with the old man about the vuvuzelas on the TV (world cup was on) but again, the thick Irish accent was hard for us to get through. The man was really lovely though, and we went and played a game of pool on a tiny pool table (or was it a snooker table?) before we headed back out. By this time it was nearing 9:30 and we toddled back to our tents. It was still light.

Turns out, it never gets dark in Ireland.

They Finally Got it Right

I went to the police station this morning to get a copy of the police report from when my car was broken into. I called them first, to see if maybe they'd fax it to me--even though I'm uncomfortable with faxing (that's sooo 1996, who DOES that anymore? Like, use the e-mail), because I'm even more uncomfortable wiht driving down town. I always get lost or stuck waiting for a drawbridge, or I go into the wrong parking garage and end up paying $8,000 to park because no one will validate my parking. Not even if I say "But those garages were so CONFUSING! Someone should really put a sign up." Or maybe, Especially if I say that.

But the records unit only faxes things if you're an official government place. I thought about it for a second but decided to not press my luck by trying to convince the woman on the phone that I was very very official, you know 'cause I go to grad school and I have an extension and an office and I work in a place with Departments. I decided to just drive myself downtown and deal with traffic and stop lights and parking lots. I needed to go to the bank anyway.


I was pleasantly surprised that it was easy to get downtown. I was, however, disappointed to find out that the Police Station doesn't look ANYTHING like it does on Dexter and I didn't see anyone famous there. It was easy to get the report. The lady behind the counter was nice to me and it only cost $4. Easy.

I went back to school and wrote a very nice letter to AT&T along with the police report (that says clearly that the "victim" of the burgulary was unfortunately out of the country in South Africa at the time of the crime). Before I headed down to the fax machine, I checked my email and noticed that AT&T had already resolved my case and reversed the international roaming charges. But I faxed the documents anyway--because I drove DOWNTOWN.

Whoever I talked to on the phone on Saturday must have written a really detailed (and sad sounding) report about the theft of my cell-phone because I thought it was going to take a lot longer, and more evidence, to get them to take all that money off my bill.

Thanks AT&T!

Dear AT&T,

You finally made me proud, thank you. I'm willing to forget about the time that you told me "Sure, your account is all taken care of...you don't owe us anything else" before I moved to Switzerland. Then you turned me into collections for a bill that I didn't know anything about. I'm willing to forget about the time I didn't have internet for a month, because someone forgot to flip the 'switch' on your end, but I paid for service anyway. All of those past abuses I can gladly get over now, because you've removed the $800 of international roaming charges from my account.

Sincerely,

ME.

Out of Africa

Hi Everyone. I'm back. After a really really long plane ride yesterday (20 hours in the air) we landed safely in Miami and even got our luggage back. The best part is that customs didn't inspect the 20 thousand vuvuzelas we brought back with us. I'm pretty sure there's an import limit on those things. Aren't they considered weapons of mass annoyance or something?

First thing I did when I got home was look around for my phone, you know to call my mother and tell her I was alive. No phone. No phone anywhere. Hummm where could it be, I wondered. And then, I knew it. I knew where it was--it was in my car. The car that was broken into the day that I left for Africa. Which meant that my phone was probably stolen. I logged into my account and sure enough, there's an $800 phone bill and my account has been suspended. AWESOME.

What a nice welcome home. If you're waiting for a call from me it's going to be a few days before I get my new phone. Then, Laura went to South Miami for some bike team meeting and on the way back she got a flat tire. She took the car to a tire place and I guess since the nail was in the tread they couldn't repair it.

I dealt with all that nonsense, unpacked my bag and promptly fell asleep on the couch at about 6pm.

Replacement phone: $85.
New tire: $85.
Being home, priceless.

And now for your viewing pleasure:

South African children sing their hearts out.

Leaving Kruger

We're on our way out of Kruger today. We had time for one last early morning game drive. We saw an amazing sunrise from the top of a little granite bald.

We saw a rhino crossing the road. I don't know why the rhino crossed the road but I think it had something to do with the other side.

Rock-opottamus, Rock-a-noceros, and Tree-raffe

PHOTOESSAY!!!!

