Thursday, July 25, 2013

Week 3 & 4

Research has been surprisingly smooth sailing up to this point. We've done duplicates with the mouse lung and we know we have a stable quantification method now. Literature research has been unhelpful in trying to figure out if formalin is going to mess up our very expensive columns/MS but after a little pilot experiment we figured its not a good option. Next step is to test a filtering purification system.

During the weekend a group of us planned a safari trip to Hluhluwe-iMfolozi park, a world heritage site. The driver who picked us up was only a few years older than myself and had brought his best friend from high school along for the ride. On the journey he explained how Zulu music today is heavily influenced by House music while listening to some of his favorite CD's. The game park was in Zululand, his hometown, so he had lots of stories about growing up in a commodity rich environment. All along the trip were acres and acres of sugar can fields and gum tree (lumber) fields. Off the in the distance we could see numerous factories he said produced steel, glass, aluminum, lumber and coal. Overall, there are lots of jobs available except they're all unskilled labor intensive positions. His dad was a lumber worker but he had not interest in following in his footsteps.





























We arrived at our lodge in St Lucia just before the sunset. The lodge itself was a quant little place with a big park across the street and upon check in they gave us many warnings about walking around at night. This was a normal warning for South Africa except it wasn't crime you needed to worry about, its the hippos. I thought it was partially a joke and partially just an overly cautious warning about something that has happened a couple times before. Turns out it isn't, in fact the park across the street must have tasty grass since a late night star gazing attempt didn't make it more than 3 minutes before we heard a sound of munching in the dark distance. Its surprisingly hard to work up the courage to shine a light on/photograph a thousand pound animal at night when all you can really make out is a black mass in the distance and the sound of something massive not to far away. So a description will have to do. Either way, a night drive, wetland tour and big 5 game drive over the next 3 days showed me plenty of beautiful scenery and animals to make me feel like I was really in Africa.

St. Lucia the beautiful.
















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