Trial by fire... literally.

My first day in the field started out with two strikes against it. One, Irene and I barely slept last night. By the time we loaded our points into the GPS last night, it was kind of late, but then the neighbors kindly left their dog out last night, and it howled and barked and whined. The. whole. night. Irene was so disoriented that she woke up an hour early at 3.30 and then kindly woke me up as well to make sure I was ready to go in time. So, the day started in a super exhausted way.

Second, and anyone who has ever gone anywhere with me before will not be too surprised: guess who got carsick? We´re at the internet shop two houses down from ours, so I won´t be uploading photos tonight, but when I do in coming days, take a look at the road and you´ll see why. Hours and hours of bumpy, curvy, unpaved roads. Fare thee well, breakfast.

So quite obviously the day started out not in the smoothest way. It was interesting to be in Mayan territority though. We were searching for my fern (helecho) in places several hours north of here and not having much success early on. Eventually we were shown some by a few farmers in one ejido, and then had several more failures, including a multiple mile hike that yielded no results under the high sun. Ugh. We passed some fields that were actually in the process of being slashed and burned, so I learned a bit about the agricultural season. Right now is the typical time to be burning fields, right before the rainy season really gets going. There was evidence of this all over the place.

Eventually we found some large patches along the highway near where we thought we´d find some helechos, though not the exact point. With the help of my cohort and manager, I´ve got some GPS points and some really sloppy sketch maps that I´ll of course go back and correct. Photos to come in days following. All in all, Alejandro, Irene and I spent over 14 hours in the field today, with mixed failures and successes, but we stopped by another lovely lake on the way back to our Casa Amarillo (yellow house). It´s raining pretty hard right now so the heat has broken at least temporarily, so I think I´ll sleep well tonight... if the dog stays quiet...

Hola desde Chetumal!

(Hello from Chetumal!)

Irene and I arrived safely yesterday! I didn't say so sooner because we've been recovering from our travels. We arrived at our house in Chetumal about 24 hours after I woke up to pack and get going. Dad dropped us off at Newark but there was some debacle when all of the flights to Mexico were consolidated and we were not on the final flight. The nice ladies at the check in fixed this, and we were off to Houston. I finished getting my grades in during our layover, and looked up my own final grades on Irene's Blackberry right before we took off, so my semester literally ended as I was about to leave the country. I passed GIS! Moving forward with my life now...

We arrived in Cancun without any problems. The flight was mostly empty so we each had a row to ourselves. Debacle two: the bus from the airport to the bus terminal wasn't running according to schedule because no one is coming to Mexico these days (why?). We ended up taking a rather expensive taxi ride, and then waiting two hours for a bus to Chetumal. We departed at midnight, and five hours later, we met Alejandro, the project manager in the area. He took us to the house and picked us up again around noon to get some things from the market. We slept for maybe 5 hours, and then didn't eat until late in the afternoon, almost 24 hours after our last meal at Houston George Bush International Airport. Ugh.

So today we're feeling a little better rested and we've had more regular meals. We met with Alejandro in the morning to discuss what work needs to be done, and the plan is to start tomorrow at 5AM travelling to an ejido (a sort of farming village-- there's 20 in all that I'll be visiting in the coming weeks) about four hours away. He'll work with us at least the next few days. After we were done talking work, Irene and I took a bus to Bacalar for an afternoon at Laguna de Bacalar, a gorgeous lake. It was a really lovely, relaxing day.

I am slowly learning some important words in Spanish, most notably today: catira (blond). Apparently, it's very obvious that I'm not from around here, and everyone's assumed that Irene is my guide. It's kind of hilarious.

So, things are going just fine so far, except for one very, very important thing that I left in my apartment. Honestly, I was just crushed when I realized forgot it: my Trees of North America: a guide to field identification. So many amazing trees here, and I don't know what any of them are. It's pretty sad.

However, you can see in photos that life has gone on without my tree book: http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v473/fishius25/Mexico/

No time like the present...

...to finish packing...

I leave in about an hour to pick up Irene, drive home, and be driven to Newark. Dad's kindly taken the day off to do that. He's not the only one I have to thank for helping keep things under control this week. Mom did most of my laundry (and somehow made my clothes brighter than they've been in ages, it's like magic!). Irene continually picked up the pieces of my overworked brain. The usual suspects met up for another upbeat Monday night. Katie and Jamie came over and scrutinized my exam, causing me to throw out a question and have that much less to grade. Cheryl and Gurzo kindly adopted my eggs and bread so I wouldn't have to throw them out. Tom reminded me not to die. The list goes on. Many others have offered laughter and encouragement, and I can't thank you enough.

So now, I just need to throw together my carry on, take out the garbage, and hit the road!

Swine? It's fine.

So, people have been concerned about this "swine flu".

Well, let me tell you, that is so last week.

