Posted by carla on Jul 16, 2009 in
Personal *yeah, im seriously using numbers for entry titles 
So i thought yesterday was pretty sedate right?
Well today’s fieldwork was nothing like yesterday. For one thing, the site was a good 20-minute hike uphill! It was something i was unprepared for. I havent exactly done anything remotely close to exercise since I got here. And i’ve been eating quite a lot. Every meal here is a feast! They wont serve food unless there are 10 of you seated, so my antisocial self has been temporarily shelved And they serve around 8 different kinds of dishes per meal! Seriously! So you can imagine how different this is from my tuna-and-rice-twice-a-day routine back home. But i digress….
So yeah, when we finally got to the site, we had to establish the plot. I was one of the first ones to work on the site because i was holding the compass. i only usually look down (because im paranoid about snakes!), so i didnt see this huge clump of wasp hanging just above my head. i may have disturbed it because they stung me 3x on my hand. it has never happened to me before so i kinda panicked. but it was nothing, i found out today that im not allergic to them (thankfully!). my hand was just swollen, and it had this burning sensation for some time, but it’s ok now. this happened probably around 15minutes after we arrived so it was quite an interesting start to my day. everything went smoothly from there
And just to echo this email that i just read this afternoon on being grateful, i say, im thankful for being stung by wasps today because it meant i was working outdoors, which is one of the things i love about this life
Posted by carla on Jul 15, 2009 in
Personal *because im too tired to think of a title for each post.
We did fieldwork today. First time since we got here. Aside from the tour around the garden, and the exercise on plant taxonomy, we pretty much just stayed inside for lectures this past week.
Upside: it wasnt CRAZY fieldwork. i’ve had more tiring days in the field before. there were a LOT of us working so we finished quite early. and it was my first time in a limestone forest, so the experience was quite new. and it didnt rain!
Downside: Limestone forests (at least the one we went to) arent really that diverse. for a 30mx30m plot, we probably only have 6 species, max. And the trail was really slippery. Merrell was no match for the paved trails here. im not used to paved trails. you walk around the forest and it feels like walking around UP. they even have stairs! and rest areas! (which isnt a downside, really).
But i think tomorrow’s gonna be another story. we’re gonna spend the whole day outside, and work in another kind of forest. a seasonal something something. haha. looking forward to it!
and we were assigned to our project groups just now. im working with andes from indonesia and liu jia jia from china. and we’re gonna do something about wood density (or is it gonna be about growth rings?) and relate this to disturbance. i dont wanna get into details here, lest you think im a nerd, and this blog post boring. i also cant, even if i wanted to, because this subject is something im not quite familiar with. to be honest, i havent really done this before. which is why im here in the library at 10:30pm sitting in front of the computer. because im supposed to read up on this before we speak with our project adviser tomorrow. which is why i should not have been writing an entry tonight. so im gonna end this one right….now.
Posted by carla on Jul 13, 2009 in
Personal Hey everyone!
I know I said im gonna update this blog every few days or so, but things have been pretty hectic lately. So many things have happened so fast that I feel like I’ve been here for weeks already!
Anyway, I’ll try to make this as detailed as possible. I wrote down some random thoughts here and there, just some short notes that I would like to build up on when I do get the time to really sit down and write something substantial. And that time is now. So here goes….
IN TRANSIT
Hong Kong (at least the part that I got to see, which is just the airport) is really impressive. And huge! As soon as I walked out of the plane, I had this big grin on my face, I couldn’t get over the fact that this is really it! I’m actually out of the country, and by myself!
SILVERWORKS?!
On the plane to Kunming, I was seated next to this old man who spoke no English. And there was me, who spoke very little Chinese (emphasis on “very little,” referring to the very few words/lines I remembered from the phrasebook I bought just a few days before). He asked me to take a picture of the airport when we landed in Kunming because I was on the window-side. And he borrowed my pen when he had to fill out his health declaration form (I guess this is standard procedure now, since the H1N1 thing). And these interactions were all made possible just by hand gestures! I thought then that this would be an indication of how this whole “adventure in Chiner” would be like. Fortunately, all of the teachers and classmates speak English. Except for a few words (civil law, not silverwork!), I’ve managed to communicate quite well with everyone (or at least I think so!). My new role is as interpreter of English (spoken by an Indian) to English (spoken by Chinese). They should start paying me for this.
KUNMING TO XTBG
We stayed in Kunming for 2 days, and then took a day-long bus ride to Banna, where we will be staying for the next 4 weeks. Yesterday we had a tour of the garden. It’s so beautiful that I don’t even have the words for it. I’ve been living in the big city for so long that I have gotten used to the pollution, noise, horrible traffic, and all these other things that the probinsyana in me absolutely abhors. It’s quite refreshing then to wake up to bird calls in the morning and sleep to the sound of crickets at night. Living in the garden is like being transported to another world.
TYPICAL DAY
Our days mostly consist of lectures, lectures, and more lectures. I’ve been out of school for almost 2 years now so I embrace with enthusiasm (no, not really) these long hours of just sitting down, writing notes, asking questions, and listening to discussions. Almost everyone is in graduate school. Many are doing their masters, a few doing their PhDs. And then there’s me, who’s neither. The composition of the group is what I’m really excited with. Different countries, different cultures, different languages, different educational backgrounds, different interests. My Thai roommate, for example, is working on flycatchers. Others are studying butterflies, frogs, freshwater mussels, monkeys, dolphins, and pandas! And plants, of course *winkwink*
I’m having such an amazing time here, just seeing new places, meeting new people, learning new things, that I have to remind myself that I’m NOT on a vacation!!! The REAL work will happen in the coming days. Just a few more lectures, then it’s time to participate in long term research projects, do field and lab exercises, design independent projects and see them through to completion (from lit search, to data gathering and analysis, down to paper presentation).
I still want to write about the food, but I probably wont be able to finish once I get started on that one so I’ll save it for next time. I still have 20+ pages to read for tomorrow’s discussion groups.
Note: There was another bombing in Iligan City the day before I left for China and I only found out about it from the newspaper I read on the flight bound for HK. No one from back home bothered to mention it to me. I guess I know where I got my “updating skills” (or should I say the lack of it) from J