Site Guide Week 1

21-27 February 2011
I'm back to tell you what course I started with and how the first week has gone...

I started with site guiding which means I am doing the game drives on Sondela.  We started the week off, by receiving our first (very thick) stack of papers that we had to study, it was about Mammals.  At first all of the bucks looked the same and I was having a hard time getting all the study material into my head.  The next day we wrote test and as you can guess, I didn't pass, not even close.  We received our papers about birds and wrote test the next day and here, I passed, how? I don't know either.  On the same day, we had to choose a bird and give a presentation about this bird.  I asked to go last because I wanted to prepare something really good and with my luck, right before I had to do the presentation, our principal, Diederick walked in.  The pressure was on!  In my eyes I did it really well but I still had a lot of faults in the previously mentioned's eyes.On Thursday our facilitator(Salaminah) and second year manager(Antonet) were kind enough to create a simmulation where they took the seats of a broken cruiser and placed it in the Academy's boma with target practice posters all around us.  We had to do the pre-trail briefing and then explain one animal.  Salamina and Antonet both said that I had a spark in my way of talking to the guests (which in this case, were my fellow site guide students).

We also had a day where we went on a walking trail and learned about the grasses and trees, I am absolutely amazed that my brain has been able to absorb this much information within one week.  I am now more confident about my way of talking to guest and my knowledge about animals.  On Friday, three out of the five site guide students went home for the weekend and only me and Elani stayed behind to work.  I worked a while at welcoming which I truly enjoy and I went to the main gate to help sign the people in.  The drive back was long and freezing, since I drove the cruiser without windows or doors and I had no jacket.  I am the only one of the five of us that has my PHP which mean I can drive the cruisers with people on them.  I only went home at about 21:00.  On Saturday I did three game drives with Klaas and on Tractor game drive with Michelle.  Only went home at 20:30 because I had to do the night drive where Klaas had me talk to the people, we saw an Aardwolf doing his business in the open, the kids enjoyed that.  On Sunday, Elani and I were allowed to do our own Tractor Drives, I made one mistake but I fixed it by making the people laugh and telling them really interesting information.  Luckily, I went home at 17:00.

This is the maingate...

Elani and myself on a game drive..

Two Giraffes we saw on the game drive...

 A Nyala, it's truly difficult to tell the difference between it and a kudu but I'm getting the hang of it...

The simmulation that was created, it was fun!

In conclusion, the week was one I would trade for anything, I never thought I'd be able to tell the difference between a 'Gemsbok' and a Hyena but now I can and I can tell you things about them you don't know.