well
i am back on the island now
but with different people it is almost a different place
i so unbelievably miss my friends from the last session - we had a pretty grooving dynamic going on, the 12 of us. plus, with 22 students, three TAs, the prof and a bunch of other researchers and randoms, the place was packed last month. now, it is me, the prof, seven students and Leo. it's soooo weird. meals are so quiet and organized. class is totally different. just in general, it's very strange.
but still fun. and the monos are still here.
i've been a lil sick lately.... 'a lil' being a huge understatement. kidney stones and something else that made me super dizzy and nautious and unable to keep food in my belly. but after a few sleepless nights of projectile vomitting, and days spent lazing in hammocks, i am back on track. and ready to TA my ass off.
it is a wee bit strange that half of my students are older than me... but they are really nice and so far things are going pretty well. it's also a little strange with only seven of them.... there is nobody that really stands out and breaks the ice in that annoying-but-necessary way.... we had a couple of them. it was magical. but this group is different.... we'll just have to wait and see....
i am feeling a wee bit useless, but i did answer some questions today, so that was good.
the bugs are out in FULL FORCE. i kept waking up last night in mad fits of scratching in my sleep.... so today i even wore pants in the field. it was strange.
not much else to say.... i am keeping up with my project, cause apparently it's good.... but i haven't gotten that many hours because of the kidney/nausea situation.
it's nice to back on the island.
also i can't freakin WAIT to see my family. i miss those people. and rosie the dog..... *sigh* oh rosie.
that's all i have to say now
i am feeling boring
i go
Friday, July 25, 2008
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
the first ending
well
we are in Granada now, on¨the touristy bit of the course, where we get to shop and wander around looking lost. granada seems cool, but to be honest it´s major culture shock to go from quiet, unpaved, peaceful ometepe island to a big bustling city. and i really miss my monos. tomorrow morning all of my friends from this course will be heading back down to san jose to all fly home. i will stay here for an extra day then go to managua to meet the students flying in for the next class.
and GUESS WHAT. there is a landermat here. we were all setting off on a mission with our bags of dirty laundry this morning, when the lady at the hostel front desk was like ¨leave it here and they will pick it up and then you pay when they bring it back later¨... WHAT? SERIOUSLY? AWESOME!!!! i´m pretty sure that it´s too good to be true though, probably it will come back with half my clothes missing. but still. laundry. real laundry. when our prof told us there was laundry here, i teared up a little. which sounds rediculous, but you gotta understand my state of mind at the time. it was just dawning on me that i´d be here for a whole nother month. which is fine. but i would really like three days at home in between. to see my family, have a bath, use my computer, not be sweaty, and REALLY WASH MY CLOTHES. so the fact that i can do at least do one of those things really got me emotional. who woulda thought that old Hygiene? would get so excited about laundry?
i can´t believe that the course is over! it was awesome!!!! stressful and obscenely drama-filled at times, but so awesome. i have made some really great friends here, and ometepe won´t be the same without them.
i should probly pick up where i left off though.
the volcano.
¨four hour hike up¨is the most rediculous false advertising in the world.
i believe that ¨12 hour death climb¨is more appropriate.
K and Laoora and i had a really great day though, despite the sheer pain and terror of it. Laoora and i were rediculously slow and made K (who was having no trouble keeping up with the guide and therefore insisted on singing inspirational songs to us the whole way up) carried our backpacks. He´s basically a superhero, we decided. the fact that he was friendly and patient the whole time despite our inability to not be rediculously slow only added to the superhero persona. we got up into the cloud forests though, and HOLY CRAP! K and i just looked at each other: DEGOBA! YODA! WHERE? it is amazing! you can´t see far because it´s totally cloudy and the trees grow as horizontal as they do up. and it´s awesome.
then on the way back down, our guide got really far ahead of us and when we caught up to him, he was just chillin on the side of the path holding two armadillos. seriously. it was so random. pretty cool though. i´ve never seen an armadillo before.
