Swine Flu: I'm still fine, home early

Update: in anticipation of craziness trying to get back to the states next week, they're ending the program early and we're leaving Saturday instead of Wednesday. 

Still not in any danger. 

But have to deal with Delta now.... 

Ok, after dealing with 5 unhelpful people and 2 annoying and unhelpful robots, I finally ended up on the phone with a wonderful person at Delta who really seemed to care and understand that if I have to leave early, I just want to get home with as little ridiculousness as possible. After much shuffling and trying to figure things out, here's what I'm doing Saturday: 

Leaving La Paz on a flight with a bunch of the other kids from my program at 3:15pm (arrive 4:50)

Go through customs and convince them that I don't have swine flu. 

Leave LA at 7:15 for Salt Lake City

Leave Salt Lake City at 12:50 am for Atlanta (arrive 6:15 am) 

Leave  Atlanta at 7:30 am for DC 

Leave DC at 11 am for Boston. FINALLY arrive in Boston at 12:33 on Sunday. 

This actually puts me home in 21 hours, which is much less that my original plan, which included an overnight in LA and a total travel time of 32 hours. 

I would have been ready to leave on Wednesday. I'm excited to get home and see everyone, and feel like I've done everything I'm going to do here. But leaving campus on Friday seems so soon, so rushed. I'm really going to miss this place. I'll probably do a retrospective blog post from one of my layovers. I'm getting all sentimental. 

Our finals got moved from being Thurs and Fri to being tomorrow and Thursday, our big paper and poster is now due by e-mail May 11th, and our presentations are cancelled.  Oy vey. 

Swine Flu: I AM FINE.

So in response to all the people who've e-mailed me worried about swine flu, here's an update. I'll just keep putting updates on here, as it's easier than e-mailing all of you. (Yes mom, I'm calling you soon.) 

1) Mexico City is a long, expensive flight away from La Paz, which is the nearest airport and a 4 hour drive from here. Puerto San Carlos is VERY isolated. We haven't heard about any cases of swine flu in Baja California Sur yet. (So, if you're in New York, you're closer to swine flu than I am.) 

2) As of right now, SFS is evaluating what they need to do to keep us safe. There is a doctor coming this afternoon to check up on anyone who has even a little bit of a cold. They're working on getting people's flights changed so as not to go through Mexico City (I'm going through LA, so that's not a problem) and our presentations at schools in town have been postponed until after we're gone. They're going to keep working on this and are currently in meetings to decide how to proceed, but the bottom line is not to worry. 

The only thing I'm worried about is randomly coughing as I go through customs and not being allowed back home. (I am not sick. I'm tired, but that's probably cause I have 3 exams a paper and 2 presentations--oops, now 1 presentation--this week.) 

SFS website about Swine Flu: http://www.fieldstudies.org/pages/6088_swine_flu_update.cfm

The US media is really good at freaking people out, so take everything they say with a grain of salt. 

WHO is not recommending any travel or trade restrictions. As long as I can get into LA and from LA to Boston next week, I'm happy.  (from http://www.who.int/csr/don/2009_04_26/en/index.html) 

I feel perfectly safe here and am not worried. You shouldn't be either. We're taking lots of precautions and will do everything we can to make sure that I don't bring back any swine flu souvenirs. 

Love and virus-free hugs

Emma

P.S. I posted pictures from our amazing 5 day road trip on Picasa. They're more interesting than Swine Flu. 

Photos and being New England girl at heart

This past week has been good, but overall uneventful. We had a baby sea lion wander onto campus and hang out for a few days in our sea turtle tank before heading back to sea. She was adorable, and we all hope she's doing well. I spent a LOT of time inside in beautiful weather getting a lot of work done, but I guess that's what I'm getting the academic credit for... 

We leave for another camping trip on Tuesday, then get back Saturday in time for the last week of classes! I can't believe the semester has gone by so quickly and have loved being here, but think I may be ready to go on adventures of the New England variety. I wrote a paper on the Maine Woods (which ate my life for a while there and is why I don't have any better stories to tell about last week) and realized how much I love and miss trees, mountains, and New England forests. Well, New England in general. And the AMC. 

I love traveling, and it will always be part of my life, but I am and always will be a New England girl at heart. And there's nothing I can or want to do about it. 

I also got a new obsession: www.blipfoto.com. It's a website that allows you to post one photo each day that was taken on that day, along with a caption. You can browse the photos posted that day and look at the amazing and interesting shots people put up from all over the world. I missed today, but I'm trying to do it every day and really think about the shots I'm taking and try to use it to push myself to be a better photographer. www.blipfoto.com/emma818. Anyone can join and you don't have to post every day (and you don't have to actually upload the photo on the day it was taken, it just needs to only be one photo per day.) It's a really cool thing, and there's a really great community attached to it. Not Mexico related, but still cool. Especially if you want to see pictures of Mexico but don't have time to look through the ridiculous number on Picasa. [If you join blip or are already on there, subscribe to my journal so I know you're there and I'll subscribe to yours!]

Speaking of the ridiculous number of photos on Picasa: 

All purpose adventures that involve dolphins, jumping off of dunes, and more: http://picasaweb.google.com/Emma.RachelKanji/TheAllPurposeAlbumOfAdventures#

The baby sea lion that wandered onto campus and made itself at home for a few days last weekend. S/he's since released herself, but it was fun while it lasted!

http://picasaweb.google.com/Emma.RachelKanji/BabySeaLion#

Amazing sunsets, mostly, from our camping trip to Loreto 2 weeks ago:

http://picasaweb.google.com/Emma.RachelKanji/LoretoCampingTrip#

More dump photos from an ocean side dump we explored in search of dead turtles. Not quite a treasure hunt... (in the album called "down in the mexican dumps" I couldn't bring myself to make another album of trash.)

Passover: http://picasaweb.google.com/Emma.RachelKanji/PassoverAtSFS# 

Love, hugs, trees, and four seasons!
~Emma

B'Shanah HaBa'ah b'New England: Passover in Mexico

Chag Sameach! (and Happy Easter) 

For months now, people have been asking me what I planned to do for Passover in Mexico. My parents both asked if I wanted to take a haggadah (passover seder guide/prayerbook) with me, people asked me if I was going to keep kosher for passover, and I shrugged it off. "I mean, tortillas are basically floppy matzah--flat things made of flour and water..." I said, over and over again. Then, as passover crept up on me, I realized that tortillas weren't going to feel right as  matzah, and that maybe that haggadah might have been a good idea.  As the only observant, practicing Jew for miles (as far as I know,) I resigned myself to a passover alone. 

At first I planned to  skype in to our seder at home, but then realized that we were going to be on a camping trip, far from internet and webcams, for seder. As I started to talk to people about it, trying hard never to make it a big deal, to joke that it was fitting, I'd be spending passover wandering in the desert (hey, maybe I'd try to split the Gulf of California!), someone mentioned that Brady, our student affairs manager, said that SFS normally does a seder. I must admit that I was skeptical--Brady went to Brandeis, but isn't Jewish, and I didn't see how it made sense that there was a seder on this campus. I talked to Brady, and she confirmed the rumor; last year, there was another Jewish professor, and she and Brady led a seder for anyone on campus who was interested. As we were going to be camping on the actual first and second nights of passover, the seder was planned for Friday night. 

