Africa - Khama Rhino Sanctuary

It is so hard to even know where to begin!  So I think I'll just break out my blogs into different sections, by place or activity, and hopefully I'll get through it all.  First off, I guess I will explain a little more about my trip.  Amy and I went with a tour company called Geckos (I know, the irony!)  it is an Australian company so there were tons of Aussies on the trip.  They gear towards a budget traveller, so we were roughing it!  Seriously...tents, sleeping bags, meals cooked over the open fire...roughing it! It was pure luxury if our camp sites had a shower and a toliet (that actually flushed!)  Needless to say myself and all of my belongings smelled of camp fire after the first night and continued to the remaining 12 days.  There were 18 people on our trip, ranging in age from 20 to lets say, 50ish.  We had people ranging from a personal chef on a yacht, to a vascular surgeon to a parachute packer!  We all met up in Pretoria, South Africa at the Twana Lodge (we didn't know the type of luxury it had to offer at the time!) and met our tour leaders, Dumi the driver, Mischek the chef and Innocent our fearless leader.  We also met what was to become our closest companion over the next week and a half...our big orange tour bus!  Little did we know how much time we would spend in this orange eye sore...Botswana is big, as big as Texas to be exact!

The next morning we set out on the road to the Backroads of Botswana at 6 am sharp!  Again, little did I know this would be the first of many sunrises I would see.  We arrived at the Khama Rhino Sanctuary late that afternoon and set up our camp for the first time.  It took a while, but by the end of the trip we were all pros at setting up and taking down our tents.  The next morning we woke for a 5:30 breakfast and then our first game drive at 6 am.  The Rhino Sanctuary is a protected area and is home to only "grazers" they are meant to help preserve the rhinos and create an environment where they are protected and can hopefully reproduce and increase the dwindling rhino population.  In the sanctuary we saw both black and white rhino, giraffes, zebras, wildebeest, warthogs, ostrich, antelope and many different birds.  We were able to get so close to the animals in the vehicles. You can see the rest of the pics on my shutterfly site. 

10 fingers 10 toes

I made it back safe and sound from Africa. I had the most amazing experiences and you safely could say I am hooked. I will return, hopefully sooner rather than later. Africa is one of the most beautiful places, both landscape and people. I could not have enjoyed myself more and I have over 1000 pictures to prove it! I am going to start working on getting everything loaded, with some heavy culling of course! Bear with me, I will start my blog updates and photos shortly.

One thing I can tell you is that none of my granola gear is as bright and shiny as it was in the picture below! Camping is dirty!

Granola, it's not just for Breakfast

OMG, I'm in shock, I leave for Africa a week from tomorrow! When thinking about what I would pack, I realized that I am not at all well-equipped for the wilderness. Really, I could survive for a couple of months without doing laundry in any major city in the world, but not one single day in wild, unless of course I did it in the way God intended, naked. So I found the London version of REI (Black's) and spent a grand total of 317 POUNDS! This whole granola thing is a lot more expensive than I thought, I have a whole new appreciation for all of those tie-dye wearing, dread locked hippies spending their time hiking the Rockies and being at one with nature. It ain't cheap! I am now the proud-ish owner of a sleeping bag, hiking shoes, a camping pillow, camping towel (folds up SO small!), a backpack, super-dooper bug spray, a rain jacket, a flashlight/lantern, binoculars, a head torch and the pièce de résistance...a pair of pants that zip into shorts...hot! Seriously people, I need to take up some new outdoorsy hobbies when I come back to get some use out of all of this gear. I think I'll take up spelunking, I've got the head torch for it plus, I've always like the sound of it. The actual word, not the act of crawling through dark caves. Here's my loot!

