I owe one final post to close the Ecuador and Galapagos chapter that was my last four months. I've been home for just over a week now and I keep putting off writing this last post. 

I'm still sort of in denial that it's all actually over. 

It's not over, really. I'm just not in the Galapagos anymore, and in a week I'll be going back to the normal student life of an OSU Beaver. So it feels over. It feels like it will be all too easy to let my study abroad experience fade away into my past and put the Galapagos Islands right back into the dream world where they originally were for me. And that is terrifying, because I NEVER want to forget how incredible study abroad experience was and how greatly it has affected my mindsets and values and altogether changed me as a person.

So what did it all end up meaning for me?

Well, Quito was quite the experience in learning about cultures other than my own. Living in a large city was new for me in general. I learned about Ecuador as a country of rich diversity in landscape and cultures. I tried new food, learned about the history of the city and country, visited the cloud forest, explored the coast, and watched a volcano erupt. In reality, though, I didn't venture very far beyond the opportunities offered through class. I hadn't yet learned to feel comfortable in the unfamiliar.

On the Galapagos islands, I began to branch out of my comfort zone more. Examples: during boat rides. I went from nervously clutching the most sheltered bench of the tiny lanchs, boats we used to bounce across ocean wave crests, to perching comfortably at the very tip of the bow with my legs over the edge just to feel the wind. I learned to free dive and ended up chasing white tip reef sharks while snorkeling just to get a better look. I fell in love with scuba diving and got PADI advanced certified just so I could have more dives in new places and go deeper in familiar ones. I learned to surf (well, started to). I talked to strangers. All of the time. I let myself get lost in life there, and it was incredible.

The overall academic experience was invaluable. When and where else would I ever be able to have school consist primarily of fieldwork on equatorial beaches and rocky intertidals as well as snorkel and SCUBA excursions in Darwin's backyard? Conservation science and management was forefront in our Marine biology and ecology classwork. The anthropomorphic issues presented through our classes in this "pristine" hub of biodiversity put the vast scope of their global counterparts into perspective. I'll expand on that more another time, perhaps when I return to my main blog page. Long story short, though, I was inspired to redirect my future. I love science, I love marine biology, but I want to be able to apply it. I am really most passionate about issues of climate change, human impact, and understanding the dynamics between ecological systems and human society. I want my path in science to be relevant to these issues, I want to DO something about them. I'm only just beginning to realize how that might change the direction of my studies and future career, and I'm still trying to formulate the words to really express this gut-feeling of a need for change. But I'm getting there. 

The real value of my experience only began to come apparent to me with six weeks left in the program, after that incredible island hopping trip where I began to lose myself in the magic of the islands. I started to learn how to be my self - or rather, how to recognize that I'm still learning who I am. I recognized the value of self-reliance, and the insignificance of petty actions and interactions by and with others who don't hold respect for you. I began to love realizing the beauty that every single day holds, if only you chose to open your eyes and heart to the moments that happen in the right here and right now. I wanted more than anything to be fully present in the world around me - physically, mentally, and emotionally. I let my heart be claimed by incredible new friends that I hope to hold on to for years to come. I realized that there is a lot more to see in the world, and I discovered a hunger to experience as much of it as possible in the future. I'm not ready to say "this is who I am and this is what I want to do with my life" because, by the end of this trip, I didn't know anymore. And that's a great feeling.

My personal growth was the most important thing I've come away with. I think part of the reason I struggled so much the days before I left was that I feared I would forget the memories that helped direct me. I still fear that, but I know that my experience has irreversibly changed me, has added incredible friends to my life, has altered my mindsets about my future, has changed how I approach uncertainty and unfamiliarity....and I'm pretty sure that's going to stick with me forever. 