I kept this knowledge in mind, but was still skeptical and missing the preparations for our seder at home quite a bit. Wednesday afternoon, I found myself sitting on the beach overlooking the Gulf of California, the gentle rush of waves persisting behind the abrasive roar of ATVs driven by the kids staying next to us on the beach. It was Semana Santa, the week before Easter where thousands of Mexican families (and American tourists) flock to the beaches to camp, drink, and relax. 

My mind was thousands of miles away, sitting at the seder-table at home, the familiar living room fresh, clean, and full of people and traditions I love. The song stuck in my head was "mah nishtanah," and I wondered who was singing it this year. Julia, probably, I thought. Were they saying it right then? It was 7:30 at home as I was writing all this in my journal, and could possibly have been the time for the 4 questions. It was the first time since I've been in Mexico that I found myself trying to picture exactly what was going on at home, but there I was. I was sure that the seder at Colby, on the second floor of Bob's, was getting close to wrapping up, and equally sure that at home, we hadn't gotten to dinner yet. I found myself trying to picture exactly what was going on--who was sitting where, saying what. It kind of felt like there was a baseball game on and I needed to know what inning we were in and what the score was, or like I was running late for a meeting, trying to figure out what part I was missing. 

It's a holiday of freedom and renewal, but I jut felt trapped, alone. For me, and I think for almost every Jewish observance, community is key. We need a minyan (group of 10 people) to pray, and the focal point of this particular holiday is a millenniums-old tradition of communal memory and teaching the next generation that "once we were slaves in Egypt, but now we are free." The thought had occurred to me to embrace this as an opportunity to teach, to share my culture and tradition with the people who are my community for these three months, but the task seemed too big, too daunting. I was sure nobody would want to participate or would care much at all. I was afraid that trying to recreate Passover with people who didn't care or were disconnected from it would end up being more painful than sitting by myself on the beach, wishing I was home. 

I got through the night. After watching the sunset from a ledge high above the bay and coming down for dinner, Brady encouraged me to at least bless the "matzah" (corn tortillas. Better than for passover than flour ones, if not tastier. Yay kitneot. See note on that below.) and bring that tradition to the group. I came to the campfire where everyone was relaxing and roasting marshmallows and gave a 30-second intro to Yachatz, the breaking and blessing of the middle matzah, then tore the middle tortilla and held it up. My roommate, who's half Jewish and has done the seder thing before, happened to be the  youngest of all of us, and was excited to go find the afikoman. Brady and I hid it in our camp kitchen, and she ran off to find it.  We spent the rest of the night playing Mafia around the campfire. (Photo: Alyssa found the "afikoman!") 

After some though, I've decided to keep kosher for passover the sephardic way, and eat kitneot--rice, legumes, and corn that sephardic rabbis allow but ashkenazi rabbis don't. (Now that I think of it, Mexico's Jews are probably predominantly sephardic anyways...) Without rice, beans, corns, and peanut butter, I'd be living on fruits and veggies all week. On our way back from camping on Thursday night, we stopped for dinner at a pizza place, where I poked at iceberg lettuce salad while longing for pizza; The last pizza I had was at Dana dining hall during Jan Plan, and all I wanted was a slice. Once again, I just wanted to be home, where matzah pizza is at least an option. 

Everything turned around on Friday. Almost everyone on campus had decided to come to our seder Friday night, which I was nervous and excited to prepare with Brady. It was my day to lead our morning meeting, which includes a "physicality" activity, and I taught Turkish Kiss, a highly entertaining Israeli line dance.  Everyone was surprisingly into it and enthusiastic about it, which we'll come back to in a minute. 

I spent the morning working on my papers while also looking up environmental seder information, to try to make the seder relevant and meaningful to everyone who was coming, then spent the afternoon cooking with Brady. She roast a chicken, I made chocolate meringues (which I am DEFINITELY making again), and attempted to make tsimmis. The tsimmis I made was completely different from the yams, dry fruit, carrots and more that mom makes: layered pumpkin and carrot, with fresh orange juice squeezed over the top, and then brown sugar and orange slices on top, baked for a while. We also made charoset, which came out pretty much exactly the way it does at home, and broccoli with cheese, mashed potatoes, and apple sauce. The feast took us all afternoon to make, and by the time we were done, people were trickling in, all dressed up and ready. Fellow students, professors, and SFS interns were all there, dressed up and actually excited and enthusiastic to be there, and their interest encouraged me. 

I opened the actual seder the way we do at home--though I didn't spill wine on the table cloths (and we didn't have wine to spill in the first place) I told the story of how my great-grandfather always started festive melas with that to make his guests feel comfortable. I explained that passover is a time of asking questions and challenging assumptions, of figuring out what enslaves us and how to become free, and about teaching and learning, and invited everyone to ask questions and interject with insights throughout the seder. Though for the majority of it, Brady or I were the only ones talking, and though my voice felt small as the only one singing the Hebrew blessings, everyone seemed eager and engaged. The students who had been to seders before, or who had Jewish family members, were excited to see familiar parts, and I was so grateful for Alyssa's voice joining in with mine for dayenu. 

The environmental connections seemed to work well (if anyone wants, I have a 9 page word document that I pulled from COEJL and other Jewish/Environmental websites) and I also brought up some of the touchier parts of the seder, talked about needing to go back and grapple with some of the issues presented in the tradition every year. I did this in a couple places, to try to pull in more discussion,  especially with regards to the plagues and the suffering put onto the Egyptians. I had found a list of "10 environmental plagues that will befall us if we don't do something about global warming" and I had anyone who wanted "pour" metaphorical wine into a metaphoric cup of plagues, as well as pouring out love for things that they see in the world to balance out those plagues. 

We used limes as maror, which makes for quite the delicious hillel sandwich. Note to self for future years: add lime to the charoset! 

Dinner was met with even more enthusiasm, and as the meal was winding down and we were all hanging out around the kitchen, Pat started to see if he could remember the steps to Turkish Kiss, which I had taught that morning. That turned into a dance party, which of course, I loved. We closed with an English version of the blessing after meals, and I sang Oseh Shalom before saying "next year in New England."

One of the most rewarding parts of all was all of the people who came up to me after the seder and told me how much they enjoyed it, how interesting they found it. It was so exciting to be able to have brought that, with lots and LOTS of help from Brady, to campus this year.  Though passover in Mexico exceeded any of my wildest dreams for it, I'm ready to be home for the next one. (Or at least at Colby...) 

Photos are up at http://picasaweb.google.com/Emma.RachelKanji/PassoverAtSFS# 

Love and macaroons!
~Emma

(Translations: B'shanah haba'ah b'New England means "next year in New England" and alludes to the phrase said at the end of the passover seder: Next year in Jerusalem. Chag Sameach means happy holiday.)  

Gone Fishin' and lapsing back into food dorkiness.

Being a fisherman is hard. Wednesday morning had me standing on the bow of one of SFS' 2 pangas trying my luck with a cast net.  (Pangas are the small fiberglass motor boats that it sometimes feels like I live in.) We took turns trying to make the round, weighted nylon nets go into the graceful arc and round opening that Poncho and Chilaco, our pangueros, had demonstrated. They patiently taught us gringas this skill they've had since childhood, and we laughed at ourselves as we all struggled with the nets.  At some points, it felt a little bit useless to be bobbing out in the bay looking ridiculous and failing at fishing. We scared off all the fish within the couple of throws, and all we were dragging up was bits of sea grass and an occasional shell. Then at some point, someone joked that it would be easier to just trawl for the shrimp the cast nets usually reel in, and the value of this lesson sank in.  

