I went on safari for my birthday, it was the most memorable birthday ever! We went to a place called Ambeseli which is a park near the Tanzanian border. I even got a text that said “Welcome to Tanzania, we hope you enjoy your stay” but I actually never went there! The group that went was my two roommates, Kim and Wendy, and then two other teachers from the school, Chris and Paul. I got up at 3 AM on the morning of my birthday so we could leave by 4:00. It took about 4 hours to get there and most of it on an extremely bumpy road. Kim and Wendy paid for my safari, which was an amazing birthday present! When we arrived in the park it looked very barren and desolate. But once we drove further into the park all of a sudden, I felt like I was on The Lion King! I could almost hear the music playing! We took a safari van, where the top lifts up which was awesome for taking pictures and made me feel like I was in a movie anyway. We saw tons of zebra, wilderbeast, warthogs, ostriches and even hyenas. We also saw lots of elephants and they posed for a picture for us! We figured they must have had lots of generations of elephants who were used to the camera and were told what to do for us. They would all follow each other in a line, and there were even little baby ones.

We then went to our bonda which was in the park. It was actually really nice with three bedrooms, a kitchen, bathroom and living room. However it was full of ants and mosquitoes and the ants ate my birthday cake!! (it was ok though because we had birthday brownies instead) So we went to the bonda and unpacked and then ate lunch. We also took a little afternoon nap since we had gotten up so early and it was super hot. When it cooled down, we went on another game drive. This time we saw a lion and lioness sleeping. Later in the evening, we saw a ton of vans in the distance and knew there had to be something really cool to see there. When we got there, there was a cheetah who had just killed a gazelle. I found out that when cheetahs catch their prey, they are temporarily paralyzed because of the effort it took to run and catch it. So it was just laying there for like half an hour. It finally got up and dug into it’s dinner! It was such a cool sight. In the background were hippos playing in the water, a rainbow, the sunset and Mount Kilimanjaro. It was amazing, we just soaked it all in. Mount Kilimanjaro is the biggest mountain in all of Africa and the tallest free-standing mountain in the world. It was so beautiful always on the horizon with the animals in front of it. We went back at dark and had kabobs and potatoes and birthday brownies. A few of us played Rook until the power went off and we went to sleep under our mosquito nets.

In the morning we got up at 6 and packed up. We went on a final game drive. We saw lions again as well as hyenas and hundreds of other animals! On the way back home, the van overheated in the middle of nowhere and we had to stop for about an hour. We prayed and God answered, because we made it back without any other trouble. After a much needed shower and nap we went to Indian food for dinner.

An amazing birthday full of God’s wonderful creation. I couldn’t have asked for anything better. I also came home and had tons of e-mails and notes from family and friends from home wishing me a happy birthday. A perfect ending to a perfect weekend!