Coming back has been rough. The days before leaving the islands, I felt as though I was floating in limbo. It was time to leave, and I'd come to terms with that, but I wasn't ready to go back to the states. I was also struggling with goodbyes. The day before our flight held a lot of tears for me. We left on the 19th, and I turned that morning into a movie-montage-worthy session of sprinting through town to say goodbye to every friend and familiar face I could find. I even jumped on a water taxi to chase one down while he was working on a boat in the harbor. After the goodbyes, I had over 48 hours of travel time through multiple large cities via planes and car rides before eventually making it home. It followed a night of maybe one and a half hours of sleep (we celebrated our last night on the island in proper Galapa-style). During my layover in Quito, my backpack was stolen. I lost my laptop, gopro, favorite sweater, comfy ecua-pants....the most disappointing thing was the lost of all of my photos from the trip. Anything not already posted here or on facebook is gone. I thought I lost my journal as well (I found it again later in my checked luggage), and at that point I felt absolutely destroyed. The layovers in huge airports didn't help. I'd gone from an island of 7,000 inhabitants directly to airport terminals that hosted at least that many travelers passing by every couple of hours. Talk about culture shock. Eventually I made it to San Francisco, where I ran into my mom in the bathroom at baggage claim. It was actually really funny - we had our OH MY GOD HI I MISSED YOU SO MUCH moment in front of bathroom stalls and a long line of impatient holiday travelers. The next day was spent driving north to our house Arcata, where I've been ever since. 
I'd never spent more than a few days in this house before, since my family just moved here a few months ago. I was coming home to a place I barely know. Having Christmas away from the Colorado snow was strange to say the least. And the whole time I've been trying to readjust and not miss my Galapagos home too much.

I'm "home" and still feel homesick.

My good friend Colleen shared a piece of what she wrote in her journal about this feeling: 
"It's a curious thing, the places you find yourself calling "home," as if you're not shedding pieces of yourself everywhere you go. Home is internal, a gut-feeling that resonates. You know that you may return if you must. Home is a place that you bring with you as you go. 
In the off-chance that I would find a home on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, I did. I stumbled upon this sunny little place and immediately felt it's magic. It welcomed me as I welcomed it. I took chances, dove into my unfamiliar, fell in love with something new every day, and could feel the universe on my side in these moments. 
Like stringing shells into the necklace that hangs over my heart, this home will be with me wherever I go. It is written in the pages of my book, forever in my heart, forever with me. I'm on my way home."
I could not agree more with her words. 

The fact that we can feel as though we are leaving a home while coming back to another speaks immensely to the connections we were lucky enough to build during our experience. It makes me proud to realize how thoroughly I lost myself in the discovery of a different lifestyle in a different place with different people. 

I have a lot more homes than I ever realized. My heart is spread out pretty far already. The redwoods of Arcata, CA are my birthplace and where my parents currently live and from where I am writing this post. Mt. Hood, Oregon hosted all of my first solid childhood memories:  the first memorable friendships, first bike ride, first ski lessons, etc. Northern Germany holds all of my mother's family and over a dozen of my traveling experiences, including my favorite Christmases. I lived over half of my life in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. Their wilderness as well as the city of Denver are from where I identify myself. I'm nothing if not Coloradan. My current life exists primarily in Corvallis, Oregon with my studies. And now I have added a tiny archipelago over 4,000 miles away to the list.

I've been searching for ways to hold on to all of these homes and the significance each has held for me. I turn to art, to writing, to reading. I love to collect shells and stories, and I'm trying hard to collect each part of my own story without losing the details.

One of the joys of being back included refreshing my library on a whim with a quick trip to Arcata's own Tin Can Man Used & Rare Books Store. I love that place. You never know what written treasure you might find, and every book has its own story of who has already read and loved or spurned the words inside; scribbling notes or highlighting and circling and corner-folding along the way. I have this rule when I go to book stores to help prevent me from entirely emptying my wallet on literature: I am allowed up to two books on my wishlist (if i should happen to find them), and I am allowed one - just ONE - of the dozen or so titles I've never heard of that will likely jump out to me along the way. In this case, the one happened to be "Animal Dreams" by Barbara Kingslover. The two on my list turned out to be Rebecca Solnit's "A Field Guide to Getting Lost" and "The Faraway Nearby." God ol' Tin Can Man had exactly one already well-loved copy of each, which I purchased, I dove straight in to the first. 

"Leave the door open for the unknown. ... that's where the most important things come from."
"To be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery"
"Not till we are lost, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations," (Henry David Thoreau)

I'm only a few pages in, and already statements and passages which resonate with relevance to my experience and to my future are flying out to me.

