Lots of travel in my future

I'm finally done house sitting, so I'm back in my crappy little apartment. Luckily, I won't be there much in the next few months because I'm going to be traveling a bunch! Some of these plans are still tentative, but if everything works out as I hope, my schedule looks something like this:

I've learned recently that it is just about impossible to accomplish anything here around Christmas, so I'm planning on renting a car and going on a little trip from about the 23rd to the 26th. Right now, the leading candidate is Pilanesberg, a nature reserve close by, but that is definitely not set in stone.

I'll then be back in Pretoria for a couple of weeks before heading to Poland to do a couple of research projects with a colleague I've known for several years. That will be my first European trip, and I am definitely excited about it.

Finally, a few days after I get back to South Africa from Poland in late February, Andrew, Ben and I are taking off for a trip to Botswana and some of the really wild parts of the Kalahari. That trip is centered around picking Ben up from his field site, and is otherwise just for fun.

When I finish all of this off, I will be in Pretoria for a while and will unfortunately have to do some actual work. I know, it's rough, isn't it?

A boring couple of weeks

There's nothing too exciting happening my life, but I've gotten quite a few comments about not updating my blog lately, so here goes...

I've been house sitting the last few weeks for Andrew while he's away tromping around Australia. More importantly, I've been slowly digging out from under the pile of work that I've let build up over the last few months and I'm just about to get to the point where I can start working on new projects. It has meant some pretty long days staring at a computer, but I've been able to do quite a bit of work sitting next to Andrew's pool, which is definitely nicer than my office.

In the next few weeks, I hope to get my schedule worked out for the next few months, but no promises. Right now, it looks like I'll be in Botswana in late February and, with any luck, in Poland somewhere around the beginning of February. We are also working on plans for the trip to Brazil in August. Needless to say, my passport is filling up quickly.