Springtime in San Diego

So it's been a long while since I've posted, and I do apologize. My time in San Diego has actually been wrapping up! Word on the street is that my dearest AngiePants will be flying in from Florida on June 1st to drive back home with me :) But I will post about that later.

For now, lots of fun things have happened in the last few weeks. For one, a coworker of mine just received his pilot's license over the Christmas holidays. Eager to get his hours in, he agreed to fly another coworker and I about an hour north to a San Diego wine town called Temecula.

Kurt even let me fly the plane for a bit! Yay!

In Temecula we met yet another coworker at her weekend winery job and got some free pours! Look!


Another thing I've done recently is attend a Padres game at Petco Park. It was thoroughly enjoyable, and unlike Camden Yards, they play funny videos of animals in between innings (thank you Petco). As you might imagine, this was my favorite part of the whole game, but it didn't keep me from snapping some pretty pics of the stadium:

All in all, my time in San Diego over the last 8 months has been very pleasing, and I am definitely going to miss it. I hope everyone is doing well and I will be posting more soon.

Cheers! ~ Shub :)

The Safari Trip

I mentioned I would post about the Safari we went on! Why have I not done that yet? Perhaps because I'm becoming more and more certain that I'm the only one that reads my blog. But it's not about being read! It's about being written! Or something.

Anyways, after all that work (and by work I mean playing with children all day long) in Richmond, in the middle of the Karoo Desert, we packed our bags and headed north to a very far away game reserve called Madikwe. Madikwe consists of 75,000 hectares of land and over 30 different lodges you could visit. Even so, it's hours away from everything. After some agonizing dirt roads that kept us questioning whether our tiny rental car would make it, we arrived at a total five-star river camp called Thakadu. It was FABULOUS.


The camp itself has many common areas, for eating and hanging out and such, and you sleep in tents. But these are no ordinary tents. This was the most comfortable bed I slept in all trip, and when I got sick on the last day, it was my saving grace. With daily chocolates on my pillow and an awesome pair of free slippers, it couldn't have been more worth the money.

So when you go on safari, you have to be up and about when the animals are up and about. Since they get up when the sun does, you must as well. A 4:30am wake-up calls leads into 5am breakfast to be on the road by 5:30. 3-4 hours of wildlife later, you're back to sleep off the afternoon and prep for the evening game drive, around 5:30pm. What a life! We only got to experience it for a few days, but it was definitely one of the coolest things I've ever done. And every second we were out on a game drive, I could think of nothing but Lion King. Every time. Without fail. So if you're a fan of the Disney classic, here's some familiar faces:

ZebraMan

Wildebeest, AKA tramplers of Mufasa (they are actually quite dull and boring animals)

Long neck

Simba and Sarabi

Zazu and Pumba

Oh and some elephant butts.

We also saw jackal, mongoose, hyena, impala, kudu, monitor lizards, tons of beautiful birds, and some very cute dung beetles.

My very last day there was unfortunately spent in bed, with crippling stomach spasms that I've taken to calling my African parasite. Thankfully it went away after I got back to the states and all tests for everything came back negative. However that morning, while everyone else was on the game drive, I had quite an interlude with some ridiculous monkeys outside my tent. They were extremely noisy and woke me up, so I went out onto the porch to see what was going on, only to realize the monkeys were jumping on my tent and fighting with each other. They saw me on the porch, we had a bit of a stare-down, they decided I was a formidable foe, and left. Ha!

So I will post all the safari photos on facebook for a more extensive look at the wildlife. Hope you enjoyed the Disney throwback. I will also be posting soon about my spring break trip back to San Francisco.

I will leave you with some awesome photos. A beautiful African sunset one night was only strengthened in awesomeness by an amazing moonrise directly opposite.

Happy start of springtime!

Shub :)

Updates on the big adventure

So a few posts back I mentioned this whole Peace Corps thing as the "big adventure" in my life. That it is. Here's the most recent update:

Last week through a very rapid turn of events I got interviewed over the phone and received a nomination for the Peace Corps. Hoorayy!!!! This by no means, however, is a guarantee of anything. From my understanding, it simply means that my recruiter (in Los Angeles) has recommended me to the next step of the process (in DC). I now have to complete very extensive medical, dental, legal, and suitability checks before I can even think about getting an official invitation letter. I have heard that this part of the process can take anywhere from 1 to 8 months. OH BOY. I have also heard that it's always worth the wait. And since I want this more than anything I will wait. As long as I have to.

For now I know three things about my potential assignment:
1. Some sort of secondary science education (anywhere from elementary through HS)
2. Somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa
3. Sometime November of this year (hopefully)

All of this is subject to change, and as I have been told multiple times in many different letters, I need to be patient.

So just keep your fingers crossed for me, would you?

Thanks,

Shub :)