My friends leave today

Today is a bit of a milestone. We've hit the 3 week mark and Betty and Linda are leaving me. It is an understatement to say that I will miss them enormously. This kind of experience lends itself to substantial bonding in a quite brief period of time. Yeah, I'll really miss them.
Yesterday, for their final full day here, we went to Mkhaya Game Reserve for endangered species. Because these animals are endangered, the park tries to eliminate or cut down on kills, so there are no cats in this game park. It seems I will leave Africa without having seen some. I can live with that. I've seen so much. For instance, we were able to get out of the Land Rover yesterday and get pretty close to the Rhinos. I have more wonderful images of Giraffes and Elephants. I call this one "Giraffes Two by Two". I still have an impossible time capturing Hippos. I've seen a lot of them, but everytime I'm ready to click, they dunk back under water. Cagey suckers.


The Rover we were in yesterday had no cover and the unobstructed sun beat down on us hard. I actually began to feel as if I might not be able to complete the drive. Feeling severely dehydrated even though we were drinking water constantly, during our stop for lunch my friends and I bought the only hats available. They saved us, but I'm still massively sun burnt on my shoulders, my upper chest and the back of my neck.

I kept waking up thoughout the night. Nothing new about that. But then the phone rang at 4:50am. Liam called to let me know that his call-back for Brighton Beach Memoirs (sent via dvd) had been seen by Neil Simon, who really liked it, and now he'll be headed back to NYC tomorrow to audition again for Jay Binder on Sunday and for Neil Simon himself on Monday!!!! Go Liam! Then I had to check out his auditions on YouTube and then I had to kvell and kvell and kvell because my baby is such a good guy and so ridiculously talented. Ah me.

So, I will be looking like a lobster who really needs some sleep when the new nurse arrives today. Wish me luck. I feel a bit at sixes and sevens without my two buds. I can't believe I have only one week left myself. I have such high hopes for how it will turn out.
Here's hoping.