Apr 2007

Well I got 7 days till I'm home and its pretty crazy. I'm definitely ready to be there but looking back it doesn't feel like I've been away for 7 months. I'm still in London now fixin some of Tom's parents house, plumming and painting really. The other day we went to see a football match, West Ham vs Everton. Everton is 5th right now and fighting for a place in Europe but West Ham is fighting premiership relegation so it was a great game. West Ham beat em 1 nil which was sketchy cause we were with some friends that supported West Ham on the West Ham end, but Tom's best mate suports Everton and we were meeting up for drinks after the game. It was all ok and stuff but its rididulous the amount of riot police and stuff sepperating the supporters (especially at a London club like West Ham). They aren't allowed to sit together, not that you'd want to be cheering for the away side in the home section. I'm not taking as many pictures and stuff now so these last Blogs are pretty boring, plus we're just kinda living here, not really being a tourist at the moment which is pretty cool. London is a cool city. Anyway, I see everyone pretty soon! Its wierd having such good friends in too places. I keep thinking that I'll get to see everyone when I get home but I only see half my friends and wait another three months to see the rest.

Ok, the rest of the African photos are gonna have to wait. We've managed to recover most of them but there on CD and a pain to upload most places. After getting back to London on the 7th we headed to Brighton to see off Tom's parents and store some stuff at his grandparents. We've been staying in London after that with some of Tom's friends and in his old house which has a room empty now. Tried to organize a bit of an African reunion in north London at School Disco and it was pretty cool. Basically everyone dresses up like school kids and goes to this massive club. Mel and Sarah came in from outside of London but we havn't heard from the rest of the Africa group yet. Tomorrow we're heading up to Birmingham to visit Chris and Wendy who we met in Thailand and then on to Worster to see Bianca from australia. NOt to lonf til I'm back, tis pretty crazy. Cant' wait to see everyone!!!

You can scroll all over it for close ups or point to different cities and get close ups of the area, see the pictures from there see where i was off to next and occasionaly read about the spot.

Hey hey, all sorts of updtes flying at you now huh? I'm back in Brighton at Tom's grandmas house and i'll be in the London area for a week or so. Good News, we managed to recover all of Tom and my pictures so I'll be able to update the pics all the way to right now. I'm not sure what you guys see when you log onto this sight and stuff but on the main page of the site they feature pictures that people update. Nick and I from the beginning of the trip have wanted them to feature one of ours and today they did. The one of the dead tree in the namibian desert was up so woo hoo! Anyway I bet you want to see the Safari animal pics from Etosha so we'll jump right into that.

I can't remember if I put this one up or not but this is the lit water hole from the camp site. Tom's got some better pictures of the animals here my camera didn't get any to well.

These are Springbok. Its easy to understand why there the namesake of the South African National Rugby Team cause there a billion of them. I almost got tired of em

Gemsbok I think but it might be one of the other antilope species.

hmm


and of course elephants. The're the coolest I think... Until the lions but thats not until Kruger national park back in South Africa so you'll have to wait for those till we get there. There's still Zambia and the rest of Botswana to do. Unfortunatly I don't have those pictures with me right now so I gotta take another break.
I got to talk to my cousins today who are out enjoying the fine Florida weather right now I would guesse. Its been such a great trip and I'm still having fun and have another couple of weeks in me I think but I'll be ready to come home soon I think. I even have a new cousin to see when I get back! And also I'm not happy at all with Ohio State and can't wait to have a few choice words with a certain Beach.

hey hey, back in London in Tom's house in Crystal Palace. Headed out to Brighton to stay at his Grandmahs again in just a bit but one of his old flatmates has a computer so...
When we left that rocky bit of the Namibian mountains we headed down towards the capital of Namibia, Whindhoek. We spent a night in the city and went to a really great game resturaunt and brewery. The game resturaunts (we went to a lot) have all sorts of the wild game cooked up for you to eat. That night in Windhoek (don't get mad) I had Zebra and it was awesome. Even some of the others at the resturaunt thought that we shouldn't eat the animals we came to see but I couldn't resist and I'm glad I didn't cause it was great. Anyway otherwise the city was pretty much a city, not a whole lot to see although the spot that we parked to go in for the internet and stuff was the parking lot of the Namibian Supreme Court which I thought was pretty funny. Alright so after that it was on to Botswana.

The first night in Botswana we stayed in a little secluded camp that had Bushman huts that you could upgrade to for 2 dollars a night.

Basically the Bushmen are these small African people that were dislocated from there lands by the migration of the bantu people and moved into the desert and lived in small groups. Some people still try to live that way but they're dying out because their children don't want to live like that anymore when they see their other options. Anyway a couple of these people came to show us different ways they find food and use plants for medicine and it was realy cool. Most of the other "cultural" stuff that we've done so far felt a little bit fake and designed for tourists. This didn't feel like that as much although we were all skeptical in the beginning.

They started a fire with sticks, that was cool, I've never been able to do that


they get water from digging up this root and scraping it into little filings and then crushing the water out of it

they told us about their desserting teenagers and we could only wonder whether the littlest ones would decide to live like their parents and grandparents or go off to join the modern society

they really are pretty tiny people

oops, iv'e gotten ahead of myself, I know you'll forgive me. Before heading down to the capital of Namibia I forgot to tell you about Etosha National Park. Dividing Angola from Namibia Etosha is one of the least visited game parks in southern africa and we saw tons of stuff there. The camp site that we stayed at within the park itself was on the edge of this massive watering hole that they lit up at night with floodlights and all sorts of stuff came there. Unfortunately the pictures at night are pretty bad but we saw rinos and jackals and Zebras and that sort of thing come down to drink.
Alright I have a ton of Animal pictures from the safaris through Etosha but we have to leave again so I'll update again when I can (which should be soon)