the last few days on the island were pretty stressful. lots of counting hours and hours and thousands and thousands of lines of data over and over and over again. and compiling it into chi-squared tests and graphs. finally at 11:30pm the night before my presentation, while hashing through the background theory of my topìc with my prof, both of us laughing to tears at the sheer rediculousness of it all (and the copious amounts of chewy coffee in our systems), wondering what the hell all my data meant, the penny dropped. and it just made sense. we looked at each other with that ¨the light bulb just turned on¨ look. it was pretty awesome.
so i finished off my powerpoint presentation, slept for an hour, rehearsed to Jess a couple of times, and then presented the next morning. and it went sooo well. i was really surprised actually. i was hoping for an inchoerent gongshow at best, but it actually went alright.
so it looks like i will, hopefully, be keeping up with my own study for the next month. if i could log another 60 hours that would be AWESOME but who knows what my TA responsabilities might include.... so far it involves picking people up at the airport and getting them to the hotel.... which, judging by my own arrival in san jose, will require me to be fluent in spanish. which i am not. so this should be interesting.
aaaaaanyways
there are things i should go and do. like sleep in that hammock. and read my book. and look up the lord of the rings map. K and i were trying to draw it for memory at breakfast but it didn´t go well, so we all played lotr hangman instead. aspiring primatologist are my kind of people. we have that shameless geeky cool thing down pat. evolution puns. star wars references. intimate knowledge of the lotr script. and of course, monkey impressions.
ok. i go now.
i´ll post again when i´m back on the island next week.ç
oh how i miss the island.
we are in Granada now, on¨the touristy bit of the course, where we get to shop and wander around looking lost. granada seems cool, but to be honest it´s major culture shock to go from quiet, unpaved, peaceful ometepe island to a big bustling city. and i really miss my monos. tomorrow morning all of my friends from this course will be heading back down to san jose to all fly home. i will stay here for an extra day then go to managua to meet the students flying in for the next class.
and GUESS WHAT. there is a landermat here. we were all setting off on a mission with our bags of dirty laundry this morning, when the lady at the hostel front desk was like ¨leave it here and they will pick it up and then you pay when they bring it back later¨... WHAT? SERIOUSLY? AWESOME!!!! i´m pretty sure that it´s too good to be true though, probably it will come back with half my clothes missing. but still. laundry. real laundry. when our prof told us there was laundry here, i teared up a little. which sounds rediculous, but you gotta understand my state of mind at the time. it was just dawning on me that i´d be here for a whole nother month. which is fine. but i would really like three days at home in between. to see my family, have a bath, use my computer, not be sweaty, and REALLY WASH MY CLOTHES. so the fact that i can do at least do one of those things really got me emotional. who woulda thought that old Hygiene? would get so excited about laundry?
i can´t believe that the course is over! it was awesome!!!! stressful and obscenely drama-filled at times, but so awesome. i have made some really great friends here, and ometepe won´t be the same without them.
i should probly pick up where i left off though.
the volcano.
¨four hour hike up¨is the most rediculous false advertising in the world.
i believe that ¨12 hour death climb¨is more appropriate.
K and Laoora and i had a really great day though, despite the sheer pain and terror of it. Laoora and i were rediculously slow and made K (who was having no trouble keeping up with the guide and therefore insisted on singing inspirational songs to us the whole way up) carried our backpacks. He´s basically a superhero, we decided. the fact that he was friendly and patient the whole time despite our inability to not be rediculously slow only added to the superhero persona. we got up into the cloud forests though, and HOLY CRAP! K and i just looked at each other: DEGOBA! YODA! WHERE? it is amazing! you can´t see far because it´s totally cloudy and the trees grow as horizontal as they do up. and it´s awesome.
then on the way back down, our guide got really far ahead of us and when we caught up to him, he was just chillin on the side of the path holding two armadillos. seriously. it was so random. pretty cool though. i´ve never seen an armadillo before.
