Ya Ya

I’m sitting here drinking a cup of hot coco and nespray. Nespray is the powdered milk that we feed to our babies when we bottle feed them, but I find it quite tasty! It just makes the coco thick and creamy…yummm. So much has happened since I’ve blogged last that I don’t really even know where to begin and therefore this blog will probably be random and such.
Our house cat has been put to sleep. Ellen and Jakki have left. We’ve gotten two new volunteers and will get another today and 2 more on Saturday. I went to the vet and saw a bush baby get put down-it had been bit by a dog and completely skinned from the neck to the hips. Helped cut a bird’s head off today. Made a mud bath for my bushpigs and had fun playing in it with them- Amy and I were much dirtier than any of the pigs! Went to the beach twice this week- it was lovely!! My tan has a pretty good head start for when Whit and I start our travels.
For those of you who don’t know- I am leaving CROW Dec 17th. I was here two months and have decided to move on for my next two. My college roommate (Whitney) is coming here for her x-mas break and we are traveling from Durban down the coast to Cape Town for two weeks with the Baz Bus and then we are staying in Cape Town for about two weeks. I am getting unbelievably excited!!! Along the way we plan to hike, scuba dive, bungee jump, sit on the ocean, ride an ostrich, work at a game reserve, and do many many other things which just happen to be along the way. After that I will be meeting my sister at some point and going to Kruger National Park and then on to Swaziland. After that I will probably be going back to work at the game reserve or possibly coming to CROW again for the remaining two weeks. It is really odd to think I can now plan out the rest of my time left in Africa. I’m not quite ready for that!
The sky dive is still on but we can’t move forward until we hear back from the newspapers and radio about letting the business that give us money have free advertisement. So I will keep you all informed on that issue- I really hope it is a go before I leave because I am really looking forward to that experience.
Tomorrow Holly, Evelyn, and myself are going to the Drakensburg mountains for two days. We are doing this tour thing that takes us up the Sani Pass in a 4x4 and then into Lesotho. We are staying at a horse farm B&B and will go riding the next day up the mountains to a waterhole and enjoy swimming. This will be the first time since I’ve been here where I haven’t gotten up by 6 to go feed something! We leave tomorrow morning at 5:15am and will return wed night around 8pm or so. I will hopefully feel ambitious enough to blog quickly so that I can let everyone know all about it. I’m charging up my camera as I type this. Then on Friday, Amy, Evelyn, and myself are going to Valley of 1000 Hills for the night and then on Saturday we’re hitting up the beach again because it’s the woman’s national surfing competition. Sat night it’s also the men’s lifeguarding competition and we’ve met a guy, Tambur, who is in it and has invited us to come watch him and then go to the party afterwards- lets just say we are very excited!!!
After this week is over I’ve only got one more full week of work and then I am done. It’s really crazy to think that I was supposed to be here for the full 4 months, but I think if I had to do that I would probably just go home. The way things are done here are just different (to say the least) and there really isn’t anything more to get out of this place once you’ve fed a few animals and been on a couple of rescues and releases. I have enjoyed getting to know a few of the staff members and I have had good experience raising and bottle feeding animals that we don’t have in America- but you can only do the same thing every day for so long. My “normal” day consists of the following:

-Wake up at 6am and make bottles
-Feed 3 Dassies and 3 pigs by 6:30
-Start cleaning the clinic birdcages and feeding them (usually takes from about 7-8)
-Do morning feed, which takes from about 8-11
-Refeed the pigs at 11
-Lunch from 11-12
-Refeed the birds in the clinic
-Do the afternoon feed from 1-2:30
-Gather pondweed and grass for the geese
-Refeed the pigs at 3pm
-Done with work at 3:30
-Do whatever until 7pm when I go and feed the Dassies and Pigs again

That is my day and it is pretty much the same thing day after day after day. I don’t mind it too much but I really couldn’t handle doing it for much longer- I am more and more looking forward to my days off.
I think that’s all I’ve got at the moment- sorry this is boring and random but hey, I’m trying eh? ☺