(I didn't have my camera on me. I know, shocking. Thanks to Larissa for this shot. Madeline is confused, as we all were, by the net. Chilaco looks on, helping a bit.)

Trawling is the practice of dragging a net behind a boat that catches a lot of fish/shrimp, but also catches anything else in its path--turtles, dolphins, other fish... (Remember at the end of Finding Nemo? The SWIM DOWN scene? That's trawling. Nemo and Dory were almost bycatch.) Anyways, bottom trawling, which is usually used for shrimp, involves dragging the net along the ocean floor, destroying habitats, corals, and anything else that happens to be in its way. And it's a LOT easier than the art of using a cast net. It's important for people trying to manage fisheries to really have a complete understanding of that fishery in order to make policies and regulations that are actually realistic. Otherwise people will just ignore them....

Though we caught nothing at all on Wednesday, we were a bit more successful scallop fishing on Friday. Scallops are a fishery with absolutely no bycatch, despite other problems with overfishing and habitat loss. We put on our wetsuits and snorkel gear and jumped into the water with mesh bags, quadrats (squares of PVC pipe), and slates. The bags were for collection. The quadrats and slates were for determining the abundance of scallops in the area. We dove down, picking up scallops and writing down how many were inside the quadrat we threw randomly through the waves. Each pair of us came back to the campus wet lab with 10 scallops, which we weighed, measured, and dissected. Those of you who eat scallops probably know this, but the edible part of a scallop is the abductor muscle that holds the two shells together. In order to open them, we wedge a knife between the blades and cut the ligament (or something) that connects them. The scallop is still alive at this point, and is trying to squeeze you out, but we won every time, and those of us who aren't kosher/vegetarians had fresh scallop snacks. (Only after weighing the muscle to see what percentage of the total scallop weight is actually marketable.)

Our third and final adventure as fisherwomen (and man) was Saturday, when we went out to pull up blue crab traps used by one of the directed research groups. The traps at the first site were suspiciously empty, and we only managed to pull in 6 crabs from 5 traps. Someone had snagged our traps first. That's the way it goes here, especially because the school operates with research permits and doesn't exactly have the same respect from fishermen as they give each other. We were more successful at the second site, and by the end of the morning we had a cooler full of wiggling crabs in mesh bags. 

A brief stint in the freezer did little to subdue them, and after lunch we were faced with weighing, measuring, and then opening up 20-something live crabs. We had a discussion about the prospect of ripping the shells off of the crabs to kill them, rather then letting them go into to a coma in the freezer--the really cold freezer in the lab is full of chemicals, so if we killed them that way, which may or may not have worked in the time we had, they wouldn't be able to be eaten, and would go to waste. If we put them in our kitchen freezer for the period of lunchtime, they wouldn't really go numb before we killed them, but they wouldn't go to waste.  Anyways, it was a bit odd to rip the shells off of the living, moving crabs in our hands, but crab insides are kind of interesting. We were looking at them to determine their stages of gonadal development (to help determine management sizes--you don't want to harvest all of the crabs that haven't reproduced yet!) As we poked around inside the crab, taking out the gooey pink gonads and also removing all of the other guts that aren't edible, we'd occasionally hit nerves that would send the crab legs wiggling again. The first time I did this, I had a momentary panic that I was poking my tweezers around in a live crab. Then I realized what was going on and could see how cool it actually was. I'd stick the tweezers in one part of muscle and the crabs legs on that side would thrash in the same was as they did when it was alive. It felt kind of like playing with a very sick marionette doll.... The crabs die instantly when you rip their shells of, just so you know.  (Antonio, one of our research interns, also pointed out that the gonads look pretty much exactly like grapefruit. You're welcome.) 

As I was one of the few vegetarians ripping open and poking around in crabs, a couple of people asked me if, given that I'd fished, killed, and gutted these crabs, I would eat them. Thinking about it (and putting almost 21 years of keeping kosher aside) I decided that in theory, philosophically, these crabs (and the scallops, and the pen shell that some fishermen gave us while we were out getting out crab traps) were fair game for me to eat--they're local, were going to die anyways, and while they didn't exactly come from a sustainable fishery; they actually died to help figure out what a sustainable fishery would look like. So yeah, in theory I'd eat them. But almost a decade of vegetarianism and 2 of keeping kosher, plus the fact that shellfish is just kind of gooey in general, kept me from satisfying my curiosity. 

The semester has FLOWN by--I can't believe that I've already been here for 2 months and that April is just a few days away. Before I know it I'll be back in Boston... well, probably back at Colby, and fishing for scallops will be just a memory. 

Love and hugs!

~Emma

Spring Break: Loreto!

Hola!

So first off, sorry it's taken so long to actually update this thing. It's been a crazy couple of weeks--homestay weekend, a camping trip, the whale festival, a couple of day trips, and a bunch of projects and presentations to work on. Then midterms and on to spring break. All good things (well... I guess the midterms were good as midterms go...), but definitely not conducive to updating blogs regularly. It feels like there's so much going on that it's hard to choose what to write about in here. I know I won't be able to convey every exciting, interesting, fun, or otherwise notable thing I do here, and prioritizing is tough. It's all new, all momentus, and I want to share all of it with you. I was going to talk about my directed research project, but I just published a column about whales and turtles in the Colby Echo (the weekly student newspaper. The article is also posted here as my last entry). I know you all have many things to do in life other than read my blog, so I try to keep these entries short. Which I guess I just failed at by rambling on about topic selection for a paragraph. Oops.

Wednesday morning, after 2 days of midterms, we all boarded a bus from Puerto San Carlos to Ciudad Constitucion, the closest city. In Consti, those of us going on to the historic town of Loreto left our La Paz and Cabo bound classmates, and spent an hour enjoying muffins and coffee in "Coffee Star" before our next bus ride. The bus in Baja is VERY nice. Nicer than some Greyhounds I've been on in the States. We watched dubbed versions of Little Miss Sunshine and Pirates of the Caribbean II from comfy coach bus seats for the 2 hour ride through the mountains to Loreto. Loreto was founded by Jesuit missionaries in the late 1600's and is now a tourist destination, capitalizing on its proximity to the Bahia Loreto National Marine Park and historic sites. We walked across town, down a pedestrian walkway, lined with trees and tourist shops selling ceramics, textiles, hammocks, and t-shirts. Loreto is approximately the same size as Puerto San Carlos, but feels worlds away. Prices are in dollars and pesos, English is spoken pretty much everywhere. After checking into our hotel (the type of thing Mom would pick out for us and love--a converted house, decorated in classic Mexican style, beautiful, with lots of common spaces to hang out... or write in blogs. And a dog to pat and play with.) After Puerto San Carlos, where we are hyper-aware of our status as outsiders and very careful not to do anything that marks us as "those gringos from the escuela," the chance to relax and be goofy loud Americans was great. We decided early on to embrace being tourists and obvious Americans, and to just have fun. Last night we went for dinner somewhere where they served us bread and olive oil on the table, and we got pasta and pizza for dinner. There's an ice cream place with mint chocolate chip and chocolate oreo. All the streets are paved and have side walks! Development is a nice change....