the last few days on the island were pretty stressful. lots of counting hours and hours and thousands and thousands of lines of data over and over and over again. and compiling it into chi-squared tests and graphs. finally at 11:30pm the night before my presentation, while hashing through the background theory of my topìc with my prof, both of us laughing to tears at the sheer rediculousness of it all (and the copious amounts of chewy coffee in our systems), wondering what the hell all my data meant, the penny dropped. and it just made sense. we looked at each other with that ¨the light bulb just turned on¨ look. it was pretty awesome.
so i finished off my powerpoint presentation, slept for an hour, rehearsed to Jess a couple of times, and then presented the next morning. and it went sooo well. i was really surprised actually. i was hoping for an inchoerent gongshow at best, but it actually went alright.
so it looks like i will, hopefully, be keeping up with my own study for the next month. if i could log another 60 hours that would be AWESOME but who knows what my TA responsabilities might include.... so far it involves picking people up at the airport and getting them to the hotel.... which, judging by my own arrival in san jose, will require me to be fluent in spanish. which i am not. so this should be interesting.
aaaaaanyways
there are things i should go and do. like sleep in that hammock. and read my book. and look up the lord of the rings map. K and i were trying to draw it for memory at breakfast but it didn´t go well, so we all played lotr hangman instead. aspiring primatologist are my kind of people. we have that shameless geeky cool thing down pat. evolution puns. star wars references. intimate knowledge of the lotr script. and of course, monkey impressions.
ok. i go now.
i´ll post again when i´m back on the island next week.ç
oh how i miss the island.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
stats, trivers, and the room with no door
so it's just after 6 am here, and "how did i get to the internet so early?" you ask? WELL, me and Laoora and K actually stayed here at the Hacienda Merida (the hostel with the internet) last night because TODAY WE ARE HIKING UP VOLCANO MADERAS!!! WOOT WOOT!!! we leave in about an hour so that is why we had to stay here last night, to meet our guide and be ready on time today. we got here kinda late and tried to explain that our prof had made reservations for us. Laoora's spanish is pretty good so we managed. there was a heated discussion between the hacienda staff for a while, all that we could make out was "pero no ai puerta"..... which didn't make sense at the time.... then they took us to our room. half of an old barn, with four bunk beds in it, three of them made up nicely waiting for us. and as the kid who took us there was leaving, he casually mentioned "lo siento, pero no ai puerta"... "sorry, but there is no door".
what a night.
it was pretty great actually.
nice to be in a hostel again, it's been too long.
but lots of bugs and dreams about huge taurantuals coming in through the open garage-door-sized doorway and crawling over me during the night. no big deal though. basically hilarious.
then we met our "bilingual" guide and quickly realized that "bilingual" here means "can speak spanish slowly".... greeeeeeeeeat. (actually, it should be noted that this is the first spanish-speaking local (aside from Leonel) who i've met that actually DOES speak spanish slowly when speaking to english people.... usually they just continue to talk at hiper spead and then wave me off with something along the live of "es de estados unidos, si?" at which point i proudly annouce "NO! SOY DE CANADA!" and they laugh and ask me if it's an independent country.... oh boy) our guide informed us about the many impending perils of our trip up the volcano and then asked if we would like pollo or queso for lunch tomorrow. queso please. definetly queso. no me gusta carne. soy vegetariana.
so right now i am mentally gearing up for a grueling four hour hike up the side of the mountain that is right behind the compound where we live. i am hoping to find a magical place with capuchins and cloud forest but probably i'll be hallucinating and in need of oxygen most of the time, so even if we pass that, i won't notice. it's fine though, it should be good. i'm stoked.
right now i am done taking my data for my project and i'm into the number crunching stage. Chi-Squared Tests, Mann-Whitney U Tests, non parametric, parametric, anova AAAAAAAAAAAAA.... mostly the worst part is going through 41 hours of number and letter codes and counting all the instances of everything under this condition and that condition and blah blah blah.
