well
it´s wednesday evening, at 11:00pm which is the latest that i have stayed up in two months now (not counting days when i had no choice but to be awake due to the violent expulsion of all fluids from my body)
we got to granada yesterday, and as anticipated, i miss the island like crazy. i miss the monkeys and the dirt roads and the bumpy pick-up truck rides and the kids and my friend jess and the simplicity of it all.
today was a great day - having been here already i knew what was going on and settled into a groove a lot sooner than last time.
we explored the CRAZY markets. people and grains and meat and vegetables and fruit and shoes everywhere! and buttons! so many buttons! and i realized that last time i was here, when jess and i went our or crazy ¨baul con serradura¨ adventure, we only hit the tip of the iceberg. those markets go back way way farther than i´d thought. and dayum does it smell baaaad.
then i went a spent a small fortune on macrame stuff from the super hot rasta guys in the park.
then i went to find my good friend Enoch, who sortof remembered me maybe, to see if he would take us all up into the bell tower of the cathedral. and he did! at noon for when he was ringing the bells! so cool!
anyways
apprently free internet time is over and i need to go now
i can´t believe this trip is almost over.
tomorrow we go to managua and i have one night there and then i fly home.
i would get all introspective now, but this time limit has throw me off. suffice to say, this has been a pretty crazy awesome experience. i had hoped it would be a positive one, but i never imagined that it would be the monumentally-life-changingly awesome.
i freakin love primatology.
this is where i am meant to be.
all i gotsa do now is learn how to salsa.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Friday, August 8, 2008
one hundred hours and seventeen minutes
ok. this will be a real one, hopefully.
as in, a real post.
this morning something amazing happened. i went into the forest, and it was raining like crazy. and very muggy and buggy. to an extent that it hasn't been in about a month. and i was very muddy and tired but also very determined to reach my personal goals that i have set for myself. that makes me feel like an adult. personal goals that i have set for myself.
anyways
i did it
i got my 100 hours of data.
holy moly.
i don't even know what to do with myself now.
i didn't think i'd make it. between the endless hours of kidney stone passage and parasite/food poisonning simultaneous projectile diarhea-vomitting incidents (too much info?), as well as the neverending nausea, i really thought i'd never make it. but alas, i did. and this is me bragging. or gloating. i am not sure what "gloating" actually means but i think that's what i'm doing.
anyways
it was actually quite sad leaving the forest today. knowing that i might never go back there. i've spent a lot of time in that forest and learned a lot of things and gotten to know those paths and those trees and those monkeys better than i know uvic campus. and it was just sad to say goodbye to it all. but i've got my pictures. and now i've also got three days to chill in a hammock and read my new book. and drink fanta. and just generally be extremely lazy. i am also gonna go on a photo taking mission with my fancy camera and take good pictures of the compound, the road, and merida (the town)... i have some pics already, but not nearly enough. most of my pics are just of monkeys. dayum are they ever cute. i would try to post pics on here, but there is just not a fast enough connection anywhere on this island. there are pics up on facebook though, that my friends from last session have posted, so y'all should check those out. just look for anything with "ometepe" in the title. people have gotten creative. i especially like "ometepe: where clothes come to die" and "ometepe: i want to bulldoze nature". just for their titles, i'm not actually sure which pics are in which albums.
anyways
tonight we are gonna go have a party at fernando's bar. we were gonna go yesterday but getting there involves a 30 minute ride in the back of fernando's pick up, and last night there was a very intense thunder and lightenning and horizontal-rip-your-face-off rain storm, so we decided to postpone. there was a bit of sun this afternoon though so tonight should be good. not sure exactly where fernando's bar is, but he's a cool guy, so it should be nice. and by nice i mean there will probably be a roof.
fernando was our chauffeur a couple of weeks ago when we had our "day off" and basically crammed as many ometepe tourist attractions as possible into one day. definetly the best part though was just having all 8 of us crammed into the back of a pickup, driving along the islands infamous unpaved roads. especially when the cows got in the way. there are cows all over the place here. and horses and pigs and chickens and dogs. and they all have a tendency to fall asleep in the middle of the road. which is generally not a problem cause there are only like twelve cars on this side of the island, everybody bikes. but it's pretty funny when you're in one of those cars and you come up to a cow and all the honking in the world will not move it.
ALSO - big news. ok so. i mentioned the biking. everybody here rides bikes. everybody. and at the compound we don't have enough bikes for all of the students so only the teachers and the TAs get bikes. so last session i never road one. but THIS session, i have been riding back and forth to the forest every day. which is sweet cause it saves time and makes me feel like a local. BUT. the coolest part is that, people here rarely ride only one person on a bike. usually it is whole families. the dad will be riding, the mom will sit on the cross bar holding a kid, and then another kid will balance over the back wheel. sometimes only two or three people. but rarely just one. so the other day, D and i thought we'd try it. cause only i had a bike and we were headin back from the forest at the same time. so she sat on the crossbar and i rode and it took us ages to get going. the locals laughed and pointed A LOT. probably cause we were making lots of noise and laughing ourselves and going very slowly and falling a lot. but eventually we got it! and it was awesome! and then the next morning, i rode Keen out to the trails too. which especially got a lot of stares, i think, because we were breaking tradiontal gender stereotypes. i've never seen a girl riding and a guy sitting, only the other way around. but Keen is a boy. so it was pretty funny. anyways.
i just had to share that.
without a visual, i'm sure it's really not that funny. so we'll have to do a re-inactment and take pictures so that you can appreciate the full extent of the hilarity. the locals make it look so easy. it really is not.