But I've got Tamiflu and an enormous bottle of hand sanitizer, as per my doctor's instructions.

Really though, I'm more concerned about finishing grading my students' exams before I go on Friday morning!

next destination: Mexico!

Oh hey!

Some of you may have heard, because I'm excited and tell anyone who even slightly expresses interest in what I'm up to these days: I'm going to Mexico!

For my masters thesis, I'll be studying the bracken fern invasion in the southern Yucatan peninsula and its relationship to fires in the area-- mostly slash and burn agriculture, but potentially with a nod to wildfires/hurricanes too (I can only hope to include natural hazards!). Yes, I am excited! Yes, I will take pictures! No, I do not speak Spanish! Thankfully, I have been teamed up with my fellow geographer Irene, whose Spanish is exponentially better than mine (she's from Venezuela). She's going to be doing some preliminary work for her Phd dissertation, too. I'll drive the truck, she'll speak the Spanish. It should be pretty excellent!

Right now my life is a whirlwind of grading my students' exams and getting all of the things I need before I leave on Friday morning. Many thanks to my kind mother for doing my laundry and my kind father for taking the day off to drive my research cohort and me to the airport!

rabid excitement!

As my trip to Mexico draws slightly nearer, we're beginning to discuss the details. I meet next Tuesday with Laura and my friend Irene, who is Laura's GA, who will be going to Mexico with us, who will be my partner in crime. Laura is from Colombia and Irene is from Venezuela, so at least I'll have help with the Spanish (funny how 9 years of German and a year of Mandarin won't be the least bit useful for this adventure).

In the meantime, in sharing my excitement about this trip with a few people, a biology teacher I sing in choir with at church reminded me to look into malaria medication. Oh yeah. I like to think that would have occurred to me without her suggestion, but it was a good suggestion anyway. The only other countries I've been to so far are not known for malaria, or really anything else in particular (except maybe Mad Cow?). I looked up some information on the CDC website, only to find that I need a few vaccinations in addition to malaria meds: Hepatitis A, rabies and typhoid.

This is just one of the things I need to address in the next six or fewer weeks before I go. We'll be hammering out some more specific details on Tuesday, but this trip is going down sometime in the next month and a half!

Español 101

Today, I went to Pennsylvania to my cousin's house to celebrate my uncle's 70th birthday. I always enjoy seeing my family, and it turns out that Kathie and her family aren't that far away from me here in Highland Park.

Upon my return home, I found that my roommate had put Post-It notes all over our kitchen and the contents of our refrigerator to teach me the Spanish words for things. She's Puerto Rican, so she's really excited for an excuse to teach me Spanish. Let's be honest, I probably would have picked up some eventually anyway, but this Mexico trip with the EDGY project is a pretty exciting reason to learn immediately!

Where in the world is... someone else?

The first video on this page was playing on a huge screen in Times Square while I was in the city yesterday evening with my friend Tom. We'd gone to see a show, and it was short so we had a bit of time to wander around afterward and still make the train back to Jersey. I just thought this video was so happy! Also, I am super envious of this guy's grand adventures. Just you wait though, I'm going to have my own adventures!

exciting and edgy upcoming adventure!

This is pretty exciting news!

After a bit of panic about what courses to take this semester and what direction my thesis work might take, I landed a really sweet field research gig for a chunk of the summer. My advisor, Laura Schneider, had mentioned offhandedly in the past that she might be happy to bring me onto her research, the EDGY project in the southern Yucatan peninsula in Mexico. She looks at land use change, among other things, but a lot of the foundation work for the project includes biogeography and soil stuffs.

She needs someone to do some vegetation mapping for her this summer. She was going to hire someone down there, but then remembered that I might be having a panic attack about my thesis by now, and am interested in this sort of thing and have a small amount of experience in it, too. The conversation went thusly:

"Do you have a driver's license?"
"Yes."
"Can you drive stick shift?"
"YES!"
"Then we would really like you to come to Mexico with us."

Fully funded, at least three weeks of wandering around forests in the Southern Yucatan, near the borders of Guatemala and Belize, with Mayan ruins in the middle of the field site. I'll be driving a truck they have down there, exploring the area and what's growing in it (specifically looking for the bracken fern but making note of the other plantlife, too).

!!!

More to come in the months following. We'll talk more as the end of the semester draws nearer. Meanwhile, I'm going to continue to jump up and down a bit about this.

mega musings

Timmy, one of my fellow Boston New Years celebrants, called me yesterday to ask if I could possibly drive him to Philadelphia airport today, since his family is all sorts of under the weather and his winter semester at St. Olaf starts tomorrow. Possibly? Of course! For one, this child is like a little brother. Secondly, when am I not game to drive places that I've never been before, really? I'm never too excited about interstates, particularly I-95, because you don't get to see as many interesting things as you might driving on more local roads. However, it's really the most logical/only way to get to Philadelphia airport. And so we went.