also, the originality and applicability of my entire project depends on me getting my hands on Triver's 1972 article "Parental Investment and Sexual Selection".... which I cannot find anywhere. cept for in one place but it's in a protected format so i can only access the first page and no more. seriously? seriously. baaaaaaaaad. so now i should go and get on that.
things are good here, but i can't believe that it's almost over!
three days until my presentation! five days until we leave for Granada! then three days there and I come back here to TA the next session of the class.(which i am totally unqualified to do, and therefore nervous about.) then i have a whole 'nother month of rice and beans and monos. i'm pretty stoked. I might scrap my study, cause it's a dead end, and instead continue on with my friend J's study. Her's is super neat but she needs about 50hours on a control group to make it publishable, so if i could get that data, we'd be set. it will, however, involve sweet talking some locals to let me onto their property everyday, since the best control group situation is not on property owned by the field station... so we'll see bout that.
ooooo also - i saw a coral snake two days ago! a coral snake! yes! so colourful. so poisonous. so deadly 100% of the time. but according to our prof, if you got bitten, you'd have ten minutes to call your momma before the delirium sets in and you die. let's hope that it doesn't come to that. i wear pants in the forest now. coral snakes are rear fang biters (or something like that) so apparently being bitten through pants means you might not die. here's to hoping!
anyways
i MUST go now
track down that Trivers article. must must must.
wish me luck up the volcano.
i have no idea what to expect... should be good though. for sure.
adios amigos
what a night.
it was pretty great actually.
nice to be in a hostel again, it's been too long.
but lots of bugs and dreams about huge taurantuals coming in through the open garage-door-sized doorway and crawling over me during the night. no big deal though. basically hilarious.
then we met our "bilingual" guide and quickly realized that "bilingual" here means "can speak spanish slowly".... greeeeeeeeeat. (actually, it should be noted that this is the first spanish-speaking local (aside from Leonel) who i've met that actually DOES speak spanish slowly when speaking to english people.... usually they just continue to talk at hiper spead and then wave me off with something along the live of "es de estados unidos, si?" at which point i proudly annouce "NO! SOY DE CANADA!" and they laugh and ask me if it's an independent country.... oh boy) our guide informed us about the many impending perils of our trip up the volcano and then asked if we would like pollo or queso for lunch tomorrow. queso please. definetly queso. no me gusta carne. soy vegetariana.
so right now i am mentally gearing up for a grueling four hour hike up the side of the mountain that is right behind the compound where we live. i am hoping to find a magical place with capuchins and cloud forest but probably i'll be hallucinating and in need of oxygen most of the time, so even if we pass that, i won't notice. it's fine though, it should be good. i'm stoked.
right now i am done taking my data for my project and i'm into the number crunching stage. Chi-Squared Tests, Mann-Whitney U Tests, non parametric, parametric, anova AAAAAAAAAAAAA.... mostly the worst part is going through 41 hours of number and letter codes and counting all the instances of everything under this condition and that condition and blah blah blah.
also, the originality and applicability of my entire project depends on me getting my hands on Triver's 1972 article "Parental Investment and Sexual Selection".... which I cannot find anywhere. cept for in one place but it's in a protected format so i can only access the first page and no more. seriously? seriously. baaaaaaaaad. so now i should go and get on that.
things are good here, but i can't believe that it's almost over!
three days until my presentation! five days until we leave for Granada! then three days there and I come back here to TA the next session of the class.(which i am totally unqualified to do, and therefore nervous about.) then i have a whole 'nother month of rice and beans and monos. i'm pretty stoked. I might scrap my study, cause it's a dead end, and instead continue on with my friend J's study. Her's is super neat but she needs about 50hours on a control group to make it publishable, so if i could get that data, we'd be set. it will, however, involve sweet talking some locals to let me onto their property everyday, since the best control group situation is not on property owned by the field station... so we'll see bout that.