Wednesday afternoon and Thursday were spent exploring Loreto, buying souvenirs and gifts that we just can't get in Puerto San Carlos, enjoying coffee and the possibility of food that didn't involve beans, rice, or tortillas. We hit up the supermarket for non-biodegradable shampoo (our gray water at the center is filtered through the mangroves) , chocolate, and Nature's Valley granola bars. We sat on the rocky beach right next to town and read for hours, people-watching from the shade of little thatched umbrellas set up on the beach. We also made friends with Cesar, a representative from a tourist agency, who found us discounts on a boat ride and car rental. (He was confused when we kept responding to his English greetings and questions in Spanish, and we got to talking.)

Thursday night, we ran into the other SFS group in Loreto. As we wandered around Loreto, looking for somewhere to hang out, we found what looked like a private party in a club next door the the bar the other group of girls had wanted to take us to. The bar was closed, but as we loitered outside the club, a woman came outside. "This isn't a private party, you can come in" she said. "It's my 40th birthday party, but please, come in!" How often are you invited to a 40th birthday party? We headed in, taking in an outdoor bar, palm trees, and all the trappings of clubs we imagine in the states (yay for not being 21...) Settling into a zebra-striped bench with high stainless steel tables, we rocked out to 90's American pop before the band started to play. The band played American classic rock, many of the guests seemed to be American, and the hostess made her speech, thanking the guests for their donation of toys for needy children, in English and Spanish. We never did get the whole story, but our hostess (whose name none of us could remember) was gracious, constantly checking in to make sure we were enjoying ourselves, happy we were dancing. "This is the best night of my life. Thank you girls so much for coming!" She said as we left, thanking her profusely for a wholly unique night.

Friday morning, we got up early to get to the marina to meet the Panguero (boat driver) that Cesar found for us. We left the dock and headed around the nearest island, Isla Coronado. As we sat in the back chatting, the boat slowed down, and our panguero pointed off the side--"ballena!" Sure enough, a humpback whale was going down for a dive, showing his flukes! Though we all see whales on a regular basis with school, it never gets old :-) Further around the island, we saw sea lions (well, heard then saw... they bark) and a HUGE pod of dolphins--over 100! (Photos to come when I get back to school. Also check out the photos of volcanic rocks and caves. They are SO cool.) We continued around the island and got to a white sand beach, protected by spits of basalt rock leftover from volcanic activity. Palapas (pavillions) are set up on the beach for shade, and we can see the fish around the rocks from the boat. We had a few hours to chill on this beach that we only had to share with a few other tourists and their pangueros. We slept in the sun (yay sunburns. Oh well, it had to happen some time) and then went snorkeling. The water was cold, but schools of Sargent Majors, scattered puffer fish, and the biggest King Angelfish I had ever seen made it worth it.

Today, we headed up the the San Javier mission, 32 km off the highway into the mountains via dirt mountain road. We rented a car and left Loreto early to make the trip. Stopping at cave paintings and beautiful oasises (oases? oasii?) along the way, the road was harrowing and would have made mom cringe, but was a LOT of fun and BEAUTIFUL. Again, check out the photo album once I get back. The mission is old and beautiful, a relic of the Jesuits who were the first Europeans in Baja. We tagged along with a tour and followed them down to a hundreds-year-old olive tree at the edge of a farm. It's beautiful trunk branched and twisted intricately. It still bears olives every year. (Pictures. Picasa. Soon.) We headed down, taking the curves carefully, narrowly missing disaster when a pick-up truck came barreling over a steep hill--we couldn't see it from below, it couldn't see us from above. I threw our rented car into reverse, he threw on the brakes, and we were fine. The rest of the trip was uneventful, driving the rough, windy dirt roads was fun, and the scenery was BEAUTIFUL. We stopped at Del Borracho, a grill/bar/restaurant right before the highway, for malted milkshakes, and then came back to our hotel for a nap. Which I am now going to go take.

Love and hugs!
~Emma

Reduce, Reuse.... ahh just recycle it already!

Hola!

So first off, sorry it's taken so long to actually update this thing. It's been a crazy couple of weeks--homestay weekend, a camping trip, the whale festival, a couple of day trips, and a bunch of projects and presentations to work on. Then midterms. All good things (well... I guess the midterms were good as midterms go...), but definitely not conducive to updating blogs regularly. It feels like there's so much going on that it's hard to choose what to write about in here. I know I won't be able to convey every exciting, interesting, fun, or otherwise notable thing I do here, and prioritizing is tough. It's all new, all momentus, and I want to share all of it with you. I was going to talk about my directed research project, but I just published a column about whales and turtles in the Colby Echo (the weekly student newspaper. The article is also posted here as my last entry). I know you all have many things to do in life other than read my blog, so I try to keep these entries short. Which I guess I just failed at by rambling on about topic selection for a paragraph. Oops.

Saturday afternoons find 2-4 SFS students hanging out in a dilapidated, roofless building on the outskirts of Puerto San Carlos, waiting.  While I would love to delve into a sketchy story that explains what we're doing there, no such luck. From 4-6 every Saturday afternoon, the Recycling Center of Puerto San Carlos is open.  This center was started last fall by Brady, the Student Affairs Manager at SFS, as a way to begin dealing with the problem of trash in Puerto San Carlos. (See my photo album/will be a photoessay as soon as I have time to edit it:http://picasaweb.google.com/Emma.RachelKanji/DownInTheMexicanDumpS#) The center buys plastic of all kinds, aluminum, and cardboard, and will take glass as well, but won't pay for it. Brady pays the same rate that the recycling truck from La Paz will pay her when it comes to pick up everything, once we have enough collected. The financial incentive to recycle is small, only about 10 pesos per kilogram (about 35 cents per pound), but works well. There are some people who come every week to recycle, bringing plastics and cardboards in huge quanities, collected from businesses and other people around town. Others seem to see it as a way to get rid of their trash that happens to be plastic/aluminum/cardboard and get some money for it.

On one memorable occassion, we noticed a car driving towards us with what looked like a bumper on its roof. We thought it was strange, but not entirely out of the ordinary in this town where it's a shock that some of the cars drive at all. As the car got closer, we realized it was coming for us. A family with a few small girls piled out of the car (nobody wears seatbelts and I doubt any of the cars would pass a US inspection), and opened the trunk. It was an old station wagon, with all of the seats folded down to fit in the tangle of black plastic and assorted junk inside. As we mobilized towards the open back of the station wagon (which was propped up with an old pipe stored in the trunk for that purpose,) we were able to make out some of the shapes inside. Cupholders, vent covers, a glove compartment, bits of dashboard, and the rest of what had clearly been a car started coming out. As we pulled things out to weigh them, it became clear that the entire interior of a car had been shoved into the back of this one and dragged to the recycling center. Some things were clearly not plastic (though we couldn't identify what they were) others we gave the benefit of the doubt, but none of it would have been recycleable in The States.  As we darted around, unpacking the greasy mess of trunk, the family milled around watching, clearly amused. Once in a while, they would lend a hand with a particularly bulky piece of siding, but mostly the little girls played in the tall grass of the empty lot next door, and the parents leaned against the station wagon, watching. Old toys, bottles and cans, and a pile of cardboard rounded out the contents of the trunk, and we weighed it all. 

[This is all I wrote, but I figured I'd publish it. Not that anyone's still reading this...]

