St. Lucia

As we drove into St. Lucia, all we could see around us were trees. It was actually relatively odd, because we didn't feel like we were at the beach at all. In retrospect, this is because 5 ecosystems meet in St. Lucia--and one is the mangrove. Skye and Johnny, you'll remember my fascination with these from environmental science. Anyway, this was the forest part.

We drove into the small town (which resembles most small beach towns in lower AL) and checked into our backpackers only to have the owner say, "don't unpack yet, we're going to watch the sun set and have a drink." He only had to tell us once. On the way to see the sunset, we also saw vervet monkeys playing in the streets of St. Lucia. What a lovely place. We walked down to the Protea Hotel which has a deck overlooking the estuary and watched one of the most beautiful sunsets I've seen in a while. Come to think of it, I haven't watched enough sunsets lately. We met some new friends, including Wolfgang, resident beach bum and weed enthusiast who proceeded to smash people from TN. When informed that there was a Tennesseean present, he said, "well, at least you're not from AL!" Double whammy, my friend. We did meet some other generally pleasant folks, as well, including Bree, a teacher from Australia who joined us on our night safari.

While cooking a lovely dinner of chicken spiced with the spices Niv bought at the Victoria Street Market, the owner of the backpackers burst in and said, "if you want to see a hippo, there's one across the street!" And sure enough, there was. Just grazing along. What a lovely place.

We embarked on our night drive at 8 and stayed out until 11 searching for animals, which we found...buffalo, hippo, and even this chameleon that our driver spotted while driving 50 kph in the dark! Good eyes!

The next morning, the girls and I loaded up for a kayaking trip on the estuary. Our guide was a former poacher who had decided to begin working for the tourism industry because it makes more money. I was glad to hear that. His major interest is birds, so we were fast friends! Now, I should remind you that the estuary isn't just your typical body of water. This is a croc- and hippo-infested body of water--two of the most dangerous animals in Africa. YES! Hardcore..it's how I roll. Sure enough, we found a large pod of hippo in the middle of the channel just sunning themselves. Of course, we kept a good distance from them for safety. You may have laughed when I said that hippos are very dangerous. In fact, they cause the most animal-related deaths in Africa every year due to their extremely territorial nature. Since those hippos were a bit in the way, and we weren't going to ask them to move, we turned around to search out some crocodiles. On the way we saw two beautiful fish eagles, which look much like bald eagles, but are bigger.

We finally found a crocodile on the bank of an island in the estuary. It was probably 6 feet long and clearly not hungry since two huge herons (one a Goliath heron--one of my faves) were hanging out there with him. We decided to go a little farther in search of another croc when the fun really began. We did, in fact find a croc--a big'un. And just as we rounded the corner, we hear Emily K say, "Um, I think we're sinking." In fact, they were! She and her rowing partner, not the brightest crayon in the pack were just rowing along when Emily noticed that they were getting further and further behind and rowing was becoming more and more difficult. When she turned around to ask her partner about it, she realized he was sitting IN the water. So our guide had to pull their kayak onto the island not 30 feet from the croc and proceed to empty the water. Luckily, we all remained unscathed. Lesson learned: kayak on cold days when crocs aren't very movement-oriented due to cold-bloodedness.

We returned to Niv in the backpackers to lay out for a while. Here are some pictures with our canine friend who decided to come with.

We then went on a walk to get a better view of the estuary. We also found this tree with odd green growths. No, they don't seem to be fruits. Any botanists amongst us?

We also found these wonderful signs which pretty much sum up St. Lucia. What a lovely place!

Next, we went for a walk along the beach which turned out to be a Broadway sing-along. That's what you get for taking me and Niv on vacation. Turns out we know all, and I mean ALL, of Sound of Music, Fiddler on the Roof, Evita, Les Mis, and several others.

Dinner was at a local restaurant which served pizza with bacon, banana, and pineapple. Niv and I couldn't resist. Turns out, as bad as it sounds, it tastes pretty good.

We finished the night with a power outage and a Zulu singing group which was wonderful. We sat and chatted with some friendly, witty Brits, and then headed to bed to prepare for the long journey in the morning through Swaziland to Mozambique.

A hard life, but someone's gotta do it...

Before I describe to you my glorious, fabulous holiday, I just have to give a little public thank-you to my wonderful aunt, uncle and cousin who sent me a sun-care package in the mail this week! I am now the proud owner of Clinique lip/eye SPF 30 sunblock, Super City Block SPF 40 for my face, and UV-Response Body Cream SPF 50! THANK YOU! It is always needed here in Africa where I apply sunscreen daily! It was such a treat...and, you know that my mother is heaving another sigh of relief by being able to check off one potential threat on her list. Skin cancer, take that! Now, we face the crocodiles. More on that to come...