Colleen introduced me to the prose of Rebecca Solnit during our last trip to the island of Santa Cruz through passages of "The Faraway Nearby." These memoirs of personal reflection on the values of wandering the unknown and the strength of connection through our personal stories are an absolute necessity to read. Part of me wishes I had discovered these literary gems before leaving for Ecuador. Perhaps I would have learned to lose myself in the experience, to truly understand the archipelago and welcome it as my home sooner had I already read her words. 

Then again, the lessons probably wouldn't have resonated with me before.
Before, I was abhorrently afraid of unknowns.
Before, "lost" was to me a term of discomfort and fear in an unfamiliar place, rather than an opening of doors to possibilities, rather than learning oneself through the total disconnect from the familiar. 
Before, I was extremely happy with the fact that I had a VERY solid plan for how my future academic life would smoothly play out through graduate school and a PhD into a professional scientific career of research coinciding with settling down and building a family in the Pacific Northwest.
Now?
Now, I want to open every door. Sure, I like having a pretty standard and (hopefully) successful future laid out....but the security of it is all just so dull. It assumes that in 5, 10, 15 years from now, I'll be the same person in the same place with the same interests.
I changed too much in just four months - hell, in just the last 2 months of my experience - to be that sure about myself for that stretch of future.

I'm 20 years old. I don't know shit about life. Yet.
 

The Galapagos were once called "Las Islas Encantadas," the enchanted islands, for the way that they suddenly disappeared and reappeared in and out of fog to passing sailors and pirates. Out the window of the LAN airplane one week ago, we watched San Cristobal and it's colorful little town of Puerto Baquerezo Moreno slowly shrink until, suddenly, clouds engulfed it all - and that was it. Hopefully I find my way back before too long. No matter what, though, the enchanted islands are now and forever a part of my life.

Que trip. Que buen trip.

So it seems that I've found myself with barely four days left in this four month journey. I have no idea how it flew by so fast. The last couple of weeks especially have felt like an absolute whirlwind. In our final module of class, we have been (sort of) trying to put together the framework for an extensive report assessing the impacts of climate change and several anthropogenic factors (pollution, tourism, overfishing, increasing numbers of invasive species and frequencies of disease) on the islands, focusing on indicator species such as sea lions and marine iguanas. The purpose is to propose an updated ecosystem based management scheme, taking into account both socio-economic and conservation/community ecology interests. It's been interesting. And pretty slow going. We'll see if anything actually comes out of it. But it did mean I spent several days doing fieldwork, including walking for hours along the shoreline to take iguana surveys and ocean kayaking to more remote areas for (relatively unsuccessful) data collection. 

Outside of the classroom and field, I was trying to squeeze every moment out of my day with friends - both other students and locals - so I was pretty much never at home/ Host family relations may have gotten a little rocky as a result.... I think I started having some anxiety about the end of this program and what it means to go home to my actual "home" - the one over 4.000 miles away from here. Through Skype, Facebook, and this blog, I've been able to share snapshots of my Galapagos life with the world I otherwise left behind/ Here's the thing, though: my sharing has mostly consisted of photos and stories of major adventures, descriptions of a handful of the many people I've met, and MAYBE a brief dialogue of my thoughts along the way. Still, it barely touches on the personal experience I've had. My mindsets about a lot of things have entirely changed, and I'm pretty sure my future is going to take off in a totally different track from the extensive research+PhD+professor plan I had laid out for myself before. I'll be going home a different person - even my relationships at home will probably change. And all of that change totally freaked me out. I got really, really nervous - what if I go home and I can't connect to my friends, my family, or my boyfriend anymore? What if going home doesn't actually feel like going home, and instead I feel like a stranger? What if I'm not ready to leave these islands, their people, the ocean, this way of life? Galapagos has become so much more to me than an academic experience in Darwin's natural field laboratory - it has become a life-redirecting, friendship-building, fear-conquering, love-discovering, story-creating, life-lesson-pounding, energy-nurturing home where everything is permanently sandy and you don't actually need a clock. I just learned how to thrive here, and I'm about to be tossed back into a place that's no longer familiar in any sense of the word.

Yeah, I freaked out.

