Semester over!!!

So another week has passed, and while at times it feels like time is dragging (particularly those days when I am studying for 12 hours preparing for the weekly test), time in general is flying by and it is hard to imagine that I have been here for 4 weeks, and the first semester has now finished, and we are enjoying a relaxing week off.

As usual it has been another busy, interesting, week filled with lots and lots of learning. We started out with an astronomy, survival and navigation lecture, then Monday night went on our first sleepout of the course. We were all very excited about sleeping out in the middle of a river bed, in Big 5 country-needless to say there were several very loud snorers which combined with the numbing cold meant it wasnt so much a sleep out as a wake out-but fantastic none the less as we got to listen to hyenas calling most of the night, and watching the moon cross the sky (would have watched the stars, but with the moon so bright there just werent any to be seen) We all had to take straws in keeping watch to make sure that there werent any animals that decided that we either looked nice and tasty or didnt like the look of us at all!!

The rest of the week passed in more lectures (learning about taxonomy and ecology), and doing a sweep across our reserve for snares (poaching is a real problem here at the moment), game drives, and topped off by a bushwalk in Big 5 country. The walk turned out to be a big highlight of the week, as our group got to see Lions up close on foot, one of the best sighting we are likely to see-chilled only 100m or so in front of us-you know it is a good sighting when the guides want a photo of themselves with the lions to show their friends!!!!

I also got to drive my first game drive, a fantastic experience which I cant wait to do again. It is a bit of a challenge seeing over the bonnet, and round the tracker on the front seat, but all in all I did very well, only driving the tracker into one thorny plant (a buffalo thorn which is one of the worst your can get caught in!) I even got a round of applause from my fellow group members when I finished!

Spotted Hyena (sorry it was very dark an wouldnt co-operate by standing still)

Sleepout

Sleepout

Lions on our bushwalk (I promise there are lions there!

Friday we had to head into town to buy groceries for the next week as we cater for ourselve, and those that were heading off collected their cars, then back to camp for some much needed study. Luckily the tests this week didnt seem as hard, or the information has just sunk in a lot easier but I feel like I have dont quite well in them-a nice feeling!!! Time will tell on how I have actually done though.