On July 7, I left for Durban and was picked up at the airport by my friend Kate Meyerowitz who is an outgoing Ambassadorial Scholar from South Africa, headed to San Diego in less than a month. She and her family have a cottage in the Drakensberg Mountains which they were visiting for the weekend and they kindly allowed me to join them. So, we drove up on the evening of the 7th and spent the entire day Sunday there and part of the day on Monday. Here are some pictures of the hike I took up the mountain with Kate's parents. The stream at the top is so clean that you're officially allowed to drink from it!

The picture of the aloe is, of course, for Carl.

On Monday, Kate and I went to see a birds of prey show on the mountain. Very cool. My favorites were the Long-Crested Eagle and the Cape Vulture pictured below (isn't the picture of the Cape Vulture awesome?!).

After returning from the Drakensberg on Monday, we retired to Kate's house to shower up and do some laundry. Kate's brother Andrew and I even got to watch the Braves take on San Diego (to whom they almost lost in the bottom of the ninth!). We then went out to dinner to meet up with my fellow travelers, Cape Town Ambassadorial Scholars Emily Avera and Emily Kenney, Emily K's sister Alli, and my friend Niv. We had dinner at the Harbour and heard the band Love Joint (I think that's correct) which is a relatively big-time South African band. We then retired to our backpackers.

The next morning we awoke early in order to get some breakfast and head to the Victoria Street Market. We bought some spices, etc., but I must show some Jo'burg pride and say that our Oriental Market is far superior, regardless of the vast Indian population in Durban. We then retrieved our rental car and began our journey to St. Lucia. Of course, we made sure we had a music selection first, knowing that we would not have radio for much of the journey. This meant that we bought a few community CDS: A #1s compilation from the 1980s to today, Amy Winehaus, Bob Marley, the new Maroon 5 album, and Cape Town Jazz. We figured that gave us enough that we probably wouldn't be so sick of them by the end of the journey. The drive to St. Lucia is through rolling hills of sugar cane plantations which makes for incredibly beautiful scenery. We passed through small villages, etc., and in a little over 3 hours made it to St. Lucia.

And that is where I'll leave you for now, friends. More to come soon, I promise! Love and miss you all!

Don't feel like dancin'...

We're home! I made it back to Jo'burg from holiday, which was lovely. Really, really lovely. We saw hippos, crocodiles, and vervet monkeys in the wild at St. Lucia, ate street-vended pineapples and cashews in Maputo, talked with Naftal, scouted zebra and elephant at Kruger, and returned home in one piece.

Now, I have to get back to work, and in a serious way. I have to go to school tomorrow and give my kids their mostly abysmal grades. Luckily, it seems they did equally poorly in all of their classes, so they may not be too shocked. I still won't like it, though. Then I have a literature review due on Monday--aaah! Classes begin Tuesday, and then life starts up again in full swing. So, the song which we played over and over on our roadtrip rings in my head--Scissor Sisters' "I Don't Feel Like Dancin'." But I will soon enough.

Promise pictures soon--I just wanted to let you know that I was safe and sound in Jo'burg.

This is the last post before I leave, this time I promise, but I had a few minutes and knew you'd appreciate a post. I happened to realize that I didn't give you a detailed breakdown of where I'm going on my vacation! So, here you are:

Today: I leave at 3 for Durban. My friend Kate is picking me up at the airport and we're driving to the Drakensberg Mountains to her family's cottage there. Here's a picture of the Drakensbert Mountains:

As Natalie says, "geez, Lis, it's a tough life." It is tough, but someone has to volunteer for it.

After two days in the mountains, I will join my friends Emily A., Emily K., Alli, and Niv in Durban where we will stay overnight. If you're interested in seeing more about Durban, follow this tourism link.

The next morning, we're leaving Durban for St. Lucia, South Africa. St. Lucia is in the middle of a huge nationally-protected estuary. It's basically a small beach town with lots of crocodiles and hippos and birds. I should be in paradise! I am going to see if I can't convince the group to go on a whale-watching expedition. It's whale migration season in this part of the world and I've never seen a whale, so I think that should be on my list of to dos. Here's a link about St. Lucia.
In St. Lucia, we're staying at BiB's Backpackers, which looks pretty cool. Check it out. My favorite part are all of the "freebie" activities.