And just in time, one final trip came up. This time, I left my computer at home. Just a duffel bag of clothes, snorkel gear, and my GoPro, and I took off. Our class had one more scheduled adventure to Santa Cruz. We dove at North Seymore Island, Mosquera, and Gordon Rocks - three incredible sites around the north side of the island. Gordon Rocks has been on my AbsoluteMustDo list since getting here, and it didn't disappoint. We took a beautiful sailboat out to the ashy outcroppings surrounded by rough currents and dropped into schools and schools of enormous hammerhead sharks and shadows of evolutionarily bizarre Mola Mola (sunfish).
We also snorkeled with hoards of white tipped reef sharks at Daphne Minor Island. I had a very proud moment where I realized that this trip has taken me from cowering inside the tiny speedboat because of waves to being the first to jump in, being someone who loves to free dive and chase reef sharks as fast and as deep as I can without an air supply. I think that hints to the type of minor changes that have grouped together and reshaped me during my time on the archipelago. We also took a class day to interview  representatives of NGO's, including the Galapagos National Park, WWF, and Sea Shepard. The program organization was far less than perfect, as per usual, but the experiences were incredible nonetheless.

To complete the journey, I went back to Isabela Island with a small group of friends. Each of us wanted the peaceful tranquility of that magic Island to fill us one more time and to kind of hit a reset button on the stress brought by the previous whirlwind weeks. It worked. I managed to get pretty sick with some sort of island cold bug, but the energy of Isabela still did it's job. After a night spent laying in the sand watching shooting stars (a meteor shower and clear skies greeted us for the weekend) and sipping coco locos with some guitars and good conversation and great friends, I woke up feeling ready. 

It's time to go home. To my actual home in the US. I'll miss this place and I will never EVER forget my journey here and I will always feel connected to the Galápagos. But it's time. Leaving is scary and the uncertainty of what will happen once I'm at home is terrifying, but I accept it. I have a nice, long travel day coming up for reflection, so I'm sure I've got at least one more Galapa-post coming for you.
. 
Here's to a full final four days to celebrate la vida bonita and create a quality "hasta luego" - because an "adiós" is too permanent and, who knows, I might just wind up here again.

(Noted after my return to the states: .unfortunately, my laptop and gopro were stolen in Quito on my way home, and I lost all my photos....so for now, I can't visually share this incredible experience with you. Lo siento.)

The last couple of weeks have felt different. I haven’t really been able to put my finger on what exactly it is, but I have a feeling that it mostly has to do with time flying by. Of course, there are seasonal transitions: my host family has added to the Christmas-themed decorations around the house, fake pine trees covered in flashing colorful lights and tinsel are visible in many windows around town (so no, Christmas palm trees are not a thing), and the news from home is full of stories of monster winter storms setting in early. Here, the holiday season is accompanied by (even) hotter and more humid days, warmer waters, and a decrease in the frequency of the spittle-like garúa mist. Last week, a juvenile whale shark was spotted traveling past kicker rock, following the incursion of warmer waters. I’m still kicking myself for not playing hookie from class to take a dive while it was there. Brand new sea lion babies are rare, and the first ones from earlier this season are starting to look especially round and fluffy. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but I swear that the grey branches of the manzanilla trees that give the lowlands their desert wasteland feel are starting to appear ever so slightly greener and more lively with the arrival of actual occasional rainfall. As we approach December and my friends from home are hitting the ski slopes of Colorado or layering up against the cold Oregon rain, it feels like I’m getting a new wave of summer. It’s weird.

Did I just say December? Is that really only 3 days away? Do I really have barely three weeks left??? I’m not ready!! This study abroad journey has been flying by, and I already feel obligated to refocus on my life after I come home. I registered for winter classes two weeks ago, I’ve confirmed that spring term will be spent at the Hatfield Marine Research Center in Newport, OR, I just confirmed my living situation for next term, and I’ve started playing around with ideas for spring break and summer adventures. I’ve felt like I’m living outside of the moment here, with my mind set in the future months instead of enjoying my last sunny Galápagos weeks. It doesn’t help that there have been some extremely stressful moments at school due to unorganized group work and some faults in the program’s management that have come to light. I have no desire to give up this place for the dreary months of rain and microbiology classes that wait for me next term, but I’m also ready to be out of the homestay and aggravating class situations. It’s frustrating to say the least, especially since I don’t actually feel ready to return, despite all of my preparing. I’m nowhere near completing the goals I had set myself in relation to my thesis – in fact, I’ve started contemplating changing my focus entirely.

