Helloooooo 2018

Hi guys and welcome to a new year!

My trip to America for the holidays was lekker! Though I didn’t get to see everyone I had hope to see (talking about you, Pavlick), I still had such a blast catching up with friends and family – I got to get lots of love from my boy, Diesel, go to the National Zoo’s BrewLights with Graham, Poolesville’s holiday light up night with the Bug and dad, wine tasting with Casey, met up with a big chuck of the family for Indiana’s first birthday, went to a hockey game (go Pens!) with Josh and Emily,

caught up with my furbabies and zoo family at the zoo, spent an amazing week with my best friend soul mate Becca, helped her adopt a new cat :-P, saw Star Wars the Last Jedi twice (once was opening night), explored and got lost in DC with Andrew, impacted the minds of some future ecologist at PHS, got to learn more details than I can remember about Teslas, got to play with my toys at the gun range with Matt and Greg, met my absolutely adorable nephew Atlas and spent an amazing week with Erin, Blair, BerBer and Atlas, had a lovely Christmas with the family, then spent a final few days in Maryland catching up with some more family and friends before hopping on a plane back to Cape Town. It was a BUSY four weeks, but I loved every minute of it!

I landed back in Cape Town New Year’s Eve and got to spend it with Joselyn out in Rooiels – such a great way to bring in the new year! Annnnd back to the grind. At Panthera, we hit the ground running. This is going to be an extremely exciting year and very busy year! I will be running camera trap surveys practically all year. I head out to the field at the very beginning of February and am expected to be back around mid-December! Just like before, I will have very limited internet connectivity, but will try my hardest to get a post out as often as I can. And yes, that will mean LOTS of new wildlife photos, if I am not a pro by the end of this year I am giving up. 😛

I am trying to make the most out of my only month in Cape Town. Ryno and I have been going on lots of hikes. I went to my first cricket match last weekend and had an absolute blast! Though I still have NO clue what is going on in cricket, I just now understand that it really isn’t like baseball at all. I spent this weekend in Simon’s Town, I got to go relax on the beach surrounded by penguins! Yes, there are penguins in Africa, they’re called South African penguins, and they are utterly adorable. This morning Vinny and I went on a lekker kayak excursion around False Bay to see the Cape fur seals and another view of the penguins. The weather was AMAZING and made for a perfect morning. Oh yeah… did I mention that it is SUMMER! Woot so I get to enjoy long sunny hot days while my American friends are dealing with some polar vortex (sorry, I’m not sorry).

And now I get to do something I have not done in years and years – school work. On top of an entire year of field work and some busy, exciting new things from Panthera, I am now a graduate student and have deadlines I need to start hitting. So, wish me luck! I will try to get up another post just after set up at my first site.

Toodles!