Unfortunately for me, there was not rain and hardly any clouds this morning. However, my eyes weren't closed shut, which is what I was worried about. Abi is moving out today to go into Laurie's room and then into Charlotte's when Johanna and Catherine have left. I'm going to try and get Debbie to let me move into that room as well, as we all started together and there are no more long termers coming while I'm here.

I had the orchard first thing this morning, which is what I class as the worst job here. Doing it with a burnt back just makes it worse. I then had to do gardening with Joan, which just turned out to be a hunt for the hose. It wasn't too bad just watering the garden, and when we started weeding I was still in the shade. It's a shame we don't have the same technique as the elephants. Well obviously not as we don't have strong, long noses, but they manage to get all of the plant out, including the roots, instead of just pulling out the top so it doesn't look any different!

Luckily for the people with burnt bodies, it decided to tip it down after that. It was a good job since I was in the field for all my other shifts after that. My last one got postponed as the thunder started and it wouldn't have been great if one of us had been struck by lightning! It wasn't the amazing displays I've heard about with lightning, hopefully I'll get to see that while I'm here though. The elephant love the rain, although I'm not too sure about the lightning and thunder. When the rain starts falling for the sky, the elephants head straight for the dam. It's amazing seeing them splashing around and playing. They love it! It's only really the three babies and Keisha who get in and the others almost "paddle" at the edges. They come out a completely different colour, they're almost black. It looks so funny.

It has been such a long day but I still managed to have a good time at the German girls Braai. It's basically a South African word for a BBQ. I managed to become "Braai Mistress". I was the one flipping burgers and turning over sausages! I don't think David liked it too much as he thinks of himself as the manly cook here. It was really fun though and took me back to the White Horse shifts on the hot grill. The girls had got their meat from Henning, the head handy man of the park, and it turned out to be tongue burgers. The realisation put a lot of people off but after they tried a bit it didn't really taste any different. They probably put tongue and all sorts in places like Macdonalds and no one complains there!

It was a good chance to get to know our new arrivals from Brazil, Raphaela and Luisa. Raffa doesn't seem to know any English and is using Luisa as a translator. Luisa's English seems limited but I think it's a lot better than she thinks. We managed to have a conversation altogether though and they had a little book with useful phrases in Portuguese to English. We did try to say some Portuguese to them but our accents are awful they just laughed at us!

Some of the guides came over to say goodbye to the girls. I'm still trying to get to grips with the guides names. I have the elephants sorted and the volunteers, now onto the guides. It's really difficult because they aren't always around on shifts when you're in the field and they swap constantly around getting me very confused! I'm sure I'll get it soon though, there are a lot of them.

I got woken up by the sound of hard rain but when 6am rolled around it was amazingly blue sadly for my burnt skin. I'm nearly there on the healing front although my right eye is still very puffy. I wore sunglasses this morning and everyone thought I'd had a heavy one last night. There was no party animal antics from me yesterday though and just had to explain that I was fried by the sun at the weekend.

I think my body is starting to take on board that waking up at 6am and doing manual labour till the near future and doesn't like it! I'm not entirely sure if the work is getting harder or easier but I think I'm slowly getting used to it. They weren't lying on the description that you needed to be at a level of fitness! I was in the field all day today though so didn't really matter on the fitness side. It kept raining on and off again but the guides put the ellies in places where we could sit with some shelter.

There was a huge group of stereotypical Chinese tourists, some even with marks on their faces. They were all tottering around in nice clothes and shoes that have probably never seen a speck of mud in their life. It was all a bit of a stressful tourist visit as there were so many of them. I felt so sorry for the elephants, there were showing a lot of signs of stress and there was so much confusion as to what they were meant to be doing they kept getting told off by the guides. It wasn't their fault that the tourists were all loud and screechy. It did mean that every elephant got some fruit from them instead of Nandi and Sally being the fatties and shoving the others out of the way. It's not as if Sally needs anymore fruit anyway, she is a big elephant!

Charlotte and I had to start training the new girls in Herd Activity and Nearest Neighbour. I had Luisa which is the one who can actually speak English. I think Charlotte struggled a lot with Raffa and we had to stay near to each other so Luisa could translate if need be. Luisa is getting herd activity though and naming most of the elephants after glancing down at my appalling drawing of each of the elephants' traits. I had the difficulty of trying to explain to Raffa what you had to do when watering the garden/tyres and was definitely mostly lost in translation. I'm sure with confidence though she'd be ok but being around Luisa she relies a lot on her and doesn't use her own knowledge of English.