Seasons are changing and making me realize how limited my time here really is, and I want more time on the islands. I want to accomplish something while I’m here aside from my own exploration in Darwin’s Paradise. I want to feel like I’ve been a part of the Galápagos rather than just a visitor because I know that the experience they have gifted to me will be a large part of who I am for years to come.

And yet, a part of me is comforted to know that I’ll be home in roughly three weeks.

Before too long, I’ll have a two week stretch of lazy mornings with hot tea, fuzzy socks, a fluffy blanket, and a book to guard against chilly rain until venturing out for an afternoon wintry redwood stroll and evenings of baking yummies and eating them next to a glittery Christmas tree. Oh, and of course spending time with my family. I appreciate the incredible hospitality of my host family here, but I want my own parents and sibling back.

And of course, I’m starting to really really REALLY crave food from home. Not that I don’t like the food here, of course. Salty and sugary treats are a daily occurrence simply because fresh snacks aren't really a concept here. Fried langosta (lobster) or camarones (shrimp) is a regular dinner item, as is the surprisingly delicious scorpionfish known as brujo. Menestras (a soupy lentil side) are still one of my favorite parts of almuerzos. I can get an avocado-pineapple or chocolate-banana-mora batido (kind of like a smoothie) for less than a coffee in the states. I’ve had a fresh mango or avocado or a frozen chocolate banana almost daily and there seems to be a never ending supply naranjas and bananas from the highlands. For living on an isolated and agriculturally limited archipelago, food here is great. Still, I never really cook or bake for myself, and the actual percentage of my diet consisting of veggies is minuscule compared to my life back home. Pumpkins and fall were never a thing here, so I missed out on some of my favorite seasonal meals. Pinterest has become my vessel for procrastination via food nostalgia for the remainder of my stay here.

Luckily, most of the other students have been feeling the same, and we ended up coming together with the university’s staff to hold a HUMONGOUS Thanksgiving potluck yesterday. There was turkey and mashed potatoes and gravy and cranberry sauce and everything, even a huge variety of delicious veggie dishes. We devoured it ALL after a toast of sangria, and washed it down with pumpkin spiced coffee that one student received in a care package from home. After our proper thanksgiving feast, we watched the island sunset with Christmas music blasting in the background. And for the first time in two weeks, I felt pretty ok with the holiday season bearing down on us so quickly, even though it brings the end of our stay with it.

In other news, updates since my last post include:

1) I was lucky enough to share the last couple of weeks with some new friends I met through another student here, Colleen. She's a good friend of mine, and happened to be indirectly connected to some people visiting from the states. One group were guys our age from Berkeley, California, and the other was a couple of surfers from New York. We had several fun days of snorkeling, evenings of cooking good food, some nights out, and even shared waves at Puerto Chino with some local friends as well.  (Photos courtesy of Dane Riva and my most favorite Colleen Henn).

2) Björn (my brother, for any readers who aren’t a part of my immediate family) turned 18 last week, which absolutely blew my mind. I can barely handle 4 months of study abroad flying by so fast – how is he already on the verge of college himself?

3) I’m officially PADI Advanced Diver certified! I’ve collected 19 dives so far, 15 of which have been here in the Galápagos, and I have another 6 or so (at least) to enjoy before leaving.  I’m officially hooked. Last weekend I returned to kicker rock for some underwater adventure and caught some fantastic footage of over one hundred Galápagos and Black-tip sharks that have been cruising the area:

4) The final module of classes starts next week. I’ll be taking Techniques of Marine Research 2. Highlights will include one last week long adventure, this time to Santa Cruz for some diving adventures (fingers crossed for Hammerhead sightings at the wild current-filled dive site of Gordon Rocks!!). By the end of it, our class hopes to have a paper put together addressing the human and climate-related threats the Galápagos face and their impacts here, with a proposed improved management scheme to present to the local government. We’ve already started working on it, and hopefully the group work headache turns out to be worth an awesome piece of published material!

5) A sea lion decided to try out classes with us the other day.