ooooo also - i saw a coral snake two days ago! a coral snake! yes! so colourful. so poisonous. so deadly 100% of the time. but according to our prof, if you got bitten, you'd have ten minutes to call your momma before the delirium sets in and you die. let's hope that it doesn't come to that. i wear pants in the forest now. coral snakes are rear fang biters (or something like that) so apparently being bitten through pants means you might not die. here's to hoping!
anyways
i MUST go now
track down that Trivers article. must must must.
wish me luck up the volcano.
i have no idea what to expect... should be good though. for sure.
adios amigos
Friday, July 4, 2008
my monos
when i was about 11 and announced to my older, much wiser, brother that i wanted to live in indonesia and study orangutans, he proceeded to inform me that there are places in the world (probably including indonesia) where the cockroaches are so big that they are often seen in the streets wrestling with equally huge rats, competing to see who gets to eat the human child that they just stole.
it's twelve years later, and i'm pretty sure that he's wrong...
.... but i'm still half expecting to come across a two foot long cockroach with a stolen baby.
i'm a little nervous.
the closest of seen was one that was about three inches long. i was way to freaked to even kill it. i made very high pitched noises and gathered all my friends to see. i did the same thing when our TA found a tarantula. yes. a tarantula. a gargantuan fuzzy black spider. not cool.
ANYWAYS.
enough about bugs.
you will all be pleased to hear that we celebrated Canada Day in style here, despite having no facepaints, no flags, and only one canadian. don't worry though, i REPRESENTED. we had a canada day fiesta with fresh fruit (the first non-rice and beens we'd had in weeks) and rum and starwars. also, many amazing things happened that day, to many different people, and my prof declared them "Canada Day Miracles".
one of the miracles? I FOUND A MONKEY SKELETON! i realize that sounds a little sociopathic, but it's the circle of life, and frankly it was way cool. i found the skull with most of the teeth and the ENTIRE SPINE and both hip bones and a lot of finger bones and then most of the right arm and leg. seriously, it was way cool.
then it was my birthday, and Leonel and the kitchen staff surprised me with a cake which was pretty awesome. then we finished off the rum and watched more starwars. ALSO i got four hours of focal data that day. GREAT DAY. also, thanks to everybody for the bithday wishes! facebook and email and blog comments, that was very nice of y'all. (Laoora is from texas, and so i am totally adopting "y'all" into my lexicon. it is awesome. embrace it)
my monos (and by that i mean, the monkeys. i have assumed possession of the ones that i follow around every day, and also i assume that they speak spanish and so i try to respect that by calling them by their spanish name) are being awesome these days. i got six hours of data yesterday. and me and Laoora 'found' a neonate - a little baby monkey that is still blond and is so small and just clings to it's momma tummy all day. it must be only about two or three days old. i got another hour of data on it today too. it is basically ADORABLE, but we don't see it much cause it's mother is very protective and it's not very active yet.
did i mention in my last post how cute the monkeys are? wow. they are rediculously adorable. it blows my mind. especially the little babies that are still unsteady and stumble around in the trees and ride their mommas backs with their tails wrapped around her tail. the novelty of baby monkeys will NEVER wear off.
anyways
i am actually super pressed for time. only got two hours of data today then my monos dissapeared, so Laoora and K and i decided to come here for lunch that isn't rice and beans. though i do love the rice and beans. of course.
looks like i might actually be stickin around these parts of the world for longer than i thought... but it's not finalized yet, so more on that later. it will cut into my kingston time in august a lot, but it will allow me to extend my study and get way more data, so we'll see. i'll keep y'all posted.
i know there was a ton of other stuff i wanted to tell you.... crazy things happen every day. some things just crazy, others crazy funny. mostly i spend my days in the forest with my monos. sometimes i run into Laoora or K, but mostly it is just me and the monos. i only wear shorts cause it's too hot for pants and i don't wear enough deet cause it feels awful so my legs are rediculously nasty. i am told that it looks as if i have "ebola of the ankle".... i'll have to take pictures.... it's pretty gross... and it hurts. it's spider bites, musquito bikes, mite bites, jigger bites, and then just cuts and scrapes. i lather on the anti-itch cream every night, and it's basically the best part of my day.
anyways
yes.
that is all i have to say.
i am LOVING it here. all of it.
i am the most physically uncomfordable that i have ever been in my entire life, but i feel like i am right where i am supposed to be. just me and monos and the musquitos. testing the integrity of Rite-in-the-Rain notebooks, day after day.
it's twelve years later, and i'm pretty sure that he's wrong...
