Who are we?

This blog is an agglomeration of the thoughts and experiences of two American girls who packed up and moved to South Africa on a whim. Caz from Fairfield, Connecticut and Mandy from Milwaukee, Wisconsin first met as roommates in 4127 on Semester at Sea in Fall of 2010.
In the interim, Caz returned to finish her Bachelor of Science with a double major in Biology (concentration in Microbiology) and Geography with a minor in Chemistry at the University of Miami in Florida, while Mandy took a hiatus to rediscover her real passion working with pregnant women, advocating for home birth and delivering babies outside of a hospital environment. We reconvened to follow both of our fields of study (read: hopes, dreams, asiprations, life goals, etc.) outside of the United States. Hello South Africa?

We are both here for at least a year and a half, though the more time we spend falling in love with South Africa, the more we'd like to think it'll be longer. We are both starting jobs in November/December: Caz working with infectious disease at a hospital clinic and Mandy beginning her training to become a certified midwife. Before then, we are both writing a book about our experiences leading up to this adventure as well as the multitude of serendipitous happenings that led us here.

As always, feel free to comment or ask questions. If you have an interest in a topic, let us know and we will surely oblige you (within reason). Enjoy!

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Homicidal Herbivores

Mandy recently discovered that the hippopotamus, an animal she once considered cute and cuddly, was actually terrifying. Watching her come to this realization, while trapped in a highly unstable and tiny sliver of wood barely kept afloat, was hysterical. So I filmed it. 





But to be fair they do actually kill lots of people... Around 2,900 people per year. 



To put that in perspective here are some statistics on deaths per year due to various things...(source)

lightning: 10,000
texting while driving: 6,000 (USA)
airplanes: 1,200
volcanoes: 845
black friday: 550 (USA)
falling out of bed: 450 (USA)
tornadoes: 60
dogs: 30 (USA)
ants: 30 
sharks: 5
roller coasters: 4 (USA)


So technically it's safer to hang out at an active volcano, next to a shark or in a tornado than with a hippopotamus...








No comments:

Post a Comment