Mood: Starstruck

I have had my first celebrity siting in London, and I personally think it is a very exciting one! So let me set up the story for you guys. Last weekend Kelly, Desi and I went to watch Simon's(Kelly's fiance) soccer game. Afterwards we went to grab a bite at this steakhouse in our neighborhood. There was a bit of a wait, so we decided to just go to the Thai place next door. Desi had borrowed the movie, The Kite Runner, from Kelly and had brought it with her to return it to Kelly. She gave it back to her at dinner and this sparked a long conversation about the movie, the book, the follow up book A Thousand Splendid Suns. Now, these are two of my favorite books (if you haven't read them, do so immediately!) so I obviously saw the movie as soon as it came to theatres. I was really scared to see it, because so many times movies that are made after books are so disappointing. This was not the case, I thought the movie was so well done and really complimented the book. So anyways, we are sitting there talking about this and all of a sudden Kelly goes "Oh my gosh, the guy from the Kite Runner is at the table next to us" We of course all whip around and "non-chalantly" stare him down. It has to be him, looks just like him! But it is too crazy to actually be him, when we have been talking about the movie all night, and actually have it with us! So leave it to us, after dinner we go over and interrupt his family dinner and ask...sure enough, it is him! He was so gracious and took a picture with us...he even asked for another one b/c he thought his eyes were closed in the first one! His family even took out their cameras and took pictures of us with him. I am assuming he probably isn't one to get recognized everyday and I think his family was excited for him as they all started clapping as soon as we rounded the corner to leave the restaurant...it was cute. Anyways, here is the photo of us with Khalid Abdalla

Daily Rant.

If the tube were in Texas, it would be a very different scene. After three months of relying daily on public transportation I have come to find that my first notions about the tube and British men are indeed fact. British men are just plain rude, when riding on the tube. To be fair, it is a free-for-all and everyone must fend for themselves. You've barely stood up before someone has swooped underneath you to take your prized seat during morning rush hour. But I have found that men will cut a women off to get to a free seat, they will avoid eye contact with any standing women nearby as to not have to be directly confronted with the fact that they are sitting and you are standing and they have no intention of giving you their seat. Old ladies will remain standing, pregnant women, women in stiletto's (even though that is their own fault). In fact, I have seen more women give up their seat to old ladies and pregnant women than men. It's funny, when you think of British men, you think of very old fashioned, chivalrous men. Which is true for the most part, with two exceptions. They've had one too many pints or they are on the tube.

Betty Crocker wants her apron back

Sorry Kel, it was a valiant effort and they tasted great. That's what matter, right?! My sweet neighbor Kelly wanted to make some "I love you" cupcakes for Simon the other night. Here was the result.

But she looked good doing it...and they were the sprinkle kind, yum! Luckily, Kelly loves me too and I got a couple :) Thanks, they were yummy...I ate them in celebration of the anniversary of my third month here in London, can you believe!

Culture...check

Last night I went to some opera/dinner concert thing at the royal Banqueting Hall (yes, I realize that I can't really be cultured if I call it a "thing" but I don't know what else to call it). I went with some co-workers, it seemed like an appropriately "london-y" thing to do. I think I was expecting a large room with big round tables with a sit-down dinner and some string quartet in the background. Not quite. It was a very intimate concert of 300 cultured people (me being the youngest in the room by generations, well besides my coworkers) with three opera singers in coat-tails, followed by a buffet dinner, church-social style, downstairs in the "fellowship hall". There was a bass, with a slicked back pony tail who fit his part as the phantom in Music of the Night very well. A precious spanish tenor. And a counter-tenor (whatever that is), who I lovingly refered to as Falsetto Fanny the rest of the night. Falsetto Fanny was a 60ish, gray haired man of moderate stature with ants in his pants. About 6 ft, bit of a belly...so you'd be as surprised as I was when you heard the sounds that came out of his mouth. I'd call him more of a soprano, and not the gun-toting, brass-knuckle wearing, guido type. Poor thing had a bit of a lisp too...I felt bad for the front row. But I wasn't sure whether it was the shower of spit that was probably flying out of his mouth from his lisp or his sweeping hand gestures throughout his performance that might hit them the hardest. Either way, I did enjoy myself even though I only knew two songs. Music of the night and Ave Maria...which they sang twice with different arrangments, so technically I knew three.

Well at least I have checked off my culture box for the month, next month, Hadrian's Wall exhibit at the British Museum.