Yesterday we drove from Shingwedzi to Skukuza. That was a very long drive--you can only go ~30mph in the park--and uncomfortable. A safari truck is really like a pickup with benches in the back, it can be very windy and dusty at even just 30mph. It took us about 8 hours, but because we weren't in a hurry we spent a lot of time spotting game and stopping a lot. Inside the park there are lots of these little villages called Rest Camps. Some are big--Skukuza has an airport and a school and a bunch of restaurants and a cricket and soccer field, it's a little city. Some are small--Shingwedzi had only a little restaurant and gift shop and guest houses. I think the South African candy and snacks are really interesting. One of my hobbies, after all, is sampling foreign candy. I'm doing a pretty good job of it, too! I also tried some wild buffalo jerkey. It was delicious, and free range.

We stopped at a very small elephant museum inside one of the rest camps. This is how big I would be next to an elephant. But, I don't walk up to real elephants because they are dangerous.

This is a big baobab tree. It is not dangerous, but it is very big. Bigger than an elephant even.
This is a bushbok, it is not dangerous and I could walk right up next to it. This is in the same rest camp that has the elephant museum.
These are blue wildebeast. I think they might be my favorite animals here. Every time I see them they're bucking all over and kicking and generally acting ornery. See the one in the middle? He's mid-buck. These wild-lifes are easy to spot, but sometimes when you're looking so hard for hours on end..every rock or stump or tree looks like an animal.

Can you find the animal in this picture?
That's an actual rhinoceros. About halfway through our drive we had a few false alarms when HA kept telling the driver to "stop, backup, I saw something" only to discover that it was a stump or rock masquerading as an animal. So then we had a nice game of naming every stick, rock or tree as a new form of wild game.
Here's a list we came up with:

Rock-opotttamus
Rock-a-nocerous
Tree-raffe
Stick-retary Bird
Elestump
Rock-allo

It was a long day...ok?


Eventually we made it to Skukuza. Here's the view from my back porch. AWESOME! That's a little river down there and so far we've seen a heard of elephants and a hyena there.


When we were relaxing with beers last night a couple of us climbed up to sit with our legs dangling over that wall. I was talking to Low, one of the South African students, about Apartheid. It was really interesting to hear him talk about it. I don't think I'll repeat much here, but my take on it is that the country still has some growing pains. I'm sure that doesn't surprise anyone to hear. Anyway about 20 minutes into this he put his hand out in front of me and said "Do you hear that?" I said "huh? whaaaaaaa?" He said "Shhh! It's a hyena!" Sure enough creeping out from behind that tree there was a baby hyena. He was a lot cuter than I thought he would be--because everything I know about Africa, I learned from the Lion King--he had these cute little round ears and fluffy coat. Still, I was scared. I don't think we could have gotten off that wall faster if we had been pushed. "They don't jump do they? Low, do they JUMP?! because I've seen coyotes jump and this wall isn't high.." He stopped me "no, they don't jump" Ok ok, so the hyena came right up to the base of the wall, tail tucked between his legs, and gave us a good look before he slunk away. Oh, and they really do laugh.

Is there coffee yet?

It's 5:20 in the morning and we're off to the field now. tired, tired. saw lions leopards elephants giraffes bush babies and a very very close hyena yesterday. We saw the whole big 5 (elephant, lion, leopard, buffalo and rhino) in one day which is rare, apparently. They're called the Big 5 because they're very dangerous. "If you don't kill them, they'll kill you" or something. Or, if you don't get too close to them or shoot them with a gun they'll leave you alone.

We went to the golf club at Skukuza and watched a rugby game and enjoyed some drunk-people watching. Now i'm TIRED. Tired Tired.

But now, off to the field to dig up some dirt and label some tubes! Hurrah!

Kruger 1

Greetings from Kruger National Park!

For the past two days we've been enjoying game drives and delicious meals prepared by our camp cook with light field work in between. This is our second night at the Shingwedzi Research Camp and Boy! do I find the accommodations lovely. I just took a nice hot shower, and the water pressure was excellent. It was well deserved too, I had the dust of two days in the back of a safari truck settling in my ear canals. I dug that stuff out with a wash cloth. I think I saw a potato come out too. That's one thing I was not prepared for--the amount of dust. As soon as we turned off the paved road onto the dirt road that took us to our field site it started to sift in and immediately got into our teeth, eyes, and noses. Sherwin rode with his sweatshirt up over his nose to keep the dust out. I think I may have inhaled some parasites. The dust is really fine and infiltrates everything.

