Pictures! Sound! Smell! Touch! Taste! (Okay, maybe just the first two)

So, assuming this works, here's a video I recorded of what a quiet night here in Africa sounds like. And by quiet, I mean there are only bugs and frogs and other small creatures, not lions and elephants and hyenas and other large creatures roaring their heads off. Some nights it's really just so loud that I can't sleep. The bugs have given me headaches before because of how loud they are. Mornings aren't much quieter, either, because then you get all the birds waking up and calling to each other, happy that they made it through the night.

And here are my roommates:

Vivian, the one human roommate that I live with. She works here at the college as well, and she's really nice, and easy to talk to, and she's been teaching me little bits of Shangaan here and there.

This is one of the frogs that live in my house. They're called foam-nest frogs because they secrete this white stuff that they beat into foam and stick in a tree to lay their eggs in. I've named him Kermit.

This is one of the squirrels that keeps falling from the ceiling. I'm not sure if it's the same one that I found dead later, but it was alive when I took the picture.

Here's a baboon spider (a.k.a. tarantula) who came to visit me one night, but didn't stay.

And the zombie lizard that looks dead until you poke it (it seriously will lay belly-up, motionless, for hours).

There are quite a few other visitors who have left before I was able to take their picture, but perhaps next time around, the scorpions, the bat, the giant walking stick bug, the tiny lizards that run away all the time, and the other little things that live here will be so kind as to let me photograph them.