From St. Lucia, we'll drive on to Maputo, Mozambique. Yes, I'm so excited I can hardly stand it. I've already talked to Naftal on the phone and I'm just counting the days. Here's a link to info on Maputo. While in Maputo, the group will go on to Tofo, and I will stay in Maputo with my friend Kristian. Then the group will return after a couple of nights in Tofo and we'll all head to the Kruger National Park. You don't need a link to that--just go back a couple of days in my posts and see pictures. Ok, just kidding, I found information on the birds you can find at the camp where we're staying, and even if Laurie Glenn is the only person to ever look at that, I'm satisfied. I've been wanting to see a broad-billed roller. And just so that my nerdiness is complete, I went out and bought the cutest tiny little binoculars yesterday. They were only R160 and they can fit in your pocket (with some difficulty--womens pants are not made to carry things right now). I'm super excited about using them. I may drive the rest of the crew crazy with my birdiness, but I'm okay with that. They already love me unconditionally, so I think we're fine.

So, I'm pretty excited. We're going on another great adventure with great friends--what could be better?? Ok, yes, if Orlando Bloom volunteered to come with, but I don't see that as much of a possibility, so I'm looking at the bright side of things. Plus, my accompanying friends are much cuter than I--there'd be no guarantee that Orlando would be all mine. So, no, this is the best possible vacation! See you in 11 days!

Strike update

Well, we're finally done with our public workers strike--7.5% is the final offer. Sounds pretty good, except that government got 50%. At least we can all get back to work now.

On the other hand, ESCOM, one of our power companies, has officially gone on strike. When will it all end?!

DMV on crack

For all of you pampered Americans who think a visit to the DMV is possibly worse than going to the dentist and whine about it for a week preceeding and following your five-yearly visit to renew your license, let me introduce you to DMV on crack.

First, I should preceed all of this merry-making with the fact that Desiree and I bought a car. It's a 1995 Nissan Maxima (yes, that's almost exactly my first car), maroon with black interior. It's an automatic in a sea of manual transmissions, we got it for a good deal, and we're excited about being independent. Well, at least codependent but not on Rotarians. Anyway, back to my rant.

So, when you buy a used car in SA, you have to have it re-registered with the Vehicle Registration Centre. This happens to be downtown where 20,000 other people are getting their licenses issued and renewed, and any number of other oddities are occuring. So, you arrive, bright-eyed and busy-tailed at 9:30 figuring you'll be out in two hours. Five hours later, you've eaten your cheese pita and drunk your sparkling Ceres grape juice and done all of the lesson planning you care to do. You have watched every white person who comes in yell at a receptionist and seen every form and been hit on several times. You wait, and wait, and wait. Only to have your name called at the end of the five hours, and to be handed two sheets of paper. TWO. And they are NOT embossed with gold. I could've done better on my laptop.

And, for those of you who think that you have a problem with the receptionists not speaking Spanish, try 11 OFFICIAL LANGUAGES. That's right. DMV on crack.

Crazy Week

Since I've been updating you on my trip with my family (which ended almost a month ago, can you believe it??), I haven't been updating you on what I've been doing. Don't worry, this won't take long.

1. "Marking" papers. That is the word used for grading here. I graded 127 exams and 127 projects and about 40 homework papers. My highest class average was a 64, which isn't off track at my school, so I felt secure but not satisfied with my teaching efforts. My next task is to plan for the next term.

2. Researching. My literature review is due on July 23, but since I'm leaving Saturday for Durban (more on that in a moment), I've been studying non-stop to get as much done before-hand as possible. I don't think I've told you my research topic, but I'm sure you could've guessed it: Human Rights Education in the South African School Curriculum. If you're interested, I can post some good articles on the subject. I'm certainly reading plenty.

3. Weekends--I've spent several weekends with my friend Kristian who is working in Pretoria for the summer and our mutual friend Katy Ginanni. We have visited some great restaurants, the Rosebank African Craft Market, Museum Africa and the Market Theater. Katy and I spent a weekend at the Pilanesberg Game Reserve (not Kruger, but a closer option. It'll do.) and did a lot of birdwatching. Call me a nerd, but in Africa my favorite hobby is bird watching! Last weekend was a Rotary weekend with the District Governor induction Saturday night and our club president's induction on Sunday afternoon. AND, our very own mom Lynne Ward was given a Paul Harris Fellow Award for her outstanding service to Rotary! For you non-Rotarians, that's a heck of a big deal!