I've seen quite a few animals. Elephant, Giraffe, Zebra, Wildebeast, Kudu, Buffalo, Ostrich, Brown Snake Eagle, Saddleback Stork, Lily Breasted Roller, Jackal, Tstssebe *or something like that, Steenbok, Impala, Crocodile, Hippos...and some more. They're Everywhere. This place is really awesome. The best part, though, is that we're allowed to get out of our safari vehicle and walk around in the bush--the Afrikaans word is VELD, pronounced 'felt'--which tourists aren't allowed to do. But it's okay because we have a guy with a gun. One of the U. Pretoria students said that KT and I looked just like lion food when we were sitting down in the brush labeling tubes. But, we didn't get eaten by a lion.

When we finished our field work we took a cooler of beer up to the top of an earthen dam and watched the sunset. There were a bunch of hippos that swam up to the edge of the dam and showed off for us. They thrashed their heads around for a bit and made some piggy noises. There were 5 of them and they even lined up in Hungry Hungry Hippo formation, which we all appreciated. The game ranger (the guy who carried the gun all day to protect us from Buffalo and such--we had a semi-close call with a buffalo in the afternoon) said that the hippos swam from all the way across the river just to investigate us--since we were intruders.

We had a campfire after dinner (the wood here is really HARD, as in dense, so we only managed a small campfire, but there was fire...). While we were sitting there watching the veld-TV (as one of the students called it) we heard lots of lions. They said that the lions were close--and they were pretty loud. I guess right outside the fence. Good thing there are fences here... Lions don't sound at all like I expected them to sound. They're not all like "Roar Roar" but more like "croak, low grunt, croak" Maybe those were their eating sounds. Or just really big frogs. Lion Frogs?

Ok, well, it's late here and I need to sleep since we have a LONG game-drive tomorrow from Shingwedzi to Skukuza--something like 7 hours in the back of the safari truck--7 hours in the dust and wind. Next time I come here I'm bringing my ski goggles. Enjoy the pictures.
Game Ranger.
Lion bait.
Ostriches and baby ostriches.
Elephant crossing.
Sunset. That spec in the middle of the water is a hippo walking towards us to say hello. Hippos don't swim, they just walk on the bottom.
That's a hippo there. Two of them actually.

PICTURES! and trip to LESEDI

Today after we lounged around, I mean worked diligently on our lesson plans, we went to Lesedi, which is like a living cultural museum. We were given a tour through some simulated viliges that represented the way each of the five major South African tribes lived. It was really cool. We had a guide who walked us from "village" to "village" and explained the way the people live there--from their house designs to the way they spend their time or the types of food they eat. In the Predi (I think that's how it's spelled) village they let us sample a common food--Mopani worms. KT and RL and I ate one. They were chewy, crunchy, and salty. Yum.

The best part about the tour is that there were two sets of actors (probably 12 total) who would portray the village inhabitants. We'd leave one village and the half a dozen actors from there would leap-frog ahead of us while we visited the next--where a different set of actors was already waiting for us. So, the Zulu spear makers ended up being the xohsa [sic] villagers who sang for us in their Clicky language (that's Nelson Mandela's tribe!)... Sherwin described it as "A really hilarious high school play" It was definitely entertaining and educational.

After the tour, the actors danced for us and then we were served a really delightful dinner. I tried ostrich, crocodile and lots of different types of vegetables.

Here's some pictures from the last few days::

The SMS crew at Pretoria U before our Mini Symposium.
Pretoria University--the Old Art Building. It was a pretty busy campus.

Sherwin and I working hard on our lesson plans.

Zulu gate-keeper.


Pile of Spit-rocks. Apparently it's Zulu tradition to pick up a rock, spit on it and throw it into a big lucky rock pile before you go on a journey. I did it. I found a small rock and liberally applied some spit and hucked it. Most of the spit flew off the rock way before it hit the pile, but I think it still counts.

Zulu lady making a mat. You can tell she's maried because she's wearing a giant red hat. In the olden days they would sew the hat onto the lady's head. No divorce in the Zulu nation.

The besotho [sic!] tribe. They wear these pointy hats because they're mountain people, the hat and their pointy houses remind them of their mountain--the Mountain of the Night.

South Africa 2

Greetings from the Cornerstone. It's South Africa day 2 and so far I'm pretty sure I haven't actually seen South Africa. We've been sequestered in the lodge. All of our meals are prepared special for us and served in the dining room. Eggs to order for breakfast and elegant three-course affairs for lunch and dinner. I don't even know how best to explain this place. It's like a compound--a gated group of buildings. Each building houses a single room and all the doors are left open all the time. It's nice, but kind of chilly because it's winter here. It smells like winter. The air is crisp and smells like wood smoke, and car exhaust, but mostly wood smoke.