Colby Echo: South of the Border, Watching Whales

So I'm going to post an actual post later on today (hopefully), but here's my article that was just published in the opinions section of the Colby Echo: 

http://media.www.colbyecho.com/media/storage/paper1174/news/2009/03/11/Opinions/South.Of.Border.Watching.Whales-3668766.shtml

3/7/09
I've been up since before 4 a.m, but Nutella and anticipation are keeping me alert as I scan the horizon for whales. I woke up this morning in a tent, surrounded by mangroves. With the sky still glittering with stars, my roommate and I climbed quietly into a boat to check out the nylon nets. In three shifts, from 8 p.m. to 7 a.m., our research team caught three green sea turtles-less than half the number we caught on our last trip, but you can't control the turtles. We measured, weighed, tagged and took DNA samples from these juvenile turtles who spend their long adolescence in the mangrove-lined esteros of the coast of Baja California. These turtles, like all other sea turtle species in the world, are endangered, and studying their population dynamics and structure in this area will hopefully help create effective conservation plans for them. But we released them hours ago. Now I'm perched on the front seat of a small fiberglass panga, searching for gray whales in Bahía Magdalena. 

The water is smooth as our blue and white panga cuts through the bay, weaving between fishermen pulling up traps and setting nets, heading toward open water. We're on the Pacific coast of Baja California, Mexico, studying the distribution and behavior of gray whales, which were once hunted almost to extinction along the eastern Pacific coast. They spend their summers feeding in the Arctic, and in the winter trek down the coast to Mexico to breed, give birth and now be patted by eager tourists. Their protection has been a major success story in species conservation, and the eastern Pacific population is once again considered stable. The more we know about these marine mammals, or any other species, the better we will be able to protect them. 

Tourist pangas, distinguishable by their canopies set up for shade, crowd around a mother and calf. We think we've seen these whales before, but we take GPS coordinates again. I climb onto the bow of the boat with my camera just to make sure. My research for the semester involves the photo identification of whales, and though I have a 300mm zoom lens, I rarely need to use it. These whales come right up to the boat, apparently attracted by the noise of the two-stroke engine, and bask in the shallow water below us. The mother stays below the surface, coming up only to breathe, but the calf is more curious. 

Boats surround the pair-my boat of eager students and then three or four tourist boats. All of us want to get closer, to pat a whale, and the excitement is palpable.

This is hardly the first day my group has seen whales this semester; we're out here doing transects and photo IDs twice a week, but each time is thrilling. Not wanting to crowd the whales, we get just close enough for me to take as many pictures as possible, our boat bobbing in the swells with the motor off. The tourists have no such reservations, and the baby is patted, kissed and even bopped on the head. The mother surfaces a few times and is excitedly reached for and stroked. They don't seem to mind too much, but we wonder if the constant crowding by whale watchers has a larger impact on the gray whales in the bay. We try to figure out ways to incorporate that question into our research as the baby and mom surface just beyond our outstretched fingertips. 

As we move on to the next group of whales, I think about the fact that all of this-watching the sunrise while measuring turtles, sitting on a boat taking pictures of whales-is class. I can't control a smile as I realize that of all the reasons my experiences in Mexico have been amazing, this is why I'm here. This is a completely different way of learning science. Some people go abroad on language immersion programs; though I'm learning many things here beyond the realm of ecology, days like this I feel immersed in the world of conservation research. It's a little window into the world I someday want to be a part of, and I'm loving every minute of it.

A Picture is Worth A Thousand Words

Hey Everyone!

I currently have a list of topics I need to "blog about" that includes cars and driving in Mexico, Homestay weekend, my Directed Research project/whales/photography, the recycling program in Puerto San Carlos, my perfect day of "class" yesterday, and the amazing trip to the Oasis today. It's getting longer by the day. 

However, I somehow don't have the hours that will take, so I'm going to tell you that a picture is worth a thousand words and post a bunch of pictures instead. I'm going off turtle monitoring again tomorrow night, but maybe when I get back I'll tackle one of those topics... Sorry, I'm falling behind! 

The following albums are now online: 

Last Few Weeks of Februrary: http://picasaweb.google.com/Emma.RachelKanji/LastFewWeeksOfFebruary#

This creatively titled album has pictures of puppies, lunch in town, and our sunday trip to the dunes a week and a half ago. It also includes footage of a scavenger hunt we had to do one night on campus, which involved my team doing the macarena with our professor. There's a video. 

This is class. Now go find a whale: http://picasaweb.google.com/Emma.RachelKanji/ThisIsClassNowGoFindAWhale#

All of the photos in this album were taken during class time. Some of them are part of the nearly "perfect day" referenced above. There are whales here. And dolphins. And sea lions. And fog :-) 

Host family Day: http://picasaweb.google.com/Emma.RachelKanji/HostFamilyDay#

Photos from my day with my host family

A Desert Oasis: http://picasaweb.google.com/Emma.RachelKanji/ADesertOasis#

Photos from the Oasis we visited and had class at today. It looks like it belongs in a Disney movie. AMAZING. Look at these pictures. Yeah, whales are cool, but look at this album. 

Love and hugs!
~Emma

P.S. If there's a topic you want me to add to that list/something you've been wondering about Mexico, leave me a comment. I'll try to incorporate it. 

Packed Like Sardines

Hola!

Though I have been taunting many of you with the fact that I am living on the beach while you're digging yourself out of the snow, let me let you in on a little secret: the beach I can see from my window would make most of you cringe and none of you reach for a bathing suit and towel.

We cannot swim at the beach directly adjacent to the center--it is contaminated by effluent from the cannery, and is covered in a thick layer of algae (sea lettuce, or ulva lactuca for those of you who care about these things) that has taken over the beach because of excess nutrients emitted in that effluent. It smells of dead fish, and due to the number of fishermen using this point as a launching point, is home to significant numbers of dead fish, stingrays, and other bycatch. The cannery is not permitted, under Mexican law, to dump any waste directly into the bay, and it has an expensive chemical filtration system that is supposed to purify the water up to 95%. However, the system is expensive, and the only times the company uses it is when the inspector is coming. Somehow they always know when the inspector is coming, and can then turn on the system and pass inspection. 

The system was on when we had a  tour of the cannery, possibly because we were coming through, but none of us was comforted by the cannery's gesture towards environmental resposiblity. What is essentially a large, round, slowly turning strainer spins over a large concrete pool, removing large peices of fish (or who knows what else) from the dark brown water cascading to the pool amidst a pile of tan foam. This water is then pumped  into a large holding tank before being piped into the filtration system. In a large stainless steel vat, chemicals cause the fats in the water, which still contains fish viscera and who knows what else, to float to the top in a dirty goop. Paddles skim this fatty foam off the top of the vat, pushing it to a collector to be taken to the dump. The water leaving this is still the color of iced tea and is piped directly into the bay on a daily basis. 

Those of you who are very attached to sardines or tuna may not want to continue reading this article. Though our tour of the CalMex cannery in Puerto San Carlos was almost two weeks ago, my memories of the experience are still vivid, and we witness (and smell) the effects of the cannery  on the surrounding environment on a daily basis. The CalMex cannery provides jobs for about 25% of the town and has been a significant part of the local economy since it opened in 1969. 

Our tour began on a Monday morning, when the smell of dead fish had not get began to drift towards campus on the wind. We walked through a parking lot and down a narrow road between the docks and the actual plant, weaving around machinery and men working as we went. It is sardine season, which means that tons (literally) of sardines are brought directly from the boats and dumped into holding containers that let a steady stream of fish onto conveyor belts below. 