.... but i'm still half expecting to come across a two foot long cockroach with a stolen baby.
i'm a little nervous.
the closest of seen was one that was about three inches long. i was way to freaked to even kill it. i made very high pitched noises and gathered all my friends to see. i did the same thing when our TA found a tarantula. yes. a tarantula. a gargantuan fuzzy black spider. not cool.
ANYWAYS.
enough about bugs.
you will all be pleased to hear that we celebrated Canada Day in style here, despite having no facepaints, no flags, and only one canadian. don't worry though, i REPRESENTED. we had a canada day fiesta with fresh fruit (the first non-rice and beens we'd had in weeks) and rum and starwars. also, many amazing things happened that day, to many different people, and my prof declared them "Canada Day Miracles".
one of the miracles? I FOUND A MONKEY SKELETON! i realize that sounds a little sociopathic, but it's the circle of life, and frankly it was way cool. i found the skull with most of the teeth and the ENTIRE SPINE and both hip bones and a lot of finger bones and then most of the right arm and leg. seriously, it was way cool.
then it was my birthday, and Leonel and the kitchen staff surprised me with a cake which was pretty awesome. then we finished off the rum and watched more starwars. ALSO i got four hours of focal data that day. GREAT DAY. also, thanks to everybody for the bithday wishes! facebook and email and blog comments, that was very nice of y'all. (Laoora is from texas, and so i am totally adopting "y'all" into my lexicon. it is awesome. embrace it)
my monos (and by that i mean, the monkeys. i have assumed possession of the ones that i follow around every day, and also i assume that they speak spanish and so i try to respect that by calling them by their spanish name) are being awesome these days. i got six hours of data yesterday. and me and Laoora 'found' a neonate - a little baby monkey that is still blond and is so small and just clings to it's momma tummy all day. it must be only about two or three days old. i got another hour of data on it today too. it is basically ADORABLE, but we don't see it much cause it's mother is very protective and it's not very active yet.
did i mention in my last post how cute the monkeys are? wow. they are rediculously adorable. it blows my mind. especially the little babies that are still unsteady and stumble around in the trees and ride their mommas backs with their tails wrapped around her tail. the novelty of baby monkeys will NEVER wear off.
anyways
i am actually super pressed for time. only got two hours of data today then my monos dissapeared, so Laoora and K and i decided to come here for lunch that isn't rice and beans. though i do love the rice and beans. of course.
looks like i might actually be stickin around these parts of the world for longer than i thought... but it's not finalized yet, so more on that later. it will cut into my kingston time in august a lot, but it will allow me to extend my study and get way more data, so we'll see. i'll keep y'all posted.
i know there was a ton of other stuff i wanted to tell you.... crazy things happen every day. some things just crazy, others crazy funny. mostly i spend my days in the forest with my monos. sometimes i run into Laoora or K, but mostly it is just me and the monos. i only wear shorts cause it's too hot for pants and i don't wear enough deet cause it feels awful so my legs are rediculously nasty. i am told that it looks as if i have "ebola of the ankle".... i'll have to take pictures.... it's pretty gross... and it hurts. it's spider bites, musquito bikes, mite bites, jigger bites, and then just cuts and scrapes. i lather on the anti-itch cream every night, and it's basically the best part of my day.
anyways
yes.
that is all i have to say.
i am LOVING it here. all of it.
i am the most physically uncomfordable that i have ever been in my entire life, but i feel like i am right where i am supposed to be. just me and monos and the musquitos. testing the integrity of Rite-in-the-Rain notebooks, day after day.
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