Rwanda – 4 Days in the Land of a Thousand Hills – Part 3 (Final)

This is continued from a previous post…

As the alarm went off Saturday, November 23 at 5am an array of emotions overcame me – excitement, nerves, curiosity, fear. The day we had planned for so long was here!

To be honest, beyond researching where to do it (Uganda, Rwanda or DRC), neither Joe nor I had done really any research about the actual hike. We didn’t know what to expect. How safe is it really? How long is the hike? What should we expect? Has anyone ever been attacked by a gorilla? Killed? These were all questions that were racing through our minds.

I packed my little hiking backpack with a rain jacket, extra sweatshirt, filled my camelback with water and headed down to eat some breakfast. There were about 20-30 other tourists at the hotel and they were all dressed for the hike as well.

Rwanda – 4 Days in the Land of a Thousand Hills – Part 2

This is continued from a previous post

My friend Joe arrived in Jozi after a 14hour non-stop flight from JFK the morning of Monday, November 17. That evening we headed to dinner at one of my favorite restaurants, The Foundry. The next day, Tuesday, we headed out first thing in the morning for the drive to Kruger National Park. We took some the scenic route through some of the mountain passes and took in some of the sites (i.e. God’s Window, Pinnacle Rock and Mac Mac Falls). Kruger is always amazing and despite having been several times before, I always seem to get pumped up for a visit. Every visit is different and I always see so many animals. Wednesday’s game drive was no different. We were the second car at the gate when it opened at 5:30am and amazingly we saw all the Big 5, plus some other animals, before stopping for coffee at Skukuza Camp around 8:30am. What a day! Thursday we drove home mid-day and had dinner with some mutual work colleagues from the UK who happened to be South Africa on business. Of course, Joe could not leave South Africa without going to a steak house so we took him to The Local Grill. It was recently voted the best steak house in South Africa.

Ok now that is out of the way, on the main attraction – Rwanda.

Rwanda – 4 Days in the Land of a Thousand Hills – Part 1

Upon moving to South Africa in 2012, as I suspect is true when you move to any new place, I immediately started hearing of all these amazing things I should do. It was a bit overwhelming at first but I started to jot them done in my Evernote App under a note I have titled “Africa Bucket List”.

Quickly, one experience started to rise to the top of the list – hiking with mountain gorillas. As I learned more about it, the more it seemed like one of those experience I just had to do. Firstly, it is a rare opportunity, maximum of 80 people per day in Rwanda (far fewer in Uganda and DRC – I’ll explain later). Secondly, there is only one area in the world you can find these mountain gorillas in the wild. Finally, there is something thrilling about the idea of being amongst 1000 lb gorillas in their natural habitat with no barriers.

Climbing out of hibernation

Since returning in mid-August from a month-long trip back to the states to renew my work visa (see last post) I fell off the radar for a bit. I went into a college final like study mode for the GMAT. The GMAT is the entrance exam for MBA programs. My plan is to go back to school full-time for 2 years after finishing in Africa to get my MBA.

The GMAT is not necessarily a hard test in terms of content (it doesn’t test anything beyond what you learn in basic high school math and English classes)  but is extremely difficult in that it is designed to test analytical thinking, logic and critical analysis. Let me tell you, I have never seen such hard questions testing nothing more than even/odd and positive/negative number properties. The test is computer adaptive (meaning the questions get harder or easier as the test progresses depending on how you’re doing) and your score is based on percentile rankings. In other words, your raw test score is relatively meaningless and rather the important component of the score is the part that is purely based on how you did compared to everyone else taking the test. It is not about passing or failing but instead it is about scoring as high as you can — the better the score you can achieve, the better school you have a chance of earning admission. The top programs have average scores that are in the 96-98 percentile of all test takers globally. The overall application process is quite involved; in addition to the GMAT test, the application typically includes essays, letters of recommendation and an interview. I will begin the application process in the second half of 2015 for admission in the fall of 2016.

