Weeks seem to just fly by here at CCF. It's great to just be able to work really hard and do your best to be helpful. I have really been enjoying my time here.

Monday was pretty boring. Jess, Stacy and I went to do observations in the morning (I should add that my manual driving skills have significantly improved). This time the cats were very uneventful and so it was a lot of sitting around in the sun. I now have great sock tan lines. For the rest of the day I went to feed the cats with Matt. It's nice because that way we can always get the fecal collections I couldn't get earlier. We finished pretty quickly so I went to help people with the pen maintenance. The five of us mowed, pulled out weeds, and raked the area around the cheetah pen. It looked so much better after we finished. That night Laurie had left again. She won't be back till June I think. Unfortunately I never really got to know her and it seems I never will. Since she is gone Allie will be staying at Laurie's house for her last week to be with the dogs (per Laurie's request). Naturally this required a fun last night together at Boskop. Rosie, Meg, Allie and I had chips, chocolate, and other snacks and watched Tarzan. Allie wanted me to cut her hair. Unfortunately she needed a straight cut, but I didn't have great scissors. It looks even, but I know it's not perfect. She loves it though.

Tuesday Jess and I did the experiment with the ball. Unfortunately it was just like the previous day. None of the cheetahs were very responsive to the balls at all. The most they did was sniff it and then go back to sleeping. Oh well. As usual I went feeding again with Matt. I gave him some of my music to download and he said that Americans always like the same kind of whiny songs without any real tune. This led to us listening to music on my laptop and no matter what I played he didn't really like that much. Out of 470 songs he only liked/kept 4 of them. Well I suppose you can't win with everyone. Afterwards I went to help James varnish a bunch of wooden platforms to prevent termite damage. It was a lot of fun and we finished them quickly with a lot of people helping. Meg and I then decided we should go find Allie at Laurie's house for dinner. While we were there Yoran let us go pet the Stars (3 cheetahs). They are always absolutely adorable. Again they all came up to me and started licking all over while I was sitting down. One of them started nibbling on part of my shirt and when I tried to pull it out she gripped harder. Yoran in the end had to help me get my shirt back and luckily it was unharmed, but covered in cheetah slime. It was really gross, but I washed it out pretty good. After dinner Meg, Allie, and I all went to the late night game count with Matti. It was a lot of fun. We rode in the back of the truck and had two spotlights. It was freezing and luckily Matti brought three coats for us to use so just my hands froze from holding the light. We didn't see a lot, but we had some great sightings of aardvarks, an ard wolf, and lots of oryx. Regardless of the lack of animals, we had a lot of fun anyway.

Wednesday Jess and I continued observations. We had so many problems seeing Merlot and Klein. After about 6 times of circling their pen we finally saw them partially through the trees. Most of the observation however, consisting of them laying down and we couldn't see if they were really doing anything. At least we finished before lunch still! Matt, Kate and James all left for a meeting and weren't back in time for afternoon stuff so they asked Rosy and I to do the centre feeding. Rosy had dish duty so I helped her, but then we were late to do the centre feeding for tourists. We had to run and get the meat which luckily Jess let us use the truck for, and I knew how to do the rest. The problem is that neither of us knew what pills to give Cruise. Luckily Anais was there and was able to tell us. After that I had to round up all the pen maintenance people and get them working. It wasn't too bad, but most helping had to leave for a game count. In the end it was Suzie and I for a while. Finally Matt came back from the meeting and told us that was good enough. It was a long day, but really good. That night we stayed with Allie in the common room. We were really tired and didn't want to make a lot of noise so we just watched Qwest for Camelot on Meg's laptop and went to bed. Saturday night is Allie's last night and so we plan to do a lot more that night.

Thursday was very relaxing. Jess and I only had to do some make-up observations so we were done by 9:30am. I was glad because I got to go feed the girls in Bellebenno with Allie, Rosie, and Meg. Anytime we drive with Matt it is like a dance party so we had a blast. After feeding there wasn't really anything left to do though so I just did some computer work for things and that was it. It was kind of nice to have time to just relax a little. Meg wasn't feeling well so we went back to Boskop early and just had cereal for dinner. We decided to eat chocolate and watch Man From Snowy River on my laptop in the room.