I’ll be home in exactly 22 days. My time here is rapidly coming to a close, but it’s still enough time to really ask myself: what have I gotten out of this trip so far, and what more meaning can I bring to it? What impact can I have here? What footprint do I really want to leave? What can I do before it’s too late and I’m pulled away from the Galápagos, a return trip just a fuzzy dream to hope for? How will I carry this experience with me into the future – how will my life be permanently changed from all I’ve lived here?

“As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’.”
-Bob Dylan

Last week we had a vacation from classes, and we took off on the long-awaited island hopping trip. Our study abroad program organized the loop, visiting the islands of Isabela, Santa Cruz, and Bartolomé. In reference to the entire scope of the Galápagos, we still have barely scratched the surface of what the archipelago holds. Nevertheless, getting to explore other islands was absolutely incredible and definitely helped me to feel more rooted here. Let me tell you about it.

My camera broke somewhere along the way, so pictures will be sparse.

Isla Isabela

I’ve fallen in love. Her name is Isabela. This island is absolutely incredible. Arriving there set the whole tone of the week for me. As our extremely bouncy and splash-tastic 4+ hour boat ride (no seasickness for the win!) puttered to a pause in the bay, we looked around and saw islets of black lava rocks that hosted mangroves, cacti, and penguins in the exact same location. Three organisms that usually make you think “Florida, deserts, and Antarctica” live on the same salty rock. Did I mention we were escorted into the bay by sea lions, small rays, marine iguanas, and blue footed boobies? Just another day in the archipelago. I distinctly remember having a VERY clear moment of “where the hell am I and how in the world have I found myself here?!”  In the good way, of course.

The town itself is just as welcoming. Isabela, though the largest island (4x as big as Santa Cruz), is the least populated between the three residentially inhabited islands (only 2,000 people) \. A single wide dirt road takes you from the harbor into the town of Puerto Villamil and out the other side a few blocks later, parallel to a long beach of white sand. It’s peaceful and quiet all day and life kind of goes in slow motion. There’s no doubt that it’s growing, though. Restaurants and hotels are scattered about, and the inland side of town is littered with construction sites, an all-too familiar scene from the other islands. Even the benches are scrawled with “Isabela crece para tí”- “Isabella grows for you.” (Compare that to San Cristobal, where growth from tourism has caused such a decline in the local environment that benches there shout “Conservemos lo nuestro” – “Let’s conserve what’s ours”). It’s disheartening to see a place that’s managed to stay relatively pristine in the presence of humans encourage the type of growth that has caused so many other sustainability problems in San Cristobal and Santa Cruz. But how can you tell a local community that their economic progress needs to end, that their livelihood should come second to conservation?

Since our trip was organized for us, we spent every day on guided tours. Our group consisted of 16 of the 40+ international students in the program, so we got a fairly private experience. Nearly every day consisted of snorkeling and/or hiking. We explored lava formations in the water and a huge caldera (Sierra Negra, whos most recent eruption happened in 2005) in the highlands. We saw baby boobies, including one less than a week old curled up under its mother. We swam with white tipped reef sharks. One of the most awesome experiences I had was holding my head under the ledge of a crevice in a shallow reef and coming face to face with not one, not two, but seven mouths of jagged teeth. Another favorite moment was finding my first seahorse in the wild.

Our afternoons were fairly free to do with as we wished. A friend of mine and I decided to explore the road out of town, and ended up taking a 12K run. It was worth it – we climbed a lookout that let us see over the south end of the island and realize just how diverse a single small land formation can be. Lush mangroves and forested areas were intermixed with cacti and broken up by both brackish pools home to flamingos and by empty, jagged plains of rocky lava barrens. We finished our run with an ocean swim and lounging on the beach. And how did we spend the evenings? A beachside bar hosted a bonfire, a little live music, and even a costume party for Halloween. We mostly hung out there, making new friends and drinking “coco loco” – a fresh coconut with some caña mixed in to the water inside, which you drink with a straw from the fruit. Can you say paradise? 

