First Days Are Endlessly Amusing

Yesterday was a beautiful day.

Seriously. Sunny, warm but not beastly hot, green (seriously, the rainy season does wonders), and pretty much amazing. We started out with breakfast at the Hot Spot (the communal eating area) and then went on a tour of the facility. Very informative, I suppose. But the highlight came when we got in our very LEGIT safari truck and went on a drive to see 7 of the cheetahs 

We saw SEVEN cheetahs. Count ‘em SEVEN! There was Bella, Padme, Samantha, Blondie, Dusty, Sandy, and Amani. Our tour guide, Charles, tried to teach us how to differentiate between the different girls. Bella has a “teddy bear face”, Padme “looks angry”, Samantha has white in her eyes, Blondie “looks like a lioness”, Dusty looks like Samantha but without the white and likes to come close to the car, Sandy has a very small head and “looks sleepy”, and Amani has a very large head… yeah, I still can’t really tell them apart unless they’re looking directly at me.



The second half of my day was… not as interesting. I did get to see them feed some of the ambassador cheetahs in a pen, though, which was interesting. They pretty much just CHARGE at the meat in the bowls, grab them and try to run; but seeing no exit, they run back to the bowls to keep it clean while they eat. Cheetahs are very picky. Besides that, I was doing… data entry! YAY! DDD: I was entering really frustrating survey data, too. Frustrating as in a lot of the answers weren’t complete and the survey kept changing slightly. MY RESEARCH METHODS PROF WOULD BE ASHAMED! Ah, well :/

On another note: everyone here speaks Afrikaans except for us interns. Thus, Britanny and Margaret are obsessed with learning it. They are video-taping our former tour guide Charles saying small phrases. They are also practicing the clicks from Charles’ native language so that they can say his real name. (His real name kinda sounds like Da!nome!nome!om!om… with clicks where the ! are) Here are a few of the words we’ve learned transcribed as best I can.

May nahm es- my name is
Ek es van- I am from
Oo handet?- how are you?
Hud- good
En medeo? – and you?

Ien- one
Deviet (very French)- two
Dree- three
Fee- four
Fihve-five
Seis-six
Sieven- seven
Acht- eight
Neeren-nine
Deen- ten

Ek es dohch- I am thirsty

Ek es Blehy- I am happy


Look forward to the next phase in my adventure! (Probably next week, lols)

ps- I did data entry all day today too. I am promised a more interesting schedule tomorrow :)