Safari

RK visited me this weekend in Tanzania, and boy did we have a good time! Pictures will follow, never fear.

Saturday: day trip to Ngorongoro Crater

We started at 6:00 am by being picked up, and then had a three hour drive out to the crater. Seeing the countryside of Tanzania--outside of Arusha--was very interesting. It's a mix of empty landscape, cows, and small villages (would they even count as villages?) which are usually lines of shops on either side of the main road with a few houses behind them. The shops are always incredibly tiny, and there's usually a grocery, a barber shop, a general shop, and a bar/restaurant. There were people out but not too many, because it was very early in the morning. We actually saw zebras and giraffes on the way to the crater, which is what reminded me that yes, we are in Africa. Those animals aren't exactly wandering around on the side of the road anywhere else.

We got to the crater around 9/9:30 ish, and then it was a bumpy, winding road up the side of the crater, where it got progressively foggier and colder. The landscape reminded me of Avatar, actually, and it was pretty cool. Then the crater itself...amazing! It's interesting to me that all sorts of different animals (all kinds, actually, including zebras, wildebeasts, elephants, rhinos, ostriches, hippos, lions, jackels, hyenas, and some funny looking birds) live in one crater. They certainly aren't trapped--the guide said they actually move out during the rainy season--but that all could live in such a comparatively small space seems so neat. I mean, compared to the Serengeti, the Crater is practically a studio apartment. We got to see all of the above animals and the lions were my favorite. We saw lots sleeping (one group was just a bunch of bellies and paws) and then we saw one eating a wildebeast in a thicket of grass. That was neat. What strikes me most is how big their faces are--lions are big all around, but their paws and faces are just huge. Not your average housecat, for sure.

Towards the end of the day the road started getting a little too bumpy, and I was less than excited to see another huge group of mooing wildebeasts. The trip up the wall of the crater was much like the trip coming down, and the landscape on the opposite side was the same. I think I fell asleep for a little bit of it, and poor jet-lagged RK did too (he was not happy when he found out I took a picture of him, but I couldn't help it). We were dropped off, got a cab home, and were too tired to do anything else.

Now I'm too tired to talk about Sunday, so I'll save that for tomorrow. (It's amazing that, after getting 8-9 hours of sleep regularly, 6-7 really leaves me tired. I can't believe I was living on 4-6 during the school year. I thought I was handling that well, but after knowing what I feel like when I get 8-9, "well" isn't how I would describe my academic state of being. I am also starting to think it's like childbirth, or what I imagine childbirth would be: you forget about the pain so fast that you actually want to have more kids. I forget about the hell of being a 1L and actually get excited about going back to be a 2L.)

Thank you to everyone who sent me something! I'm fabulously excited about all of the presents, and will be using/enjoying them hugely for the next two months.

Also, work is good (yeah, that thing I do from 9-5 M-F). It's slow sometimes, because it takes skill to go fast and I don't have that skill, but I'm narrowing down research topics for my paper (I'm getting credit for this program) and I'm getting excited about that.