In all honesty, it wasn’t all sunshine and flowers (figuratively speaking; literally, though, it was). A group of 16 girls together is bound to generate some dramatic tension, and there were a surprisingly large number of really negative moments. Gossip and an infamous “pizza night” set a divide in the group and the next few days felt like a war of passive aggression was waiting to break out. It really disappointed me and I actually had to take a couple personal moments to myself to kind of emotionally work through the fact that our experience in this incredible island was being so dramatically soiled by petty interactions with individuals who only happened to be in the same program. In the long run, though, I think it actually helped me.  It reminded me that I’m here for my own set of reasons separate from those of other students and their attitudes towards me or towards others. I am always responsible for facilitating my own happiness. It also helped to strengthen my friendship with other individuals, showing me who among our group are my actual friends. It made me determined to generate my own good experiences with others by focusing on positive energy and open-mindedness – the opposites from what caused tensions in the group.

The best moment of my time on Isabela was, by far, a Sunday night spent playing a pick-up game of soccer with a bunch of locals (photo credit to miss Amy Schubert). After a particularly negative interaction over dinner, I was pretty shaken up.  But instead of being upset about it, my friends and I joked and laughed it off, and then went to investigate the legitimacy of a soccer invitation I’d received the day before. We got to the field and the guys who invited me weren't there, but some other local friends we made that day were, so we went looking for a ball and ended up playing our hearts out until almost midnight. It was the most fun night I can think of out of my whole trip. It solidified friendships and built new ones and seemed to me to be a reward confirming my decision to personally work on my own positive mindset rather than getting dragged down by the negativity of others. 

Isla Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz was also an incredible amount of fun, though the island itself didn’t compare to Isabella for me. The town, Puerto Ayora, is HUGE in comparison. It is absolutely tourist central. Now, I’m not talking high-rises or backed up traffic or anything, but still. Nothing about it felt like an isolated island of the Galápagos. The whole place seems to be solid concrete, and there are enough large streets that there’s the potential to get lost. I was uncomfortable.

Guess I’m in for a little shock when I get back to the states.

Our guided activities here also consisted of snorkeling and exploring the highlands. Santa Cruz has multiple large sinkholes, caves, and underground tunnels to explore. The geography created by volcanic activity is a fascinating thing. We also wandered through the tortoise reserve, where the creatures are even larger than on San Cristobal. (Photos courtesy of miss Haley Saxe. I promise I’m not actually touching the tortoise). The highlight was a day trip to the beautiful island of Bartolomé. It’s really just a small ashy hill almost devoid of life. It’s just off the coast of the larger and more productive island of Santiago. The views between the two are incredible, and the snorkeling was as clear as a swimming pool.

The program-organized section of the trip ended on a Thursday. Of course, my friends and I made the very easy choice to spend our weekend on the island we were already visiting. Days were spent surfing, beach lounging, jogging, and shopping in town. Nights were spent venturing out to Bongo bar and the discoteca. I’d never been on any form of board before, so surfing was a huge adventure for me. Everything about it should stress me out: balancing, cold and rough water, getting tossed around by waves, letting go of control to zoom across whitewater, crashing….and yet it was another absolutely incredible experience. The sunburn was totally worth it. This mountain kid has absolutely fallen in love with surfing!

I came home early on Saturday to spend a night beach camping with a friend on San Cristobal. I sat under the stars and listened to the waves and reflected on the long week.
Now that I’ve started really focusing on creating my own happiness and entering situations with positive energy, the number of new friends and good experiences I’ve been having has skyrocketed. Even in the last few days, I’ve met more people on San Cristobal just by being more open. I’ve been invited to spend time in a dive shop to help staff practice English and take photos during dives in exchange for free dive trips. The last week really helped make me feel comfortable on these islands. My new favorite compliment to receive is that I have positive energy and good vibes, something valued highly by a lot of the locals we met. We made friends surfing on Santa Cruz who want to come visit us next weekend. We are planning on returning to Isabela to visit new friends there. My Spanish got WAY better just by gaining confidence through meeting people. We met back up with our guides for cake, beer, and pool and we’re planning weekly soccer matches. I learned to surf.  I swam with sharks. I got sunburned. And I am happy. I learned. Honestly, the scheduled events were fun, but the best memories I made last week were during unplanned moments shared with good friends. There are always open and loving individuals willing to have fun and make an experience as positive as possible. It’s all about the mindset you travel with, the energy you present yourself with, and with whom you chose to surround yourself.