Yesterday we went to the University of Pretoria and met with the students who are going to Kruger with us. KT and I gave research talks at a mini-symposium that they organized just for us. Oh boy. I was so glad that they did that. I don't think anyone fell asleep during my talk but there were definitely a lot of eyes glazed over. C'mon guys! It's important!

The University was pretty exciting. There were a lot of students out, hanging out on the lawn, or hanging out having coffee...normal college things. All the buildings were labeled in both English and Afrikaans--which looks a lot like Dutch. Of course, that makes sense because South Africa was colonized by the Dutch.

After we finished our talks, I had a nice lunch of slimy pasta and oily mushrooms at a campus cafe. Yum. From there we went and met with the teachers we're going to working with when we are in the schools in 2 weeks. Then, straight back to the Compound. There's a gas station across the street that we're "allowed" to walk to. I'm going to go check it out now, it'll be about the most exciting thing I've done all day.

Tomorrow we're headed to Kruger and I'm so excited to actually get out and see the country.

South Africa, 1

We made it to Johannesburg with no major incidents. I think this day has lasted like 36 hours and we've seen at least 6 sunrises/sets. Crazy.

The flight to London went well. I sat next to KT and because Cheryl broke her knee we had a whole extra seat to spread out on. I took benedryl and slept through that flight. When we got to London at 6:30 am we had to wait in line for like 40 minutes just to get a bus to travel to a different terminal, then we went through passport check and took a train to our gate--all in all it took us over two hours to get from gate to gate, that was EXHAUSTING. We got to our gate just in time to board for our flight to Africa.

I ended up sitting in an aisle seat next to these two German guys. I fell asleep right when we got on the plane. Two badly behaved German guys. They woke me up less than an hour into the flight to get up, I was pretty cranky but then I decided that I'd better just stay up for the flight so that I could sleep when I got to SA. Good thing I decided to do that because these guys probably drank a whole case of beer (that's 24) between them and at least a half bottle of whiskey. They weren't stupid drunk or rowdy or anything but the were up and down and they talked the WHOLE way. At least it was in German so I didn't have to really know all the stupid stuff they were saying.

They fed us two meals and even though the guy who ordered our tickets didn't ask if anyone needed vegetarian meals--and so they didn't order special meals for me--I was able to ask them on the plane if I could get a special meal and they accommodated me, which was nice. The food was pretty good.

We did have a bit of drama on the plane--besides the antsy Germans--this old lady sitting in the aisle across from me--I say weird because she had this fanny pack and about 4 bags full of stuff and she was wearing leggings under a skirt and hippy sandals and as soon as she sat down she tucked her legs up under her and perched on the seat like a little bird. Then she started taking a bunch of pills from an unmarked bottle. I didn't think it was THAT unusual, they all looked like vitamins to me. But, I did notice that it seemed to take her a long time to get just the right combo out.

Before breakfast they served us drinks and the boys next to me started in right away on the Heinekin, and I did too--because they were and it's FREE. But I felt a bit guilty drinking a beer with my english breakfast so I only had about 1/3 of the can. Anyway, we had our drinks for a good 1/2 hour before they served my breakfast, which was early because I'm special. When I was chowing down I took a second to look up from my grub and noticed that the weird lady across the aisle was finishing off a mini bottle of wine, which seemed like an odd morning choice and it also seemed like she finished it pretty quick.

I was done with my breakfast when they started coming around with the regular breakfasts and the steward was really annoyed when weird-lady dropped the empty wine bottle on her foot. She served the people in the row in front of me and then I think we all noticed at once that weird-lady seemed to be having some sort of seizure. For the next 20 min or so there were 3 flight attendants in the aisle trying to get her to wake up and finding her travel partner (who was elsewhere in the plane). It was really scary and I was thinking "I hope she's okay" and "what if they have to make an emergency stop, we're in BFE". (literally, Egypt or something) Luckily, she came around. They filled out some special paperwork and let her go back to sleep. She slept for like 8 hours. She didn't remember any of it. Turns out she had taken an ambien and that doesn't go well with wine. oops

ok Ive written enough, I'm beat. The hotel we're in is really nice. I'm wearing a bathrobe right now.