At the first stop, two rows of women working on either side of the belt take the whole fish and line them up in notches along the outside of the conveyor belts. Their hands worked fast, the sound of machines leaving no real opportunity for talking or communicating while doing the automatic work of lining up fish to be beheaded. The conveyor belt brought the neatly lined up fish to a point where their heads and entrails were removed automatically. The exact mechanism used to do this was not visible from outside the machine, but a concrete channel underneath rushed with water, carrying away what had been removed. 

In the subsequent steps, the fish were packed about 10 to a can by women working equally quickly and silently as the first group. Men put still open cans of whole fish onto large trays and carry them to the ovens, which they take 25 (45?) minutes to move through. When different men remove the trays from the other end, the fish are cooked and ready for the sauce to be put on. The same machine that fills the cans with sauce seals the lids and moves them to a pool of water where they wait to be sterilized in giant autoclaves. (Which use high heats and high pressure to kill of any bacteria inside or outside the can.) 

The tuna cannery was not operational, as it's not tuna season, but we were also able to see where fish meal used in agricultural feed and pet food is made. Past the waste treatment system described above is another cement pit, this one full of fish that did not make the cut for canning. A huge pile, pecked at by  few pathetic looking pelicans, also contains fish entrails, heads, and who knows what else. When the fish meal is being made, this whole mixture is ground up and baked until it is a fine brown powder. It is this process that creates the rank smell that drifts over our campus every afternoon. 

I promise that a less graphic post about whales and research and without even a hint of my environmental food dork bias will come very soon. I'm spending the day tomorrow with 5 and 6 year old brothers and their wonderful grandfather, who comprise my host family for the weekend, so I'm sure I will have lots of stories!

Love and LOTS of hugs, 

Emma

Aquí estan las Tortugas!

Hola!

This week was our first camping trip, a turtle monitoring trip to Banderitas, an estero north of Puerto San Carlos in Bahía Magdalena. (An estero is like an estuary, but without a freshwater input.) Half the group took the boats to the campsite; I rode in the van, though only half of our route had a road. Off-roading in a 15 passenger van loaded with camping gear is quite an experience, though not for those with weak stomachs...

Our campsite was beautiful, on the dunes, perched above the ocean; the desert reached down to the water, with only a narrow band of mangroves acting as a transition zone.

Sea turtles, as you may remember from Finding Nemo, live a very long time (>100 years!) Age is determined based on carapace (shell) length, and they're not considered adults until they have reached about 75 cm (about 2.5 feet). At a growth rate of ~2 cm/ year, turtles do not reach maturity until they are in their 30's. As juveniles, they live in bays like Bahía Magdalena and feed on sea grasses and algae for 20-30 years. For years, SFS has been monitoring the sea turtle population in the area, working with other organizations and research institutions in Baja to gather as much data as possible for the species. The more we know, the better we will be able to protect the species and their habitat, which is threatened by by-catch in fisheries (see post about J. Nichols' work with Grupo Turtugero) and illegal poaching.

In order to monitor the turtles, we set up nets to catch them. We then measure, weigh, and take a small skin sample from them, note any identifying characteristics, and photograph them before tagging their back flippers with a small metal tag containing a unique number. Tagging allows us to measure turtle growth over time and see how long the turtles stay in the bay. The tags go through the back flippers, and are no more intrusive or painful than an ear piercing. Basically, they are a piercing. Often, SFS will also be given the tags of turtles that have been killed, which is sad but also gives us information about the turtles.  On this trip, the nets were set up for 12 hours--from 6-ish pm to 6:30ish am, and checked every two hours to make sure that the turtles don't drown or hurt themselves.  In small, sleepy groups, we left camp for 4 hour shifts throughout the night: from 8-midnight, midnight-4am, and 4-6:30am.

Though the hours sound grueling, the monitoring shifts were a lot of fun. My first shift was 8-midnight on the first night. The 4 of us on that shift tore ourselves away from the warmth of the campfire and an upcoming game of mafia, the taste of s'mores still fresh on our taste buds, and boarded one of the boats with one of our professors, a research intern, and a panguero, the local boat drivers who work for SFS and know the area incredibly well.  Chilaco, the panguero, guided the boat slowly in the dark as we sat there, excited. Two nets were set up across the estero, and we pulled them in, slowly and carefully, as soon as we found them. In the first two hours they had been up, the first net only caught 2 sting rays. The first fell out of the net with a little help from Chilaco, but the second was much more tangled, and needed to be cut out of the net. We had to put him in the bottom of the boat until the nets were pulled in so that he wouldn't get hurt or hurt any of us. It was tough to watch, but he ended up being OK.

The next net was more successful--we caught our first 2 turtles! We pulled them out of the water and put them at the bottom of the boat, between the bench seats. Once our turtles were safely in the boat, the ray released, and the nets reset, we had an hour and a half to spend in the boats before we could check the nets again. As it was only 9:00, none of us were tired, and we spent the hour talking about bio, ecology, turtles, and other less dorky things. We looked at the stars, which were as clear as I've ever seen them, we found the big dipper and made up our own constellations. At some point we designated the boat the "Spanish panga"--the first person who spoke English was going to be thrown overboard. It was fun, relaxing, and exciting. The two turtles sleeping and occasionally moving around in the bottom of the boat were a constant reminder of what were out there to do.

The second check brought one more turtle, and we hung out some more until the next group came for the 12-4 shift. The bow of the boat is a very comfortable place to nap. The next morning, we got up to measure the 5 turtles that had been captured overnight. Working with the turtles was amazing. I've seen turtles before, but the closest I'd ever gotten before (aside from Myrtle the Turtle at the Aquarium) was when Rebecca and I followed one around Salt Pond Bay on St. John at some point during high school. Up close, they're beautiful and SO cool to work with.

After they were measured, tagged, and photographed, it was time to release them. This was the moment we'd all been waiting for, the moment we'd been told we'd get to ride the turtles! There were 5 turtles and 16 eager students, so a lottery was held to see who got to release these 5. To my surprise, I was one of the 5 winners! We scrambled into our bathing suits and ran down to the beach to choose our turtles. We each carried our turtle into the water. The sand sloped down steeply, so the water got deep only a few feet off the beach. As soon as the turtles realized that they were back in the water and were free to go, they took off, their powerful flippers pulling them away from us. All we had to do was hold on, and they pulled us for a few exhilarating feet. Yeah, it was short, but have YOU ever ridden a turtle?

The next night, I was one of 4 to volunteer for the 4am-6:30am shift. Three of us who were on that shift sat by the campfire until 12:30, talking to some students from a university in La Paz, an Ecuadorian born in the Galapagos, and a guy from Columbia, both working on turtle research and conservation as well, then pulled ourselves out of bed at 3:30 to get in the boats. The second shift was as amazing as the first--1 ray, 1 turtle, 1 beautiful sunrise. We got back to camp with half an hour before everyone else woke up, so we walked down the beach, got first dibs on the cereal, and enjoyed the cool, fresh, morning air. The next 5 turtles were as wonderful to work with as the first. We let them release themselves, pulling themselves slowly down the beach with their front flippers until they hit the water. Once they were submerged in the water, their natural grace came through and they flew off through the water, free, with only small silver tags to show for their experiences.

