My first shower here was delightfully warm. In fact, I think I created a new microclimate for the apartment when I opened the bathroom door and all the steam flooded the hallway. However, my shower this morning and then upon my return from the field were as cold as the glacial spring in Nome, Alaska. I have a feeling Ben jumped in the shower right after I turned mine on, accounting for both the drop in water pressure and drop in temperature. However, a "drop" simply does not conote the total lack of water above freezing. There was not a drop of warm water mixed in with the rest of the flow. I jump under the spout, wet my hair, lather up, then jump back under to rinse off. I could care less if my hair doesn't look as nice without conditioner, but I am not going to spend the extra time freezing wet that would take to add that step! Brrrrrr!
Okay, so that being said, we finally made it into the field today. Now, it's not like I've been here forever, it's just we didn't go yesterday as planned. Our site is amazing. On first glance it might be a little disappointing. It's on land owned by the University yet rented by a rancher. There are lots of cows and horses roaming around, and even quite a few sheep. There are a bunch of lagoons everywhere (aka mosquito breeding grounds when it finally does warm up). And due to low oxgen levels in the water a while ago, there are tons of dead fish everywhere. Luckily, they've been out of the water long enough that they don't smell quite so ripe.
The site has TONS of birds though. In addition to all of our swallows, there are just about any kind of bird you can think of. We've got burrowing owls (I finally got to see some after all my time in SW Florida wanting to catch a glance at some), parrots, wading birds, shore birds, birds from families that aren't even in the States. Lots and lots of birds! The only problem is, that I've never seen so many of them. That is a great thing... but compound learning a new species by the fact that it is named in a different language, and then a scientific name might thrown out, and after asking I'll get the English common name. That's a whole lot of info at once! I'm still just absorbing things right now, so in time I'll actually learn all the species. It's awesome though!
Oh and I can't forget that we also saw capybara today. These are the largest rodents in existance. Think of a guinea pig on some serious steroids, and you'll have a good idea of what I am talking about. Don't worry, I'll have pictures soon as I don't think they'll be going anywhere.
Our site will be flooding as the season wears on. I'm not talking about some puddles we'll need to walk though. The water already reached over my rubber boots and soaked my socks and pants today as we crossed a wet spot in the path. It will get to the point where we'll need a boat to reach our nest boxes. Last year, the water rose about 6 feet as we could see on all the trees, nest boxes, etc. (At least I think it was last year... I know there was a huge flood in Santa Fe in 2003, but I think there was another one at least in this part last year as well. As you might imagine, details such as this are lost to me in translation.) I don't know what we are going to do when the water is deep, but not quite deep enough for a boat. How I do miss my waders!After checking the boxes that were already up (about 50) for nests and eggs, we went to the institute to build some more nest boxes. I must say that I am quite good with my power tools as blasted through the nests. Martin and I had quite a system going while Ben was in the other room. Upon his return, he took over for Martin and we finished up the rest of the boxes. It worked pretty well, but combine OCD with a project that doesn't require being exact (aka screws perfectly flush with the wood, etc) and I had to chuckle a bit.
When we got back to the apartment, the owner and her family were there. She explained that the metal covers for our windows needed fixing and asked which I wanted fixed first. I said my smaller one by the desk instead of the slider one, as it needed to be kept closed. I really had no clue what was going on, but just kinda guessed, and sure enough, the workers came in and my window above the desk it apart right now with the metal cover (think of a garage door with multiple slats rolling down to cover the window) blocking any view or light. I think they are coming back tomorrow with the parts to finish it up and then they'll do the other side. I could be wrong, again trying to figure things like that out in a different language kinda flies right over my head.
She made Ben and I dinner with an assortment of foods, a plethora would be more appropriate. We had two types of pizza, two types of empanadas (a stuffed pastry filled in these cases with ham and cheese and the other with ground beef), and a type of grilled ham and cheese sandwich that also probably has a special name. Then she brought out dessert and cut each of us a slice of ice cream cake covered in a hard chocolate and nut shell. It was divine, as it was chocolate ice cream on the bottom and toffee ice cream on top, with a liquid nugget of dulce de leche in the middle. After we finished, she insisted we couldn't be done yet, and cut us each another piece of the ice cream that was probably double the first. Though my stomach was already bursting at the seams, we both looked at each other and figured we couldn't offend our host. You can be sure though that I much rather would have liked to save it for later and savor it over the next couple of days. Oh well, it sure tasted great and I bet I'd be able to find it in the store if I crave it over the next couple of months.
I forgot to mention that yesterday Ben and I went out to dinner. Mind you, people here don't eat until 9:30 or 10pm!!! So not only was it very special for our host to make dinner just for the two of us and all of them to join us at the table to talk, you can imagine that finding dinner by ourselves at a normal US time wasn't possible. We left the apartment a little past 7pm and received strange looks from the waiters in the restaurant we tried. We ended up walking around town for the next hour or so. We are very close to the city center, which is great as we don't have a car. We ambled down the pedestrian street filled with stores of all kinds which I'll definitely be taking a look at later. After eventually making our way back to the restaurant we tried earlier, we were served. Before our dinner came, we received a basket of bread and crackers. With that came a brown looking spread which I tried. It tasted remotely like chicken, in a strange kind of way. Yep, you guessed it, it was chicken pate, basically, spreadable chicken liver if you aren't familiar with it, as I certainly wasn't. It didn't taste all that bad, but upon learning this, I couldn't bring myself to eating any more of it.
Hmmm, I think that is about it for now. I'll unpack my camera and hopefully start taking some pictures soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment