I Know, I Know, You Get It, I Went to Africa

I suck at blogging. That is an undeniable fact. Some how uploading pictures and text at the same time is a much harder adventure then you would previously believe. I have decided with my Africa pictures, that I will upload a few per blog entry and do a little bit more of the blogging part of it and give details to support the pictures. It makes logical thought to start at the beginning. So I am basically making a retro-active travel blog. As lame as I realize this is, please stick with me and I'll try to make it worth it for you.

I thought this would be a good starting point. This picture was taken in Zululand on the Northeastern coast of South Africa. The subject of this picture is Lars, one of my fellow study abroaders. He is Norwegian national and just an all around good guy. This picture was taken with an Olympus point-and-shoot. The photo quality between the point and shoot and my DSLR is overly apparent, but I imagine like most things, photography is a process and this was really the start of my interest in it. Not too terrible of a starting point.

The reason this picture is not only excellent but symbolically significant is because it largely represents my first experience in South Africa. While studying at UKZN was, what I believe to be, far from the average study abroad experience with a program in Western Europe, its still far too easy to live life in a bubble when studying abroad. The most bubbly of my experience was a three day trip taken with a vast number of the study abroad students to Zululand. In Zululand we got to experience a little slice of everything South Africa; from the Umfolozi-Hluhluwe Game Reserve to the Ithembalesizwe HIV/AIDS drop in clinic.

Even though this was only a brief glimpse at Zululand, it was an important first. I was able to travel somewhere radically different from what I had know. I think the picture itself was not only a unique shot at a tourist in front of an inauthentic piece of history but more of the true experience one has as a foreigner living inside country for that short period of time. The Academic sphere creates this same image on a continual basis.