This week has certainly been an interesting and somewhat exciting one. It all began with rhino tracking Monday morning. Meg and I were really excited because we had never done it before. We went out with Rob while he tried to find out where the two rhinos with radio tracking devices were. He found both signals and at one point we were about 500m to 1K from one he thinks, but we can't go by foot through the bush to find them. Nevertheless it was a pleasant drive and I saw many of the dams that the rhinos use. That afternoon I finished a video project which Allie had started. It was rather boring, but I finished all the data entry and was glad to be done with it.

Tuesday I finished more data entry for the inventory of the gift shop. Luckily I finished early enough so I could go with James that afternoon to go look for the giraffes. He is working on a giraffe project where we are trying to update the giraffe identification book by finding and taking pictures of all the giraffes we have. It's no easy feat! After nearly 2 hours of driving we finally found them. There were 11 giraffes in that one spot and we tried to take as many pictures as possible before they went behind the trees. We never expected to find so many and it was quite a site! It was also a fun ride because we saw lots of birds and animals along the way as well. James saw a bird that had not yet been recorded as being here in this area.

Wednesday I went on a vegetation survey with Matti which is always a lot of fun. I showed the new volunteers how to use the GPS and the other tools for the survey. That afternoon I did pen maintenance with some of the volunteers. We were right next to the Stars' pen and they were happily purring and watching us. We finished early and Kate let out the Stars so we could pet them. Petting cheetahs is always an amazing experience. One of the volunteers was so cute and said that it was the best day of her life. At 5 pm I went to the gift shop with some other volunteers to help with inventory. We started doing a count for all the items in there. Naturally I picked the hardest section with all the small jewelry items and things. I wasn't anywhere close to being finished by dinner time. Unfortunately I had to go back to Boskop so I had to finish up the inventory the next morning. That night we watched Tomb Raider at Boskop and I was so glad that my laptop is big enough that it can work well for 6 people or so to watch a movie.

Thursday I spent the entire day working on inventory. It was a mess! Half the time I couldn't find the item numbers and had to handwrite descriptions. Then there would be loads of items without numbers all together. By that afternoon we had finally counted all the items and just had to enter them in. Bridget and I worked together going over all the problem items and figuring out the item numbers and descriptions. It was a long process. Finally I could enter all the counts into the spreadsheet and we were done! It took us all day and by the end we were practically dead with exhaustion. For a moment Bridget thought she had deleted the worksheet and we almost thought we had lost everything! Luckily, she had deleted a different one and all our stuff was still saved. In the end it should all be worthwhile though and the gift shop inventory should be easy to maintain after that. It was a really long process though. At 5pm that night we watched Enchanted with Matt in the common room. Since he was leaving the next day it was the only day we could watch it. We had a surprisingly large group, and had a blast singing along and watching the movie. Matt had no fear at all to sing along with every song, and I must say more men should be willing to sing along and watch girlie movies. I only know of a few. That night there was a night game drive with James that Meg, Rosie, and I went on. Right in the beginning we saw the two wild boys (cheetahs) named Sam and Hifi. It was a good start that just got better as the night went on. We saw things such as Eland, Barn owls, Kudu, Oryx, some Aardvarks, a few porcupines, and the highlight of the night was the great sighting of the Caracal. We could see it clearly which James says few people get to see one their entire time at CCF. That night we saw two, possibly three, but the other ones were not so close and easy to see. One may have actually been a serval, but it was too far away to tell. Either way it was a great night and James was great at explaining neat details about the animals as we went along so I learned a lot. We stopped halfway through for hot chocolate, coffee, or tea and looked at the stars. It's so nice to be in a place where you can always see tons of the stars and the milky way. I'm trying to brush up my knowledge of the constellations.

Friday morning I went on a scat walk with Meg looking for anything left from the Wild Boys. Unfortunately we didn't find anything, but it was a nice walk nevertheless. Later we went feeding with Kate and Gail. It's always a fun experience feeding the cats, and my absolute favorite part was seeing Cruise with the four boys now. I hadn't seen them since they were put together, but Cruise looked pretty sickly. It took him a while to come up for food. His fur is pretty scraggly around his neck and his face looks a little sunken. He still ate so hopefully he is ok. However, he is about 13 years old, just had a testicle removed, and is cancer positive. He won't live forever, but I'm glad that he at least seems to be doing well and happy with the other boys. That afternoon I went again with James on a giraffe drive with the other volunteers. This time we only saw one giraffe, but I finally got to see Eland during the day. I never really knew what they looked like so I wasn't complaining. That night James decided to play a video game which sparked into hours of laughs. We discovered that on a golfing game you could create your character so detailed that you could have scars, no teeth, beer belly and more. James's character looked like a some kind of giant bum with a massive belly and skinny everything else. Meg's character was a ginger midget with oversized shoulders and arms, and a massive rear end. It was hilarious. After a bit of golf, they then played a fighting game that no one could figure out the controllers. Despite Meg saying she has no experience with video games, she kicked everyone's butt. Somehow she had mastered many fighting combinations. We spent about an hour or so after she went to bed trying to figure out the controls, but we couldn't figure everything out. It was fun.

Saturday was pretty chill. I revisited the video project much to my dismay. Now I have to analyze the spreadsheet and create a report. I'm not ecstatic about that, but it needs to be done. Luckily I had an escape and was able to go feeding. This time Cruise seemed better and even ran a bit with the other boys. They were so adorable. In Bellebenno there is always one person to close the gates with the cheetahs. The cheetahs come pretty close to you so you need a stick. Unfortunately someone had taken the sticks out so all I had was a piece of a tree we found. We decided just to be safe we wouldn't go in with the feisty boys. It's still a little nerve-wracking being right next to them and not having much to defend yourself with. After lunch we all went back to Boskop and I went with Diana (Peace Corp volunteer her) to a wedding across the street. She didn't want to go by herself and be the only white person. In the end the two of us were the only white people. They loved having us though even though we didn't really know the bride or groom. Everyone wanted us to take pics of them and have us in pictures. It was really neat. I didn't understand any of the ceremony since it was in Afrikaans and some other local language. They wanted us to stay longer for food and celebration but I decided to go home. Gail, Meg, and I ended up cleaning the house and mopping the floors. It's ridiculous how much fur is all over the place! After dinner and returning to Boskop some other showed up at the house and we watched a movie with the projector together. It was a pretty great day.

Today is pretty relaxing. It's been a fun week and I'm looking forward to next week. I start observations on some cheetahs again this week and we'll see how it goes. It may be too hard to watch these cheetahs I've chosen because they have such large pens. Nevertheless I am really hopeful and it will be nice to be out in the field every day again.