Wednesday, July 14th

"The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page" - St. Augustine

This morning I woke up, had a cup of coffee, and was ready to go for the morning game drive by 6:30 am. Today, we saw many eye-opening sights. I have been asking our guide, Sammy, as many questions as possible about the animals. They are absolutely fascinating. I learned that elephants have a 60-70 year life span and grow 6-7 sets of molars! The topi and the elephants are the smartest animals we've seen. The buffalo, elephants, and hippos are the most dangerous. We saw a mongoose right before we drove to a deserted location to have "breakfast in the bush." As we climbed out of the mountain green Toyota, which was very similar to a Jeep Wrangler, to eat, I felt as if I needed to pinch myself to know that I was really here in the magnificent place. Words cannot adequately describe how amazing this place is. The morning drive included Sammy, Julia, Lana, Steve, and me. Lana is a language teacher from San Francisco and Steve is a water engineer from Ireland. They are here on their honeymoon!

Later on, a giraffe came 100 yards away from our tents! Giraffes stand so tall to digest their food. We saw the hippos basking in the sun. On our drive, a cheetah was looking to kill a gazelle as he was scouring through the Savannah grass looking to make his move. In the late afternoon, we drove to a Maasai village. At the village, we were greeted by the Maasai men who immediately pulled me and Steve aside to be their volunteers. We had to stand in a circle with them and took turns standing in the center, trying to jump as high as we could while they chanted and clapped. The strongest, supreme man in each village is the one who can jump the highest! Clearly, I did not have the same springs in my legs that they have in theirs! As you can guess, it was a hysterical sight to see. Then they look turns showing us their dances and placed a hat that is made our of lion fur on each of our heads. This hat is placed on whichever male kills the most cattle. Then we saw the inside of their one room homes that are made out of dirt, pebbles, and cow manure. Being 5'3, I was unable to stand up straight inside one of the houses. The women in their villages do a majority of the difficult work. While the men are out hunting, the women are in charge of caring for their children, building the homes, walking miles and miles to carry a 20 liter jug of water on their head (along with their baby on their back), and many other tasks.

On our drive back to the camp, we stopped at Paradise Plain! The best way to describe this is to think of the opening and ending scenes in the Lion King when the animals of every species gather together to peacefully coexist. I took a deep breath and thought, "WOW this is actually really happening right now." Today I received some words of wisdom from one of the other travelers. He told me that many doors are going to open in the near future. You can either walk through those doors or watch someone else walk right through them. I am grateful for the sake of learning on this trip. I am not going to declare myself an expert at anything that I have done. At times, I realized that I lacked experience and needed to be taken under the wing of someone who knew more than I did. Others took me under their wing, and I took others under my wing. With one more night left here, I have a million thoughts running through my head...I have learned so much here...I am excited to go home but how can I leave this place...When will I realistically be back...I promised the students and myself that I will do as much as I can to spread what I have learned to help them...I can't lose this hope once I go home