Hmmm food

pizza blueberries raspberries
lattes orange juice hoagies
calzone pad thai veggie burgers lasagna
foccacia baguettes wine peach cobbler
salads fish cheese
croissants dark beer bagels

i haven’t been letting myself think about the foods i miss until recently - now that i can count the remaining weeks on one hand. hmmm…

so this past week was my last week of rest and data entry…i did about 30 hours of data entry and am all caught up for the sites that we have done to date. only 3 more sites to go! one morning the little neighborhoods were waiting outside my window. they call me “acca” (i have no idea how to spell it) which means older sister and is used as a sign of respect. “can you open the door, acca?” then they all came running in, wandering around the apartment, touching everything. i kept my eye the bag that has the dead squirrel in formaldehyde to make sure they didn’t go near that…then i had to usher them out when i was leaving to go to the college to check to make sure all the equipment was ready for this next week of field research.

thursday, i spent 3 hours on the back of a motorcycle. that was rough. we had to go to a town that is about 1.5 hours away to pick up some plastic bags that are needed for the research. we just went there and then turned around and came back. the other option would have been to take a city bus, but we would have had to take 2 buses and it could have taken 3 hours one way – so the bike was the better option. but after i got off, my knee had stiffened up, my hip flexer was sore, my lower back and hands were almost bruised from bouncing up and down over the half paved roads and holding onto the metal for dear life. my research assistant did share his ear phones with me on the way back, so we had a little motorcycle dance party which was fun :)

on friday, i left for bangalore with one of the project drivers to pick up the 4 undergrad students from the airport which is about a 6 hour drive from ponnampet. on the way, we saw a group of langur monkeys right next to the road that cuts through a national park. they were beautiful! that is the type of monkey that i did my behavior study on at the bronx zoo, but i have never seen them in the wild before. unfortunately, i couldn't find my camera in time to take but one picture. can you find the monkey in the bamboo? he’s there, you just can’t really see him. the students were supposed to get in a little after midnight, but the flight was an hour delayed and i think they were the last ones to get off the flight because we didn’t leave the airport until close to 3am. then we had to get up at 8am to get breakfast, run some errands, and drive them to coorg. poor things didn’t know if they were coming or going – but actually stayed awake for the most part, so that was pretty impressive. on the way home, we saw wild elephants - a first for me. it was amazing. it was dark out, so we couldn’t see them in detail, but they were close. we passed about 5 or 6, then stopped by the side of the road to look at another one that was a couple of meters further down the road, it started flapping its ears which is one of the first levels of threats if i remember my animal planet correctly : ) then started walking towards us which i think is the second, so we drove on. then there was another right on the side of the road, our driver warned a motorcyclist who was coming that way because elephants can be very dangerous. it was a great way to welcome to students to the area for sure.

tomorrow my advisor will be out in the field with us to see what i have been doing for the past couple of months. i hope that i have been doing everything right – i’ve been kind of winging it, but i think that’s part of it. we shall see… then tonight one of the students is staying with me at my apartment. she will help get the equipment organized and set up… help me make peanut butter!! it will be nice to have students here to help out for these last 2 weeks of field research. hopefully they won’t be too tired from the jet lag and all the travel…