4. Trip planning. On Saturday, I leave for Durban to meet up with an Ambassadorial Scholar friend in Durban and to go to the Drakensberg Mountains (again--wooohooo!) with Kate's family to their cottage. Then on Monday, I'll meet back up with Cape Town friends Niv, Emily, Emily, and Alli and we'll head to St. Lucia which is a little town in the middle of a National Park on the coast between Durban and Maputo. Did I just say Maputo? Yes. If you know me well enough, you know that no trip that close to Maputo would see me not driving to the city to see my friends! On our family trip to Kruger, it was all I could do to stay in SA! So we'll spend two days in St. Lucia and then head to Maputo where Kristian will meet us. The group will go on to Tofo and then I'll stay with Kristian in Maputo and visit with Naftal, Telmo, and other friends. On the 16th, we'll then head to Kruger for a couple of days and then back to Jo'burg. The major benefit about this trip (other than it being breathtakingly beautiful and exotic and full of great friends, blah, blah, blah) is that it will be WARM. Forget warm, it'll be HOT! I heard that in Maputo tomorrow it's supposed to be 80 degrees F!!! I can't wait. My swimsuit is ready and so am I! Bring on the sun.

So, I won't be posting for a while unless I just have some good time with the internet at some point during my trip. Hope you all have a great two weeks!

Kruger--final installment!

A final post on the Glenn women trip! And you thought it would never come...

We rose early on the morning of the 6th to head to Kruger National Park, about a five hour drive from Jo'burg. About five minutes after entering the park gate, we were greeted by about ten giraffe grazing on bushes right beside the road. Kruger, like many SA game reserves, doesn't require that you be in a game-viewing vehicle to be in the park. You can hang out with lions, etc. within the comforts of your own vehicle!! This is truly the life. After having our moments with the giraffe, we continued on, only to find a huge white rhino a few km up the road. Wow. What a good start to the day. We got out of our car at the camp lodge and saw three vervet monkeys climbing on the telephone wires. We were in the right place, for sure.

We then headed to our cabin. The "bungalows" at Kruger are quite nice with several beds in a common area, a kitchen area, and a bathroom. They even had soap with the SA National Parks logo, a male kudu, with which Mommy was thoroughly impressed! We settled in for the night and began to watch Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil...and then we paused it to make sure that noise was really what we thought it was...yep! A lion roaring in the distance! Definitely in the right place. We went to bed at a whopping 9pm in order to be up in the morning for our morning walk.

The morning began at 5:15 for a walk at 5:45. We greeted our two ranger friends, Surprise and Lourens, for a walk through the bush. Katie was a bit concerned about the rifles the two men had, though to be honest, I think we were all glad they had them! We were the only three on the hike, so we got lots of personal attention. This is good since we're an inquisitive bunch. We learned about every kind of dung you can imagine (for a good story, ask Katie about white rhino dung), dung beetles, elephant tracks, and flowers. We were in nature nerd paradise. We only saw a few impala, but we learned how to know when predators were around from Grey Lourie calls and how to locate honey from the Honeyguide's song. We then returned to our bungalow to shower and get in the car for a bit of a drive on our own.

After the drive, we had lunch/dinner, and had our evening game drive. Sadly, it was a bit cold and rainy for that one, but we still saw some great sights. In addition, we had a sunrise drive in the morning where we saw some more game before departing. Here are some pictures of our time at Kruger:

Do you see this lion? I was really five feet from him. We got that close, the driver stops the OPEN AIR VEHICLE in which I am in the front and LOWEST seat, and stops the engine. I didn't like it one bit. And then I accidently took this picture with a FLASH! I thought I was a goner, for sure.

Vervet monkeys outside our bungalow!
Pictured above is a scrub hare--an African bunny!

Cute baboon family to the left, hey? See the baby on the mom's lap?

These elephants crossing the road nearly trampled a car! It was fabulous!

On the night we returned from Kruger, we had a delightful dinner with my friend Katy Ginanni who took us to a wonderful Thai restaurant near her house. Katie Glenn found out that evening that she really enjoys duck!

The next day, we headed to McAuley House School to see the primaries do their assembly and to show the fam where I work. We then went out to lunch with Lynne and Peter. Here's a nice photo of almost my entire family!

And so, the Glenn women returned to Murfreesboro (minus Lisa, of course) with only a partially hair-raising experience in NYC with US customs. All in all, a trip well-spent! Anyone else want to come visit now??