Check out the Picasa album for photos of the whole trip, including lots of turtles and class/a walk through the desert. I also took a series of photos of the turtles who released themselves, which if you scroll through fast enough kind of looks like a flip book. It's towards the end of the album if you want to see it.  It's pretty sweet. http://picasaweb.google.com/Emma.RachelKanji/BanderitasCampingTripSeaTurtles#

Amor y Abrazos! (love and hugs)

~Emma

P.S. I banned myself from facebook until I decide to unban myself. I'm still on skype all the time and have to check my e-mail for school stuff. I still want to hear from everyone, but I'm going to see if I can do it without facebook. At least until there are interesting pictures that I need to tag people in...

Language Exchange

Hola a todos!

Dia de San Valentino feliz! [Happy Valentines day, for those of you who are more spanishally challenged than others.]

Tuesday will mark the beginning of our third week here, though it feels like we've been here much, much longer. It's strange to think that 2 weeks ago today I was rummaging through REI's garage sale and procrastinating packing on a cold January day in Boston.

It's been interesting stumbling around with my Spanish. When I have time to think and translate everything I want to say, I can work it out in my head pretty well and come up with something close to correct. But when I actually need to use my Spanish, I almost never have the luxury of a minute or two to work out my sentences. Instead, I stumble through and use a lot of sign language and Spanglish. It's definitely getting easier with practice, but as soon as I stop thinking about every word and things start to flow better, it starts coming out in Hebrew.

On Friday morning, we did a trash clean up in town. The streets of Puerto San Carlos are lined with trash--plastic bottles and bags, cigarette butts, half eaten lollipops, bits and pieces of unidentifiable broken plastic, foam, or other material, and in preparation for the whale festival in march, we do weekly clean ups of town. As we walked down the streets with our garbage bags, a man sweeping out his coffee shop asked us if we spoke Spanish. We gave him our standard response: un poquito ("a little") and he began asking us when the English classes that SFS runs were going to be happening this semester. We didn't know,and were looking for one of the people who would know. As we were explaining this to the man in Spanish, I thought we were doing pretty well. As we looked, I tried to explain that we were "buscamos a alguien que..." (we're looking for someone who...) and as I paused to figure out how to say "knows when the classes are," he interjected with "who speaks Spanish?" ... oh well, we tried. We found someone who knew the answer to his questions, and went along our trash cleaning way.

Later in the day, we went to a technical school in Ciudad Constitucion, which is the closest city (about an hour away from Puerto San Carlos) and had a "language exchange" with English students there. It was SO much fun! Basically, we sat in little groups (one of us to 3ish of them) and spoke Spanglish. We attempted to speak Spanish to them and they attempted to speak English to us. They ranged in age from 13-21 (ish) and though their English was definitely a lot better than our Spanish, I think we all came out of it better off.

It was fun trying to explain where Maine is (above Florida, close to Canada but not in Canada) and talking about American movies, actors, and TV shows with them. I got to talk to 4 different groups, which was really cool. Each of the groups had a different feel and talked about different things. We talked about siblings, travelling, our best friends' names (they kept wanting me to point out my "mejor amigos" and were sad for me that all of them are in Maine...), what we do for fun, and lots of other things. A group of 14-16 year old girls that reminded me of my sister wanted to know why I don't have a boyfriend, a group of boys was shocked that I have never been to Disneyland or Disneyworld and that I didn't really have a favorite soccer team, but I explained ultimate Frisbee (or at least, I tried to) and we had fun talking about baseball and the World Series. They wanted to know about snow (I told them about how my friends at home like picking me up and throwing me into it, which they found very entertaining) and I wanted to know what their favorite thing about Baja is.

Though we live in very different places and lead very different lives, getting to know these kids was pretty much the same as getting to know any other kids back home. We giggled over our language mistakes, made jokes, talked about things we had in common and asked what we were curious about in each others lives. For some reason, a lot of people get this idea that people in different places are different, but I don´t think that´s true. Yeah, we've had different experiences, hold different points of view, religious beliefs, and are parts of very different cultures, but at the heart of it, kids are kids and people are people, and I'm pretty sure that any two people, anywhere, could find something in common, something to talk about if they just took the time to look.

Next week we're off on a turtle monitoring camping trip from Tuesday-Thursday, which I am SO excited for. I can't wait! It may involve riding a turtle! More on that later, and more photos on Picasa as soon as the wireless works again.

Love and hugs!
Emma

On Being an Ecology Dork

Hola! 

After a relaxing day off at the beach, I go back to class tomorrow. Classes are great so far--they're wonderfully interconnected, hands on, and all really relevant to what I'm interested in and what makes me happy. 

The 4 classes I'm getting credit for this semester are Coastal Ecology and Conservation, Principles of Resource Management, Economics and Ethics of Sustainable Development, and a directed research project that we'll start soon. 

We had our first field lectures for the ecology and management classes on Saturday (yeah 6 day a week classes!) in a mangrove forest that has been repeatedly destroyed for the construction and maintenance of a pipe that brings fuel from the docks to a power plant nearby. We first spoke about mangrove ecosystems, adaptations, ecosystem services provided by mangroves, and threats to mangroves. Then we explored the area to identify black, white, and red mangroves. The exploration was followed by a lecture about possible ways to evaluate the health and recovery of a mangrove ecosystem and ways to work with governments and other parties to protect mangroves. 

It is amazing how much easier it is to absorb information when you are immersed in it.  Hearing about the different ways to tell mangrove species apart, or talking about the different ways they get excess salt out of their systems is one thing, but exploring and touching the mangroves is a whole other thing. It just sticks better. Looking at photos of mangrove trees is one thing, taking them is a whole other picture. [No pun intended. See picasa for my mangrove pictures. http://picasaweb.google.com/Emma.RachelKanji] This is why I love ecology so much. It's thrilling to look around and be able to understand the way the various pieces of world around you fit together and see the cycles and pathways that connect everything. 

We also saw our first whales on Thursday, on our way home from a swim test in the mangroves. We saw them spouting water and the next thing we knew, we were surrounded by 5 or more whales--including a calf. It was so exciting--it felt like we had finally reached the moment we'd been waiting for, sitting in boats in the middle of Bahía Magdalena, not 10 feet away from these huge, mysterious animals. For some, it was the first time seeing whales. For me, it was a different experience than any I have ever had on a whale watching trip. I can't wait to work with them, to see them all the time and learn from them. 

This is the most excited I have ever been about my academic situation. Though I've loved many of my classes at Colby, this new environment is just what I needed. I know I will learn SO much this semester, then be ready to get back to Waterville and apply it my senior year and into the future. We are all so passionate about what we're doing here, and it's contagious--our enthusiasm builds off of eachother and we all are so engaged in what we're doing. 

On that note, I should probably go finish my homework...

(Yeah, I haven't changed THAT much.) 

Love and hugs!
~Emma

P.S. I'm updating my picasa albums almost daily. http://picasaweb.google.com/Emma.RachelKanji, click on whatever album looks newest, most interesting, prettiest, whatever. Enjoy!

An Ocean Revolution (and intro to Puerto San Carlos)

We started exploring town yesterday, which was a lot to take in at once, but really great. I need to use my spanish more, and then it'll start coming back, I hope. Puerto San Carlos is tiny, which means that 16 americans are very noticeable, but the center has done a good job of keeping good relationships with people in the town. It's not perfect by any means, but it's improving all the time and there are a bunch of people in town who we know we can go to whenever we need something, want to practice our spanish, need some help, or whatever. There are a bunch of opportunities to do environmental ed, teach english classes, help with recycling, or lots of other things with the town, so i'm planning on doing a lot of that. There are apparently thousands of people coming to PSC in a couple of weeks for a whale festival, which should be really cool--we get to do a bunch of environmental ed there too. 

