Profesora? I think not...

My last day of taxidermy class was successful. I can now preserve a duck from start to finish. hehe. All we had left to do was stuff the neck with cotton, sew up the throat, stuff the rest of the body, and sew that up. Ohhh, before we finished with the stuffing, we were each given a length of wire. (12 gauge? I'm making that up cause I really have no idea how the classification of wire thickness works, but it was pretty thick.) We were then instructed to poke it through the head. I placed mine right at the junction of cut skull and clear skin. Nope. I had to redo it and actually stab it through the remaining part of the skull. That required sharpening the point, so all said and done, it looked ready to throw on a rotiseri. Remember the part about the meat still in the wings and tail? Well that little problem was addressed with none other than a couple squirts of formaldehyde. When I poked the needle into the wing, I was told not to use too much. Why? If I did, then when I pull out the needle, the extra could shoot into my eye. Oh, okay then. And why aren't we using gloves, or glasses, or any kind of protection with a chemical that is currently under consideration to be banned from all of Europe for it's toxicity? We took a few pictures (yes, still having trouble with the uploader here) and said our goodbyes. Good class.

The night before I decided to escape the apartment and headed over to the "mall." There's a Walmart over there, a huge food court, only a couple stores, and a movie theater. I didn't say anything to Ben before I left, because whenever the word Walmart comes out of my mouth, he gives me crap about it. Come on now... I can understand people's dislike about the supercenter, but then why do you eat and praise the food and produce that I get there that you can't find anywhere else in town? Plus, I wasn't even going to Walmart, just the movie. Anyhow, I had a very pleasant time and watched, "Al Otro Lado del Mundo." In English it's the "Painted Veil" or something like that with Naomi Campbell and Edward Norton who are English in the 1920's, marry and go to China during a cholera outbreak. Very good movie. :) I took the bus back and made it in bed by 1:30am. Since I drank mate before I left and coffee while waiting for the movie to start, I didn't fall asleep until about 3am. I was up for class by 7am. Reminds me of college...

Yesterday Martin met Ben and I at the bus station at noon to head over to Parana for us to give a lecture to an evolution class at the university. That's after I woke up early to head out into the field... only Ben had decided with Martin the night before that we'd be skipping the field. Nice to let me know too... Argh. On the bus Martin told us that the class was actually meeting for a symposium, so there would be about 40 more people there including anyone doing biological research at the uni. Thanks for letting us know. At least Ben was in the dark about that too. Martin also told us that we would give the lectures in Spanish instead of him translating for us as he originally informed us. Thanks again. If he didn't feel like it was important enough to fill me in on what I should be doing, I wasn't going care how it was going to turn out.

It did turn out good enough though. I wish I had known that it was a symposium, as the talk I gave was on the importance of color (adapted from the program I made at Big Cypress). I could have easily given a talk on the research I did in Costa Rica and the implications of color in that, which would have fit in better with the rest of it. Oh well. Again, I really didn't care. hehe Ben was all proud that he could add it to his resume. I'll be nice and keep it to that. lol

Today I woke up at 8am, the latest I have since I've gotten here I think. It was my first day off that I didn't need to run off to errands or appointments. Ben wasn't around, so I figured he was still sleeping. Then I read in my room for a long while. I still didn't hear any other rustling, so I investigated and saw that Ben's shoes weren't under the table like normal. He wasn't home. Eventually he came back with his field pack. Yep, he went out into the field today. Do I feel bad for not going? Nope! I had a very pleasant morning. It was supposed to be my day off. And he never told me I should have gone to the field. If he was expecting me to come (besides letting me know) he could have woken me up. (He's overslept several times here and I've never had a problem waking him up. hehe) And best news of all is that he said today was his last day in the field for a week, which means that he'll be leaving for BsAs to visit his wife who is coming down. (He said she would be coming at the end of Nov, but never told me when.) So I'll have the whole apartment to myself for a while. I can't wait!!! Party??? hehe