Soooo I’m sorry about the delay on blogging!! I’ve been
getting settled in at work and in my new city, and meeting some new people!!
I’m not going to give you a play by play of my days, because frankly, I don’t
think you want to hear about my work days, since they are pretty anticlimactic!
But I’ll let you know the basics of what I’ve done this past week!
We’ve been snorkeling a bunch (I’m still trying to get the
hang of my mask… pretty sure I’ve drank like 5 gallons of saltwater since being
here… yummmm)! I’ve seen a bunch of cool fish and sea urchins, but I haven’t
ventured out to far yet, so I haven’t seen the sea lions swimming or the sea
turtles! But that’s my task for this weekend! :D We walked to Las Grietas,
which is like a huge crack in the earth’s surface that has filled with water!
It’s super deep and the water is really blue! Its super pretty and there are
some big fish in there! Let me tell you… I was super excited to be walking on
lava rock before I got here, because I mean come on… its lava rock… but its not
so great. In fact it really hurts. Especially when you aren’t watching where
you are swimming or walking in the water and you kick a huge rock. I’m a little
scraped up. Oh well… at least its lava rock and not concrete, because lets face
it, its less cool to say “I kicked concrete” compared to “I kicked lava rock.”
Besides snorkeling, I’ve been working! We started working on
Monday. Kind of. That was suppose to be our first day. But a few things
happened at the station the previous week, so they weren’t 100% prepared for
us. So all we did on Monday was fill out some paper work, tell them what shirt
sizes we needed, and had a small meeting with Frank about our individual tasks. Tuesday, I met Henri Herrera (probably
one of the nicest guys ever!). He’ll pretty much be my boss while I’m here. I
was given a bunch of things to do over the summer, so I’ll stay pretty busy!
The first task I was given was to type up a table of all of the Universities,
Institutions, Museums and what not around the world and their addresses and
contacts that we have to contact about their Arachnid collections. Then Joe and
I were put in charge of helping Henri organize the papers he is using for his
thesis paper so its easier for him to set up his bibliography. He gave us a
file (a huge file) of hundreds of papers. We had to find all of the ones that
deal with ants (because that’s what his thesis is on!) and throw out all of the
other ones. After that, we had to organize them all into files by the primary
authors last name… Joe and I split the task, so I took ‘A’ through ‘K’. I
seriously worked on that for the past 3 days. And I finally finished today! SO
MANY PAPERS! The thing that will be my primary task for the summer, is taking
pictures of all of the specimens of invertebrates in the lab. I’ll be taking
dorsal, frontal, and profile view pictures of all of them. I’ve got the camera
all set up so I get to play around with it and make the insects look all pretty
:) The program that I’m using is also really cool! I can actually control the
entire camera from my computer! All of the functions show up on my computer,
just like they do on the camera. I control the flash and everything! It’s
pretty nifty! (yes… nifty!) After taking some pictures, we have to upload them
to a library computer, where it will go into the database. Then we have to
label and tag every species so its prepared to go online and into Datazone.
It’s a pretty complicated program, but I think I’ll be able to get the hang of
it pretty quick, since I’m going to be using it all the time.
So that’s my work for the summer! With a few other little
tidbits in there! Like… Henri asked me to go out in the field with him to take
pictures of specimens out in the wild! Woot! I’ve also made friends with some other people working on the
islands (I’ll talk more about them in a bit!) and I might be able to go out in
the field and help them observe, catch, and band Blue Footed Boobies! (they’re
birds, for those of you who, I know, thought of other things).
So back to life on the islands! Basically… its awesome. Food
here is amazing (and that’s coming from someone who doesn’t enjoy seafood,
which we eat a lot of here!) and fresh fruits, veggies, and fruit are super
cheap! You can get a pound of yellow fin tuna or a pound of wahoo fresh from
the water like 5 minutes prior cut up right in front of you, for two dollars!
Its awesome! All the while, there are frigate birds and pelicans and sealions
sitting around to get the scraps! Its pretty entertaining!
The shops and such here are pretty cute! (a lot of tourist-y
shops haha). On the weekends they pretty much shut down though, same with at
lunch time. Everyone shuts down for lunch, except restaurants haha. I love just
walking around the town. The people here are so friendly!
Every once in awhile, during the day I stop by the internet
café to check email (when I decide to go into town on my hour and a half lunch
break). I think we’ve all kind of been going to the same place. Either way, I
was in there a couple days ago, and I had a little girl (about 3 years old)
come up to me and ask me my name (in Spanish of course) and she asked me a
bunch of other questions that I could not understand… and I didn’t really know
how to explain to a 3 year old that I don’t speak Spanish… it was quite an
entertaining ordeal for the both of us. After that, I was just sitting there
minding my own business and I turned to look out of the shop, and there was
this 30-something guy walking passed and he saw me and stopped in and talked to
the shop owner. I thought, “meh whatever, friends, not a big deal” then I comes
over and asks my name, and if I speak Spanish. I said it was Jordan, and that I
knew very little Spanish. He laughed and then continued to talk to the owner. A
little while later he came back over and asked if I had a phone number (umm…) I
said no I don’t. he’s like “well can I see you again?” I was just kind of
like.. well.. uh… ha.. I’ll be around I guess? But I don’t know? And then said
I had to leave. Its crazy how forward the guys are here. They aren’t trying to
be creepy or anything its just their culture. Its just okay for them to go up
to someone and talk to them and stuff. I was definitely caught off guard but it
was kinda funny. I haven’t seen him since haha.
Two people I have met and hang out with all of the time,
though, are David and Maria! They live right next to me! They are the ones who
are working with the Blue Footed Boobies! They leave me every few days to go
and do some work, but whenever they are here and I’m not working, we all hang
out! We make dinner, and lunch together, and sit around and play games (like skip-bo,
which I got second in but I beat David, so now he owes me a beer! Ha) and we go
swim together. They’re planning a few fun things for us to do in the next couple
weeks which is super exciting! We have plans to go into town and go dancing and
have dinner and a few drinks. On Tuesday we did just that and had a blast!
Maria is 22 and from Colombia. She’s just here for a month working with David on
the Boobie project. She’s super awesome! And I know we’ll be keeping in touch!
:) David is 27 and is working on his Master’s here. He’s lived here for 4
years, but is originally from Guayaquil, Ecuador. He goes to school at Wake
Forest University in North Carolina. Both of them are working on my Spanish
with me, and I’m helping them with their English. It’s a pretty decent trade haha.
Its nice at nice and on the weekends when no one is working
at the station, we can go sit on this patio area overlooking the ocean and sit
on the internet and update things. Its so nice and peaceful! Last night while I
was sitting there I had a night heron (pretty birds!) jump up on the bench and
freak out at me and the light from my computer haha. Always entertaining with
the animals here! I love it! I could totally live here! I just wish I could
have all of you here with me, so I wouldn’t have to miss you so much!! :D
Besides that, not much is going on here! I’ll add more
pictures soon! I’m ganna take some more this evening when I go into town so you
guys can see what a pretty town it is! I think we’re going to walk around the
town tonight, since it’s the weekend, it’ll be a bit more lively, and it wont
take as long because I finally have a fixed bike! haha
When we went into town for lunch today (super cheap! Juice,
soup, and full entrée for 4 dollars!), they were setting up for some sort of
festival! So I think we’re going to check it out! :) I have to go into town for
some supplies this evening anyway! So much going on! I don’t think I’ve
remembered everything! I’ll think of it sometime! Haha! Ciao!
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