Busy Busy Busy week

It's been a surprisingly busy week here. After returning from the camping weekend, I could have used a nice quiet week but with the holidays coming up and so many people heading out of town it ended up being my busiest week out here.

Wednesday night was dinner at Addis in Dar - a high end ehtiopian restaurant - for a friend's birthday. The food was good but even more expensive than I expected... this place was expensive for a restaurant back home. Had a nice time though and went out to Karaoke night at Irish Pub after for a while.

Thursday night we had tickets to a play. It was a pantomime modernized sleeping beauty. Quite entertaining.

I spent much of Friday running around the city with Cathryn trying to find a few items we needed... it's a little frustrating how hard it can be to find items that I could get in ten minutes back home. Fortunately Cathryn has a car so we made pretty good time and were able to check a lot of places. In the afternoon I had a meeting with Amref - where I will be volunteering - to discuss what I can do for them. Getting started is turning out to be a lengthy process but I think it'll be an interesting opportunity. After that we went to see the Golden Compass which I was really looking forward to and was so excited that it was coming out here. The movie was okay... it was fun to see but somehow wasn't as epic as I was hoping. And after that I went out with a friend who was leaving town.

Saturday I can barely remember what I did during that day... I know there was cooking involved. That night we had Christmas dinner at a friends house. Something about a potluck in 30 degree weather just doesn't feel like christmas. Though we did have some fine christmas music going on in the background including Alvin and the Chipmunks!

Sunday and Monday were nice and quiet and tomorrow I have to deal with my resident permit and pick up Chelsea from the airport. Almost vacation time! and this weekend we will head out to Zanzibar for a couple of nights to get a quick taste of the place and meet up with Natasha and Jen who will also be out there this weekend.

Mikumi Photos

I had to reduce the quality in order to speed of the uploading a little... sorry.

Camping in Mikumi

I am very sore and tired this monday morning because we finally got to go on our camping trip. Eight of us spent the weekend at Mikumi National Park having a blast. It took about 6 hours to get there but there was beautiful scenery and a gorgeous sunset to enjoy en route. We got there a little after the gate closed (3 hours late) so had to do some driving around and negotiating to get into the park but finally got to our camp site, set up tents, lit a fire and got dinner cooking. Each morning we got up at 6:30, drank some coffee and loaded into the land rover for a game drive. There are soooo many animals everywhere. We saw zebras, wildebeest, buffalo, elephants, impala, giraffes, hippos, lions, baboons, jackals, warthogs, crocs vultures and eagles (We also had a whole lot of insects at camp, including army ants, which hurt like hell when they bite you-I got nibbled twice). One of the guys let me use his 50-500 zoom lens on my camera so I've got some amazing close-up photos.... although more often than not, the animals were so close we didn't need the zoom at all. I spent most of the weekend sitting on the roof of the land rover getting bounced around (hence the sore), listening to music and taking photos of the amazing animals and scenery. We had in our group a couple guys who worked for a hunting/safari company so they knew everything about the animals and the trees and so on. After a few hours we'd get hungry and head back to camp. Saturday we went on an afternoon drive as well (which turned into an evening drice as we ended up really far away and didn't get back to camp until after dark). Sunday we spent a couple of hours sitting around a hippo pool watching as one by one herds of different animals came to the water hole... there was some serious negotiation involved in accessing the water as there was a clear priority sequence and crocs waiting in the water for their lunch. Lions are not the most exciting animal to watch (didn't do much but lay around) but it was pretty cool to get so close up to them and we found four cubs as well. Anyway, beyond this description I think the photos will have to speak for themselves... I took about 400 pics so it'll take a couple of days to download and sort but I will post photos here soon. I had an amazing weekend and couldn't have asked for better company. All in all, a huge success and I could definitely have stayed longer.

sick

Well, I finally got over the stomach bug and was healthy for all of about five days before catching the flu. Have been mostly taking it easy ever since except yesterday my stubborn side insisted on not postponing dinner plans I'd made. Last night was the first night of Chanucka and I had invited my new "family" for dinner. There were nine of us in total and I spent five hours straight cooking. I made latkes and meatballs and ratatouille. Food mostly came out okay - meatballs weren't as good as they usually are - but I was pleased considering I have minimal ingredients and spices to work with. The whole experience was a little exhausting though and I was fairly dazed through dinner and then had to clean up before crashing into my bed. Apparently standing over a hot stove all day with a fever isn't fun. It was well worth the effort though to get everybody together and have a nice holiday dinner.

Camping, attempt #2, starts on Friday. fingers crossed.

my new zero tolerance policy for mozzies was going really well for a few days but has since collapsed completely. I just can't seem to keep the damn things off me. apparently I need to eat more garlic. Will keep trying though I can't imagine camping is going to help the situation much.

can't think of other news at the moment. I do have more photos to post (a good one of my campus monkeys!!) but haven't had a chance to do it... hopefully early next week I can put them up with camping photos.