We took Route 70 straight through the Pine Barrens. I love the Pine Barrens. Pitch pines, the predominant tree in the region, are really kind of ugly, but there's something lovely about the vastness of it (similar to my impression of the Canadian prairies). There really is quite a bit of biodiversity. It's one of those situations where you can't judge a book by its cover. And speaking of books, I'm currently reading John McPhee's Pine Barrens for the gajillionth time. It's so good. If you have any level of respect for New Jersey, you should read it sometime. And if you don't... go away. Now.

It doesn't take long to cross New Jersey from the Atlantic to the Delaware. We crossed the Walt Whitman Bridge and got to Phila Airport in good time. We figured we could find some cafe or restaurant and grab an early dinner before he peaced out from the east coast for five months, but lo and behold, there is not a single eatery before security (at least in the D and E terminals, which we wandered through). What the--?!

I understand why security is so intense at airports nowadays (like that time I had to forfeit my shoes for analysis at Newark Airport...), but I was really disappointed in being unable to share a last meal with my friend before his trip. We ended up taking over a bench next to security and people watching until Timmy needed to get going. It was interesting seeing people separating and reuniting, it was like an emotional funhouse in there. We were at terminal E, which is Northwestern and Southwestern airlines. People were going all over the US from where we were. There were lots of pictures being taken, and I thought it awkward to be in the background of people's pictures, kind of like being immortalized in photo albums on their coffee tables and bookshelves forever in a weird sort of way. It's kind of amazing how interconnected everything and everyone really are.

Of course, I realized that with this little trip out to Philly, I have toured pretty much all of the US's Megalopolis in the last week. I've been from south of Richmond, Virginia to Boston, almost all via I-95. Overdevelopment makes me a little nauseas, but I find an interesting juxtaposition between the way the northeast corridor lights up in NASA's nighttime pictures and the very dark drive through the Pine Barrens on my way home from the airport.

New Years in Boston: Don't Expect the Expected

Happy New Year.

I spent mine snowed in up in Boston, where I decided to go for a quick trip with a few friends because I've never been there and the weather report was clear until at least today. We left after lunch on the 30 and returned this afternoon due to some unexpected weather. Overall impression: I dig the city and want to visit again... but maybe not during a snow storm!

We got up to the city around dinner time, checking into our hotel in Framingham and eating the dinner we packed before wandering around in the vicinity of Commonwealth Avenue. The trees were all lit up for Christmas along the walk in the center of the avenue. I was immediately taken with how pretty the architecture in the city is. I like the patterns that many of the buildings maintain while being somewhat unique from their adjoining structures.

Kevin, Timmy, Jessica and I started our New Year's Eve with the intention of starting at the Boston Common and following the Freedom Trail and stopping at a few museums along it. We farfed around the Public Garden for a bit as it began to snow a little, jumping into empty fountains to get photos with the statues. The snow began to stick a little bit but we weren't worried, until the three of them launched themselves into the last fountain before crossing back over to the Common, which wasn't empty, but had a thin layer of ice, dusted with snow, covering a few inches of water. Jessica caught herself before flying ankle deep into cold water; Kevin and Timmy got their feet wet. This put our adventure on the wrong foot...

After sitting in Kevin's car with the heat on and getting dry socks, we ventured back out. The snow had picked up quite a bit, but we decided to try to take on the Freedom Trail. We wandered through the Boston Common and then went down Joy Street to the Afro-American History Museum. It was nice to be warm and inside the historic schoolhouse, but the snow really picked up, prompting us to cancel our New Year's Eve plans at home and to call our parents and have them look up hotels in the city for us. We got a room at a hotel within city limits (Framingham is about half an hour outside Boston) and went to check in and move the car. The room had a lovely view of the Charles River, so we took a stroll along that, half playing in the snow and half looking for transit stops. Our feet were pretty cold and wet by then so we took another break, having Chinese food for lunch in the hotel (with the added attraction of a man selecting one of the live fish, and hearing it flop about as it was pulled from the tank behind me) before taking a bus and then the T back into center city.

We took the orange line down to Massachusetts Avenue in attempt to see the Harriet Tubman House, as per the boys' intense wishes, only to discover it was a community center named for the heroine, not actually her house. So, orange line back up near the Common and back on the Freedom Trail after getting some DD, but the sun was setting and our feet were not drying. We saw a few sites: Park Street Church, Old State House, Fanueil Hall... but started our chilly trek back to the hotel not too much later.

This morning was clear as a bell but absolutely frigid: 7 degrees Fahrenheit and quite windy. As a result, we drove around Boston instead of walking a bit more before heading home. I continued to be in awe of the historic architecture, and also enjoyed passing by the wharfs (wharves?). This was only meant to be a quick visit to begin with, but turned into a quick visit over a few days. I'm looking forward to going back one day.