alright
that's it for now i think
on the 12th we leave for granada and we're gonna stay at the place with the free internet. so i'll do one final post once i'm there, i think.
peace out Gs
as in, a real post.
this morning something amazing happened. i went into the forest, and it was raining like crazy. and very muggy and buggy. to an extent that it hasn't been in about a month. and i was very muddy and tired but also very determined to reach my personal goals that i have set for myself. that makes me feel like an adult. personal goals that i have set for myself.
anyways
i did it
i got my 100 hours of data.
holy moly.
i don't even know what to do with myself now.
i didn't think i'd make it. between the endless hours of kidney stone passage and parasite/food poisonning simultaneous projectile diarhea-vomitting incidents (too much info?), as well as the neverending nausea, i really thought i'd never make it. but alas, i did. and this is me bragging. or gloating. i am not sure what "gloating" actually means but i think that's what i'm doing.
anyways
it was actually quite sad leaving the forest today. knowing that i might never go back there. i've spent a lot of time in that forest and learned a lot of things and gotten to know those paths and those trees and those monkeys better than i know uvic campus. and it was just sad to say goodbye to it all. but i've got my pictures. and now i've also got three days to chill in a hammock and read my new book. and drink fanta. and just generally be extremely lazy. i am also gonna go on a photo taking mission with my fancy camera and take good pictures of the compound, the road, and merida (the town)... i have some pics already, but not nearly enough. most of my pics are just of monkeys. dayum are they ever cute. i would try to post pics on here, but there is just not a fast enough connection anywhere on this island. there are pics up on facebook though, that my friends from last session have posted, so y'all should check those out. just look for anything with "ometepe" in the title. people have gotten creative. i especially like "ometepe: where clothes come to die" and "ometepe: i want to bulldoze nature". just for their titles, i'm not actually sure which pics are in which albums.
anyways
tonight we are gonna go have a party at fernando's bar. we were gonna go yesterday but getting there involves a 30 minute ride in the back of fernando's pick up, and last night there was a very intense thunder and lightenning and horizontal-rip-your-face-off rain storm, so we decided to postpone. there was a bit of sun this afternoon though so tonight should be good. not sure exactly where fernando's bar is, but he's a cool guy, so it should be nice. and by nice i mean there will probably be a roof.
fernando was our chauffeur a couple of weeks ago when we had our "day off" and basically crammed as many ometepe tourist attractions as possible into one day. definetly the best part though was just having all 8 of us crammed into the back of a pickup, driving along the islands infamous unpaved roads. especially when the cows got in the way. there are cows all over the place here. and horses and pigs and chickens and dogs. and they all have a tendency to fall asleep in the middle of the road. which is generally not a problem cause there are only like twelve cars on this side of the island, everybody bikes. but it's pretty funny when you're in one of those cars and you come up to a cow and all the honking in the world will not move it.
ALSO - big news. ok so. i mentioned the biking. everybody here rides bikes. everybody. and at the compound we don't have enough bikes for all of the students so only the teachers and the TAs get bikes. so last session i never road one. but THIS session, i have been riding back and forth to the forest every day. which is sweet cause it saves time and makes me feel like a local. BUT. the coolest part is that, people here rarely ride only one person on a bike. usually it is whole families. the dad will be riding, the mom will sit on the cross bar holding a kid, and then another kid will balance over the back wheel. sometimes only two or three people. but rarely just one. so the other day, D and i thought we'd try it. cause only i had a bike and we were headin back from the forest at the same time. so she sat on the crossbar and i rode and it took us ages to get going. the locals laughed and pointed A LOT. probably cause we were making lots of noise and laughing ourselves and going very slowly and falling a lot. but eventually we got it! and it was awesome! and then the next morning, i rode Keen out to the trails too. which especially got a lot of stares, i think, because we were breaking tradiontal gender stereotypes. i've never seen a girl riding and a guy sitting, only the other way around. but Keen is a boy. so it was pretty funny. anyways.
i just had to share that.
without a visual, i'm sure it's really not that funny. so we'll have to do a re-inactment and take pictures so that you can appreciate the full extent of the hilarity. the locals make it look so easy. it really is not.
alright
that's it for now i think
on the 12th we leave for granada and we're gonna stay at the place with the free internet. so i'll do one final post once i'm there, i think.
peace out Gs
Friday, August 1, 2008
bug bites and chick peas
ok this is a quick one
things are going well
i am not sick anymore
i am mostly eating full meals again
i wake up every night in the middle of the night scratching the crap outta my legs. it's gross and annoying.
i've got 32 more hours to go and then i'll have 100 hours of data.
this is awesome.
the new group is TOTALLY different.
i am still loving the island, etc.
but i am stoked to go home, and to the cottage, and to see my family.
at night, i dream about chick peas. and hummus. and tofu. and various other meatless proteins.
also, last night i had a very stressful dream involving international flights and a rowing crew meeting.
it is not raining here much anymore.
it's weird.
i heart monkeys.
i go now
adios
things are going well
i am not sick anymore
i am mostly eating full meals again
i wake up every night in the middle of the night scratching the crap outta my legs. it's gross and annoying.
i've got 32 more hours to go and then i'll have 100 hours of data.
this is awesome.
the new group is TOTALLY different.
i am still loving the island, etc.
but i am stoked to go home, and to the cottage, and to see my family.
at night, i dream about chick peas. and hummus. and tofu. and various other meatless proteins.
also, last night i had a very stressful dream involving international flights and a rowing crew meeting.
it is not raining here much anymore.
it's weird.
i heart monkeys.
i go now
adios
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