Safari

Today was an amazing day! First, let me give a brief recap of last night. We had an awesome dinner at the hotel---total bill for the 10 of us to eat a 3 course meal plus alcohol ($30). Afterwards a bunch of us went to the hotel's bar and sat on a beautiful patio with a single table for our group. Our waiter, Sylvestor (by the end of the night we were calling him Sly), was so friendly. They really didn't have much in the way of alcohol at the bar, so we ended up doing a lot of tequila shots. We even had one of the ministers of health (who I am sure was there spying on us instead of just happening to be at the bar by himself)---doing tequila shots. It was hysterical---he'd never done a shot before, let alone licking his hand, pouring on salt and then putting a lemon (they didn't have limes) in his mouth. We definitely bonded with him and he wanted to invite us all to his house from a barbecue ("in our country, we call them a bri").

After a few hours at the bar we convinced one of the hotel managers to let us go to the swimming pool on the 12th floor. To be fair, it does say the pool hours in the hotel information, but on the side it says "if these hours are inconvenient and you wish to swim at another hour, please contact the on duty manager"---they are very accomodating here in Zimbabwe! 4 of us---one of the facial reconstruction surgeons, one of the chief resident surgeons, my roommate and myself went up to the pool and had so much fun! We went from the sauna to the pool and back multiple times. And we were all so tired that we were just being weird!

This morning I woke up and a few of us decided to go to a game park about 40km from Harare. We took a cab from the hotel (one of the hotel's cars). It's sad, because they have such a fuel shortage that the guys from the hotel had to wait there all day for us because it was too expensive to drive back to the hotel. So myself and another girl gave the hotel drivers our ipods so they could have something to do all day. We did sooo many things....I couldn't even begin to describe, so I will give you some bullet highlights (and accompany pictures at a later time):

-went around to the wild animal orphanage---got to feed some tamarinds (mini monkeys with the cutest little faces), some apples. We also fed a donkey. This one frisky donkey got into part of the zebra population and now they have little zonkeys---donkeys with zebra stripes---they are really funny looking
-a little marmoose (i think that was the name) came trotting over to us and tried to climb up my pants---he was cute though
-stopped for tea and cookies (and bought some things at the little store) and there was a 4 1/2 month old orphaned monkey (I think it was a baboon) named Sheila. She was the cutest thing ever and ran around like a frisky cat. When we first met her she was humping the dog's leg. And then she was climbing into our laps and letting us hold her and feed her apple pieces. I swear, it was the highlight of my life (well, not really, but I love monkeys---especially baby monkeys) I hope she doesn't have ebola because she looked a lot like the monkey from Outbreak.
-We went on a canoe ride and saw elephants drinking from the river as well as zebras.
-After the canoe ride we got to ride elephants!! It was so cool but also the single most terrifying thing of my life. Our elephant was a 15-year-old adolescent named Gonzo. She was crazy and kept trying to shake us and run ahead of the other elephants. I almost started crying at one point---but at the same time, it was so amazing!! We also got to take pictures with them up close.
-We also got to come face to face with a bunch of lions---Brutus and Brian the Lion, and a few females. One second the guide was telling us to scratch them through the fence (because they are "domesticated") and then the next minute the lion was roaring......and that is pretty freaky! I have some amazing video!! It was crazy.
-We also went on an open air game drive and saw a ton of cool things. It was so gorgeous.

Tomorrow we get to work for real. We are all pretty adjusted to the time difference so now we are going to be screening the patients tomorrow all day and then start surgeries on Monday. It should be great!!

Thanks for keeping me in your prayers.