The Place I Call Home

I have always been on a 3-year assignment to South Africa but for some reason we (my Company) applied for a 2-year work visa. I am fairly sure the reason for this has to do with that (for South Africa) it is far easier to get a 2-year intra-company work transfer visa and then apply after 2 years then to apply on the front-end for a 3-year work visa. At any rate, heading into July, I was approaching that 2 year mark.

Resurrection

And we’re back. I have been away from the blogosphere for over 6 months now. I could give some elaborate explanation but there isn’t really any other than plain old laziness. A combination of factors have motivated me to get back into blogging. I am approaching my 2-year mark here in South Africa and as I look back over the past two years, and especially the past six to eight months I have been absent from blogging, I am just amazed at how much has happened. If the remainder of my time is even half as exciting as the past two years, I really want to make sure to capture / document it. Also, having a social media guru of a girlfriend that nags me every day to update my blog is partly to blame. So only a few things (insert excessive sarcasm) have happened since my last post

Surprise Lily!

One of the hardest things about being an expat is being away from family and friends, especially for significant events (weddings, births, deaths, etc). One thing I told myself before moving to South Africa was that I would make a conscious effort to not miss things. Earlier this year we found out my sister and her husband, Steve, were pregnant with our family’s first baby. Almost immediately conversations headed in the direction of when would Brendan be back in the States. For months, I honestly didn’t know if I could swing a trip home for the birth but told my family it was not going to avert any sort of expectations.

The baby was due in mid October and I didn’t start seriously consider flying home for the birth until late September when I was stuck in Nigeria over a weekend. I thought what the hell, lets see what a last-minute airfare would set me back. I knew I couldn’t book in advance so I quickly did an airfare search for the next few days. I was delighted to find that the airfares were actually very reasonable. I kept checking over the next few weeks, doing the same search (same day, next day, 2 days out) — fares stayed relatively flat.

I woke up Saturday October 12 to pictures of my brand new niece Lily Danielle Morgan.

Ok Chelsea You Win

My sister, Chelsea, has been pestering me to blog for the past month or so. She is prego and has a blog which she updates sometimes 2-3 times a day. It’s exhausting just to keep up with posts. Its not that I don’t want to blog, its just that my life is pretty “normal” now; I have a fairly boring routine.

Ever since returning from my US trip in June, my life has settled into a fairly normal and boring routine that can be summed up in 5 short verbs: Work, work-out, study, sleep, REPEAT. With that, I will give you a short update on each one these four actions that seem to define my current life.

Work – The past two months have seen a lot of activity, I spent 2 weeks in July in Nigeria (and I am heading back tomorrow).

Winter in South Africa

Almost 3 months to the day since my last post, woops. I’d like to say it is because I have been literally too busy to post but really I have just been a bit lazy. Let me try and bring you all up to speed.

April:

By the way I am using my photo stream on iphoto to help remind me of what has happened the last three months. (those of you Apple junkies know what I am talking about here).

Surprisingly I did not travel in April. The highlights were a rooftop party in downtown Johannesburg at an amazing venue called Randlords. It is mostly rented for private events but about once a month they will host a public party and sell tickets. Crazy 360 rooftop views of downtown Johannesburg from 20+ floors up.

Additionally, we had some of internal auditors in town from the UK for several weeks doing a routine audit of one of our South African businesses. I had met them last year in the UK while I was doing a rotation in internal audit. It was great to see them and we went out a few times which was a lot of fun.

South Africa vs America: Similarities & Differences

A lot of people ask me what I find different about South Africa vs the US. My response typically is, “Not a lot”. For the most part that is my honest opinion. That being said I have tried to develop a list over the last few months. Not all of them are very interesting or meaningful.

Before I go any further I do need to add one fairly large qualifier – I live in a fairly affluent (and sadly predominately white) bubble that makes up a sliver of the overall population and is in no way representative of the way the majority of South Africans live. Please just keep that in mind.

It is probably first worthwhile to give a quick explanation of why I feel, it is, for the most part, very similar to life in the US.

For starters  the circumstance of my life here are a big contributing factor — let me set the stage a bit.