Written in Africa, but posted only now, because I couldn't check my LETU mail or access anything on the blogger domain, until now.

Ah! My last Monday in Africa. Life in the Barn continues inexorably on. The weather has taken a rainy turn for the last week, so the archaeological work has slowed a bit. I did, however, enjoy helping some other students with their projects (which still got us in the rain) such as trying to find baboons, leopard tracks, or most interestingly of all, termites.

Nils and I ran his little termites through these mazes to see if they learn patterns or anything. I don't think they do. Three maddening but hilarious hours watching these brainless creatures crawl through a maze... anyway, we had a good long talk about universities and I think I am beginning to grasp the German educational system. It's very different, though I think becoming more like, that of the United States.

I also helped Karin look for leopard tracks and set up cameras. She got a totally sweet close-up of a leopard at night; apparently it was photogenic enough to pause for two takes, flash and all.

The archaeological work here has been interesting, and it's certainly a cool place to do it, but I'm a tad disappointed with the lack of supervision here. If you have a graduate project and want to organize your work and just go for it, it's great. But for wee undergrads without projects, like myself, sometimes it's a bit... open-ended. It would be cool to do something in grad school that would bring me back out here for longer, but somehow I doubt that would work out.

There's been three new students arrive since I've been here, and all three are German girls! What is it with this place and Germans (and girls for that matter. Hello LeTourneau?) I think four of us, myself included, will leave in this upcoming week, so that should put the Barn back down to "normal" size. The Barn's a bit crowded now, but never for very long.

Nils took some quality photos of baboons grooming each other on these rocks. He's one of those kindred spirits who toys around with Photoshop... so naturally we had to do a picture with several of us sitting on the rocks, "grooming" each other monkey-style, so that he could incorporate us into the pack.

On Thursday I went up to the peak of Mt. Lajuma for a third and final time. It's different everytime you go up. This time a storm was coming over our backs, over the mountains and on into the farmlands to the south. It was awesome, to look up and see the blue erased by clouds, to see the shadow advancing over lands miles away, to see rain and lightning in the distance.

I went with Tazz and Molly. Molly left Saturday, so Friday we had a goodbye braai (like bright without the T), which is the South African word for barbecue. Names for the festivities included the "Molliday" or "Molly's Braai Braai." You are speechless, might I say, stunned by our wit.

We had grand plans of playing a soccer game, and cooking outside over the fire and then it rained. Before it did, I struggled long and hard to make a bed of coals with wet wood, and very nearly had it, when the rain put the nail in the coffin. We cooked steaks over the stove, but it's so hard to stay up late past that at the Barn -- it gets dark and you just want to crash.

~~~~~~~~~~~ (Continued in the States) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So, my last town day, spent again at the same cafe except this time I got TWO milkshakes... I didn't have to spend much money of course on much else. I was stymied in my attempts to blog and answer emails and such because of blogger and LETU mail all deciding to be down at the same time.

Then there was only half a week left... two *more* German girls came, but then two were going to leave the same time as me, so I guess it evens out. Some previous "barnie" students visited on my last day; after dinner we crashed their braai and sat around the fire laughing and talking about animals and stuff. Erik recounted being attacked by a black eagle, and these two other Dutch guys roasted these humongous steaks. They talked back and forth in Dutch a lot, to the point where my German pal Nils nudged me and said, "OK, now I know how you feel all the time." Europeans are, quite typically I think, much better at being bilingual than the lazy Americans.

The last few nights we really enjoyed looking at the stars. I learned some more about Orion and the Horsehead Nebula, which Nils enthusiastically pointed out from the star chart he printed on Monday. I found the Southern Cross, a pretty cool looking cross constellation you can't see in the northern hemisphere. Cool stuff.

I left Lajuma on Thursday the 16th, not entirely looking forward to 30+ hours of non-stop traveling. It turned out alright though.

I rode the 5-hour bus ride from Makhado to Jo'burg, and the taxi to the airport with Inga; I think we both appreciated having company for the trip. I met her brother, helped her get some ticket hassles sorted out since her English wasn't so good, said bye and then it was off!

I had a nice relaxing time in Jo'burg International, but after that, I had no time to even stop for a drink in Heathrow or Dulles in DC. Run run run to catch the plane, but I actually got all my flights and miracle of all miracles, my luggage was waiting for me.

I should *not* have been on the plane for Indy out of DC, but God was merciful, that truly is the only explanation for it. You have no idea how happy I was to be on that plane and not spending who knows how long in the airport. At the very least, airports aren't such a mystery anymore.