As of today,
January tenth, I have 125 days left until I start working with the Great White
Shark Project outside of Cape Town, South Africa. Being the nature and animal
nerd that I am, going to Africa has been a dream of mine for as long as I can
remember. I was the girl whose punishment was not going outside. I was the girl who always had leaves in my hair
instead of bows. I was the girl who knew the words “crepuscular”, “dimorphism”,
and “unguligrade” before I knew how to multiply. When most kids looked into a
fish tank and said, “it’s a sucker fish!” I rolled my eyes and said, “No, it’s
a plecostomus.” The one who saw it as good luck to get pooped on by a bird. The
one who always insisted on saving the roach or gecko or moth in the room,
instead of killing it. The one who sighed when hearing a snake described as
poisonous, or hearing a story of a porcupine shooting its quills, or a turtle
coming out of its shell, or getting leprosy from touching an armadillo. I was
that girl. And I’ve always been just fine with that. In fact, my animal-loving
nerdiness is very possibly my favorite thing about myself. It’s what got me
started at the San Antonio Zoo, my favorite place in the world, and what has
always kept me working to make my dream of going to Africa a reality. Now,
seven years after I started volunteering at the zoo and about six months after
spending the best summer of my life up in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming,
my Africa adventure is fast approaching! It seems like spending last summer
working up in Wyoming started a bit of a travel itch in me that has been hard
to ignore ever since getting home. Those amazing months in that park gave me
some extra motivation to turn just dreaming about Africa into actually going
there. I still think about my summer up in Wyoming just about every day; I’ll
definitely never forget the wonderful time I had up there. The opportunity I
had to meet people from all over the country, and the world, made me pretty
eager to actually see other areas of the world instead of just hearing and
reading about them.
I know there
are still several months until I’m in South Africa, but the idea of making my
lifelong dream come true is getting more and more real every day! I’m so ready
to be out in Africa!!
