What's Next in East Africa?

So today is the last day of this years East Africa study abroad program. One student has already left the grou and soon we will all be scattering for our individual adventures. While I absolutely adore every memeber of this group and will truely be sad to see them go, I am exceptionally excited to move more as an individual and spend some time away from the group of 25. However, now I have to start making plans for my next few weeks of travel before going home. This upcoming week a group of us (Charles, Mika, Sarah, Rachel, Whitney, Adam K, Adam L and I) will travel up to Moshi in order to climb Killimanjaro. After hearing so much about this mountain from various sources, I am extremely excited to see all its various ecosystems and to make it to the top. After that Leonora and I are going to travel up to Uganda in order to experience the culture, see chimps and hopefully engage in some outdoor activities. While (besides Killi) my travels aren't too planned I am so excited to be able to follow my interests and explore the various places that interest me. So all in all it should be pretty wonderful!

Reflections on Safari

As I mentioned in an earlier post, a few days ago we returned home from a wonderful safari experience. While so much (including the individual landscapes and communities) were so familiar to me, I was amazed by how many new things I learned and experienced over this last month. To review and explore in more depth the various ecosystems was absolutely amazing and it really reinstilled in me an appreciation of natural spaces and communities who have adapted to the ecosystems in which they live rather than striving to dominate the enviroment. I continue to respect in particular the hadza people for this and while I by no means want to enter a hunter and gathering lifestyle, I hope to incorporate some lessons from our time with them into my life in the United States. Alongside these lessons, certain experiences stuck out to me as particularly beautiful or overwhelmingly new. These include (to name a few of counlessly many):
* Listening to our Maasai guildes sing and dance for us at Oldonyo Sambu and to have Bushka so extremely excited that he rocked his necklace of.
* Sitting by a sparking fire while experiencing the blues rhythms and dancing thrills of the hadza's musical legacy.
* Observing the endless beauty of the savana grassland.
* The best lesson ever - Hearing about and watching a troop of dung beetles roll and battle over their balls while being surrounded by maasai herdsmen wondering why a group of 25 wazungus were crouched over bugs.
* Catching a hyrax with out hadza guides and dragging it across the bush for the remainder of the day.
* Sleeping out by the fire and watching the endless stars.
There really are far too many to recount here but hopefully this can give a taste of the beuty of safari!!!

Calendar Updates

Check out the updated calendar to more information on my travel plans for the next few weeks in East Africa

Going home

So things have changed and I will no longer be going to Mali after the end of my adventures in East Africa. While I was excited to visit this country and new area of the world, I truelly am overwhelmingly relieved to be able to go home for a while particularly for the holidays. So I will be back in Boulder on December 24th!!!
On a lighter and oh so happy note, I just returned form safari yesterday and it was asolutly wonderful!!! We ended with the exact same program as last time I was in East Africa, but it was wonderful to visit all these places again and to reconnect with some people from two years ago. So yeah.. it was a pretty amazing month.
Better go... more posts later...