A real safari! 2/4/10

Wow guys! A week has flown by without any time to write about it! And oh the adventures we’ve had!! I must go back to Thursday’s safari with Sandy (our bio teacher).  We arrived to Tala Game reserve, hoping that we might get to see a few animals, with no idea what was actually in store for us.  Two safari jeeps took us all over the private reserve, revealing kudus, super tall giraffes, zebras, galloping wildebeests, grazing rhinos, swimming hippos, frantic ostrich, pumas (warthogs) and so much other wild life. On the muddy road our jeep tipped slightly sideways when we splashed through a puddle.  The biggest surprise was how magnificently large the rhinos were: they were grazing toward us with their giant tusk and intimidating death stare, even our tour guide semi-panicked.  We had to do an experiment where we named all the vegetation species in a square every 2 meters for 20 meters, mostly surveying grass.  Even though the exercise was tedious, I learned to recognize how beautiful each tiny part of the ecosystem is, down to every plant and loved giving them all wild names like African sunshine, button, teacup, and fuzzy grass.  The most striking thing to me about the day is that everything in nature is made for a purpose, from the giant grazing herbivores to the dung beetle that cleans up everyone’s mess.  Without any part, utter chaos would break out, unable for any part to survive.  That just testifies to how amazing God’s creativity is and how perfectly he designed everything with a purpose, even down to the termites that make good soil.