I'm sorry I'm a terrible blogger

Greetings and let me just jump right in here and apologize to the select 4-5 people that are aware of this blog's existence. I'm sorry I haven't made a post in around 4 months! I'm very disappointed in myself because I wanted to document a lot more this summer and give a rundown of my time in South Africa. Unfortunately, extreme business in combination with extreme laziness prevented such things from occurring and here I am today, filled with chagrin. Truth is, I found the whole South Africa experience very daunting to write about. It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime things that doesn't even feel like it was real. I tried to start a blog post once or twice, but there was just too much to describe and I didn't know where to start. I did, however, write a daily journal while I was there that was pretty detailed so if you have been waiting on edge for four months ready for South Africa synopsis, hit me up and we can set up a tentative schedule to do some journal readings together. For now, suffice it to say that it was absolutely the most wonderful and enlightening experience of my life. For now, let me just let a few pictures do the talking:

Me + the Indian Ocean!

Riding in the truck bed back from the boma in the African sunset

Cool kids can't die

Me and Emily tranquilizing wildebeest like it's our job!

The whole crew on one of our last days in the field! Left to right: Jasmine, Jake, Emily, Some Dingus, Dr. Fore, Dr. Goldman, Allison, Lauren, & Megan

A family of happy hippos in the St. Lucia Estuary! St. Lucia is known most for its hippo and crop population. But tread carefully... Hippos are actually vicious and cause 3,000 deaths a year in Africa! 

Three elephants caught chowing down in Kruger National Park

Africa somehow helped to unveil my strange obsession with beetles. Here is my dead beetle collection (George, Paul, John, and Ringo) in full glory. 

A Blue Wildebeest! We helped to capture some of these guys on one of our first days and I decided that they are my favorite antelope. 

This picture has two purposes: 1) This is Steve the chameleon! The farm manager, George VanderWesthuizen (lol I know quite a name), caught a bunch of small critters for us to play with. 2) The first day there, I tripped over a shrub and my face fell into a thorn tree (thorns are EVERYWHERE there) and this is a pretty good shot of the resulting indentation in my forehead. When I got home I found a very small piece of thorn still lodged in there because I'm very observant and have great hygiene. 

Here is an intimate moment with one of the giraffes we captured in the boma.

This was our last day at the boma! The kid in the background is Zander, Andre's son. He was definitely a big part of our days there.

Here is a shot of the boma that we used to capture giraffes. It had to be raised up from the ground because of their height. The downside to this was that the giraffes could definitely see our legs when running.

Me and Emily in a tree(LS).

And finally Me, Emily, and Zimbabwe in the background. This was located at Crook's Corner in Kruger. 

That's all for this update! I'm going to do a separate post about my wildly interesting Kirksville summer so be on the lookout if you want to hear about organic chem and physics!!!!!!!!!!