Today was a massive day. It started with a little bit of classroom work, then we went into the reserve to catch insects and to talk about the biodiversity of the area. As it turns out, the most diverse group of animals in any area is always the insects. For every one large animal, there are at least 1000 insects. We used nets and sheets and ran around the park like maniacs for a half hour, grabbing every insect we could find. After we had collected for a while, we identified the insects up to their order. For those not in the know, the scientific naming of animals goes from domain to kingdom to phylum to class to order to family to genus to species. We are Homo sapiens, which is our genus and species names. After identifying the insects (not bugs, bugs is a much more specific term), we took samples from a new area of the reserve, and repeated the process. On the way, our teacher decided to be a rough rider and drove the bucky super fast through a bunch of puddles. It would have been really fun and awesome if in the process, Kevin hadn’t hit his head on the roof of the bucky, causing his head to split open and bleed profusely. He got stitches. We all laughed.
After we got back, we had a bit of a break before lunch. Then we spent the entire afternoon working on our first assignment—an assessment of the sustainable harvesting rate of rhinos in the Hluhluwe Umfolozi reserve. My homework is awesome. We worked on developing a way to assess the growth rate of these rhino populations, and then to see how many rhinos can be safely harvested before the population has the possibility of going extinct. So, for all of you students who are turning in math assignments and writing boring papers, neener neener neener. It was hard, but Hannah and I mastered it. Plus, it didn’t hurt that when things got rough, Laurence cheered us up with “sweeties,” or south african candy
That night, we had our first party, and it was a shit show. I won’t go into details, save to say that I was happy that I was not really drinking, as there were way too many people to take care of as it was. Lots of beer pong, lots of lady gaga, and lots of fun. Words of the day: Me=Mina, food = Shakooja
The Joke
It's a frickin' elephant
A class of five-year old students are learning to read.
One of them pointed at a picture in a zoo book and said,
"Look at this! It's a frickin' elephant!"
The teacher took a deep breath, then asked... "What did you call it?"
"It's a frickin' elephant! It says so on the picture!"
And so it does...
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