October Haps

I have been (and will continue to be) totally disconnected for the month of October, so will just do a quick recap of what I've been up to:

• October 1: Picked sister up in Arusha!  On-time and with (shockingly) no issues!  Met up with Giraffe at local bar where he told us he used to throw rocks at bush babies when he was little to knock them out of the banana trees.  He also said they ripen bananas by scratching through the peel and then urinating on them.  All bananas are now inspected for bush baby scratch marks before I eat them.
• October 2 - 9: Safari extravaganza.  
• Parks visited: Tarangire, Lake Manyara, Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater.  
• Animals seen: name it and we probably saw it.  Most notable included:
• Giraffe fight! Bendy neck clashing and all.
• Explosion of what I would liken to a "lion bomb" that went off all around our car.  i.e. a huge pride (2 Mufasas, 7ish moms, 4ish "teenagers", 7ish medium cubs and 6ish tiny kitten cubs) spilling around and under our car as they were on the hunt for gazelle.
• Elephants visiting our campsites.  The first included a herd of about 10 "sneaking up" on us in the Serengeti and the second included an elephant coming to drink from our shower water reserve in Ngorongoro.
• October 10 - 15: Zanzibar relaxation.  Probably one of the most beautiful beaches I've ever been to (Kendwa).  Did some scuba-ing and kite-boarding.  Scuba-wise, we saw a bunch of sea creatures including turtles.  Kite-boarding-wise, I crashed their kite and then had a solid 4 face-plants at the end of the sesh.  All in all and ish-eating aside, I totally want to get certified as a kite-boarder. 
• October 16: Successful vuvuzela acquisition from Tyrone Biggums-esque characters in Stone Town.  Saw sister off, ran into scuba buddies at outdoor food market, went to cultural center for traditional Zanzibari live music followed by getting magically transported back to the USA when we happened upon a bar full of what I'd guess as the entire 20-something white tourist population in Stone Town slamming beers and dancing to Gaga.  Caught a midnight cab to the airport which turned into the unfortunate luck of sleeping there for the night.  It was closed, mind you, and the security guard showed me to a dark corner where I could set up camp for the night.  Except there were huge ants all over the ground, so I wedged myself under the armrest of a row of glued-together chairs and caught maybe 45 min of sleep before my ridiculously delayed 6:45am flight.  Narrowly made my connecting flight from Ethiopia to Zambia.  Met up with Habitat for Humanity group and head to the Zambian bush tomorrow for 2 weeks building houses, sleeping on the ground, showering from a bucket and squatting over holes in the ground.