Parts of the town are REALLY poor (as opposed to the rest, which is just pretty poor), and the whole place is really undeveloped, so it's kind of hard walking around knowing that most of these people have a whole family living in a house smaller than the foss 6-man. It's hard not to feel really separate from the community, which I'm hoping I'll be able to work on by getting as involved as I can and meeting lots of people.

Today we had our first lecture, which was also our first guest lecture. It was from Wallace J. Nichols [www.wallacejnichols.org], who basically started turtle conservation in Baja and across the world [www.grupoturtuguero.org]. He spoke about the trouble our oceans are in, stemming from 3 main problems: 

Too Much In: huge volumes of plastics floating in the ocean in what have been named garbage patches, the effects of global warming on our oceans, the effects of sound pollution from fishing, ships, sonar, and more on marine animals, agricultural runoff, erosion, dead zones... Basically, everything ends up in the ocean at some point. 41% of the ocean is "highly impacted" by human activity, and pretty much nowhere is unaffected.  

Too Much Out: We're overfishing our oceans, and doing it in unsustainable ways. Fishing used to be powered by humans using natural, biodegradable materials to harvest fish for thier own consumption. Now its dependent on gasoline and plastics, and most ocean species are being "eaten into oblivion." Huge numbers of animals are killed as bycatch every year, with the larger animals, the top predators, being killed first and most often. In shrimp fisheries, 90% of what's caught is often bycatch--stuff that isn't shrimp that's ususally shovelled overboard, already dead. 40% bycatch is considered "clean" for a shrimp catch. Much of the bycatch ismade up of turtles, sharkes, large fish, and other things that need protection. [www.shrimpsuck.org].

  

Destruction of the Edge: High levels of coastal development, shoreline fish and shrimp farms that destroy mangroves, erosion, and so much more are destroying the vital edge habitats of the ocean. (Has anyone seen those islands Dubai is building on thier shoreline?)

The thing that was so amazing about J.'s talk was that he spent the whole second hour talking about what we can do about it. Most simply, we need to put less in, take less out, and protect the edge. He's started a bunch of organizations and done a ton of amazing work. One of his organizations, which is kind of the big one that the other ones come off of, is called Ocean Revolution [www.oceanrevolution.org] The three main things that are required for an ocean revolution are this: 

Unprecedented Knowledge: this is where the science comes in. The ocean was once thought of as inpenetrable, mysterious, and boundless. We now know better, and the more information we can gather about the ocean, the better we'll be able to protect it. New technologies are allowing us to study the ocean and marine life in more in depth ways (literally and figuratively) than ever before. We saw video from "crittercams" mounted on the backs of turtles and penguins (!!)  that gave new insight into the life and feeding patterns of these animals. We heard about the first sea turtle ever tracked electronically, with a transmitter on her back. She was released off the coast of Baja in 1996, and was tracked via a website that J Nichols and his collegues set up by scientists, kids and thier teachers, and animal lovers with internet access worldwide. This stuff gets me excited! That first turtle made the trek from Baja to Japan in just over a year, which changed forever previous understandings of turtle and marine animal behavior. One of the important things about science, which J pointed out, is that you have to be ready for your ideas to be totally wrong--that just means that science is working. 

Global network of activists: we have easy access to more people in more ways now than we ever have had before. (Excellent example: sitting in a town in Middle of Nowhere, Mexico, with wireless internet, updating all of you in the snowy north of my every day activities with the repeated pressing of a few buttons.) This makes it easy to build huge networks of communities, scientists, social scientists, and activists from all over the world, who can work together to create real change. Using the power of community and grassroots organizing!

Creative communication: this one is very connected to the last one, but think about how effective a great website, some flashy stickers and posters, and mass facebook groups, e-mail lists, blogs are. There are now many talented artists, graphic designers, musicians, and more, who are devoting thier talents to creating social change. 

Some of the take-home messages were this:

Build social networks and communicate with spirit, innovation, creativity, and love for the world around you and for what you are doing.  Lots of things seem impossible, but aren't. Don't let anyone stop you. 

 I loved hearing all of this from a scientist, a man who devotes his life to (successfully) saving a group of species and using science to do it. I hope that in 20 years, I'll be able to look back and say that I took these lessons and used them, and that I have been able to make real change with them. 

We all walked away from that lecture so inspired and excited, armed with stickers and postcards, along with a long list of websites (see below), and the knowledge that we get to apply what we just learned in that lecture immediately. We have the next three months to do it. 

Don't get used to these daily posts--for now we have a LOT of spare time, and everything is so exciting that we all walk around going "Oooooh I have to go put this in my blog," but I'm sure that as time goes on, we're going to be much busier, with papers, camping and turtle monitoring trips, and things in the community. For now though, check often, comment, and I'm going to go to my first "official" class now. 

Love and hugs!
~Emma

Bienvenido a Mexico!

I'm here!

After leaving Boston midday on Sunday, I finally arrived here at the Center for Coastal Studies at midday today, Tuesday. We stayed at a hotel in La Paz last night (see photo) so that we could rest and get to know eachother a bit before the 3 hour drive across the peninsula to Puerto San Carlos. 

The drive was long, but went through very interesting desert landscapes. See the picasa album for pictures. 

The center is beautiful, with lots of hammocks (see photo), very fine sand that's incredibly soft. I'm sure that some of you will be able to feel it as it pours out of everything I own when I get back home. Each cabin has 4 sections, each with two levels. The top level of each is a bed, below which we each have a desk space and shelves. It's great--we have our own space, which is nice. 

So far, we've just had some basic orientation things. Risk management, policies, etc. Fascinating stuff, really. Classes start next week, which I'm really excited for. Everyone we've met has been great. The weather is also pretty perfect--"skin temperature," pretty dry, but not too dry, cool enough at night that I get to cuddle up into my sweatshirt and sleeping bag and be comfortable.

I'm excited and a bit nervous to start getting involved with the local community. My spanish is kind of failing me-I know I know it, but it's all a bit fuzzy at the moment as I'm adjusting. Our Student Affairs Manager, Brady, told us that students studying abroad have the local and cultural knowledge of about a 5-year-old when we arrive, and I feel like that's pretty accurate. It's kind of intimidating being so clearly an outsider in a tiny little town. We have a homestay for a couple of days in a few weeks, which should help. Hopefully I'll at least reach double-digits by the time I leave. We have a lot of interaction with the community, so I'm optimistic that that'll all change with time. Especially as I start getting more confident with my spanish. 

At this point, I'm keeping myself busy getting to know my group. There are 16 of us--15 girls and 1 guy--on the program, almost all from up and down the northeast and midatlantic states. I think we're all going to get along really well. We watched Finding Nemo on a projector set up outside today. It was pretty sweet. (The AMS quad projector set-up definitely has competition.) 

I can't wait to find some whales and turtles, and get classes started, and to explore the local community. More stories, and photos, as they happen. 

Photos so far are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/Emma.RachelKanji/BienvenidoAMexico#

I promise there won't be this many from every day.... 

Love and miss you all, and a tiny little part of me is jealous of the snow you're all getting at the moment. (But only a tiny little bit.)

Adios!

Emma