Friday we started another day of observations. Again we had problems seeing Merlot and Klein. After going around their pen a few times, giving up and going back, we finally found them and at a location we could easily see them. It seems the cheetahs here are just always resting! Jess and I had to make a run later in the day to go collect fecals for Cruise who is farther away. It was awesome because we saw a large cat cross the road in front. When we got to that spot we stopped and I could see the wild cheetah sitting and looking at us from the tree. What a sight!! We don't know what one it is or anything, but we think it's not the two wild boys that are seen more often because they are always together. Later on in the day a lot was going on because Chewbakka (Laurie's ambassador cheetah) who is 14 yrs old was really sick. He stopped eating, was vomiting, and drinking a lot of water. The speculation was that he may have kidney failure, but they put him down to do some tests and get a blood sample to check. It seemed he wouldn't recover from the anesthesia, but by the next day he seemed fine and HUNGRY! I don't know if he'll be okay, but for now he seems better.

Friday was great. Our alarm didn't go off, but I woke up at the right time anyway. I needed to get to the office early to do mirror testing. The first two to test however were Harry and Hermione. They are always difficult to shift in to the smaller pen to test with. I cut small pieces of meat, but they wouldn't come at all. In the end Matt and Kate showed up, cut up small snacks of meat for the neighboring four boys along with the girls, and then called them in. That worked like a charm. As always they were great at looking at the mirror and checking themselves out. This time we had a bit of an audience too, but at least it didn't affect the cheetah's behavior. We finished early and while I waited for lunch I filled out a survey on the ten cheetahs we are working on. It was surprisingly hard to "categorize" cheetahs based on various characteristics like activeness, aggressive towards humans, etc. The afternoon was fun as well. Matt asked me to help move the 8 girls in the Eland pen so the fence could be fixed. Some time the previous day an oryx broke the fence we determined. After we finished moving the girls, Kate and James came and felt that perhaps the oryx got inside the cheetah pen. They took a gun because we would have to kill it if we found it. We drove inside the pen and found oryx tracks confirming it must have gotten in with the cheetahs. I'm sure the cheetahs had a good chase! We later found another part of the fence damaged and assumed the oryx escaped there, because we never found anything in the pen. After that Allie, Rosie, Meg, and I all went to finish feeding with Matt. Also, to make the day even better I finally got to play volleyball! There were only four of us, but it was really fun. The only problem was that anytime the ball went out of bounds it would get covered with stickers that are really pokey. Veronika and I want to play a really good doubles game though at some point with others that play volleyball. Maybe some new volunteers coming in the next little while will play. Later I was able to get on the internet for a while and surprisingly my friend Jen was on Skype for once! We tried several times, but we just couldn't get it to work. In the end we could see each other, but only she could hear me. Well something was better than nothing. Apparently the internet connection is so weak here that skype is a little difficult. That night we watched Confessions of A Shopaholic and Moulin Rouge for Allie's last night. It was a lot of fun, especially to have a big sleep over with us girls.

This morning we got up at 6 am (only 5 hrs of sleep) to see the sunrise from the tower nearby. It was a great view in the morning with the sun breaking between the clouds. We went back to sleep until it was time for Allie to go. Meg and Rosie cried for a good while and it was sad to see her leave. Allie is the type of person that is always silly and makes you laugh so things will not be the same without her. We watched 27 Dresses while we waited for brunch to be ready and to lighten the mood. During the beginning the wash room started flooding with water. The sink that the water drains to from the washers was overflowing onto the floor. I missed the beginning of the movie while I tried to sweep out all the water outside. It was a serious mess, but nothing got ruined I think. That drain just couldn't handle that much dirt and things so it wasn't draining very quickly. I'm glad our washer at Boskop doesn't have that problem. Now we are just waiting to go back to Boskop and relax. It's been a good weekend.