Que te vaya bien, amigo.

The last few days have been pretty low-key. Most days have been spent with classes, homework, and relaxing in the sun. We've had a huge research project to work on, so that has taken up most of my time. It's actually been really fun: we looked at whether damselfish show selective defensive behavior. That is, we put urchins and rocks into damselfish territories and watched the fish react, usually by kicking the urchin out of its "farm" by pushing or carrying it away. The really fun moments, however, were spent with some adorable sea lion pups after a morning of research (aka snorkeling). The beach we were at, La Loberia, seems to function as this season's primary nursery beach. Watch the little guys play in the sand and the sun:

(ok so eventually there will be a video here. Again with the internet problems.)

ADORABLE.
Last weekend held some fantastic dive trips to kicker rock, but the highlight was really a surprise. We happened to cross paths with a huge group of dolphins! And then? We jumped in. We delayed the dives for the sake of snorkeling with these beautiful animals. It was quite probably one of the most exciting and incredible moments of my life. It was only my second time seeing dolphins in the wild, and being in the water with them as they sang and swam around us nearly made my heart stop with joy. I'm working on my video clips from that, hopefully I can share them with you as well.
Otherwise, Island life has settled down to a pretty regular pattern. It won't last long, though - tomorrow we (the international students here) leave for a week long island hopping trip. Time to explore the rest of the Galápagos! I'll be missing out on my host family's Halloween and day of the Dead celebrations (serious bummer), but I'm sure the Island explorations will be worth it. I'll have TONS of stories after, I'm sure!

In the mean time, I noticed my posts have had a lot of writing and have severely lacked in visuals...In my defense, my access to reliable internet is a bit of a struggle. Nevertheless, I really should SHOW you what's been going on in my life, rather than just talk your ear off (or your eyes, I suppose, since you're reading). So, let's look back at what's happened since my lost photo post (not counting the turtles, I think I left you in the dark somewhere in Quito...).

Do you think reptiles are cute? Or is that just me?  Especially those of the order Testudines. I’m talking turtles. Yeah, they’re technically scaly, cold blooded, shelled lizards with wrinkly faces…but something about them just gets me. Look at these faces! How could you not love ‘em??

I’ve already gotten to have several lucky moments in the water, swimming side by side with massive green sea turtles. This Sunday, I got to meet some of the land variety. I went with some fellow classmates to visit the Galapaguera de Cerro Colorado, the reserve and breeding center for giant tortoises on San Cristobal Island.

The Galápagos hosts 11 species of tortoises endemic to the islands. Most species are found only on one of the islands, having evolutionarily diverged from tortoises on adjacent islands. The species on San Cristobal, Geochelone chatamensis, has a small existing population that survived the effects of visiting whalers hungry for turtle meat in the past and, later, introduced animals like goats, dogs, and cats. The population is split between two locations: a small, protected area on the northeast area of the island and the breeding center outside of town. The breeding center opened some years ago after transferring some of the adults from the wild population to the Galapaguera. These individuals get a comfortable life of meandering through native vegetation, eating to their hearts’ content. They’re not the largest or the longest-living of the Galapagos tortoises, but they’re still pretty impressive. We met a few that were at least 70 years old and who’s shell came up to my knees. They watched us carefully, hissing like some prehistoric version of a Monday-morning-grouch and retreating their old-man-heads into their shells if we moved too fast or too close to their comfort zones. The tortoises here mate once a year and the park employees take the eggs and incubate them to maximize survival. The baby turtles are monitored for five years before being released back into the wild population.

Talk about cute: the babies are exact replicas of their massive parents, except for the fact that they could fit in your hand. Even the way they move is the same. They slowly bob and sway their heads to find a good spot to step, then carefully shift one front foot at a time forward. The back feet follow slowly and blindly, dragging along until finding a stable spot. This whole extensive process is exhausting and time consuming, so the tortoises take a necessary breather every couple of steps.  Every single one of us fell in love with the tortoises.

The rest of our Sunday was spent exploring the surrounding area. My friend Shannon’s host dad drove us around. His family came along, so we all piled in to the back bed of his pickup, ready for adventure. The area above town is generally referred to as “the highlands”, as it raises 2,000+ feet above the rolling flats of the rest of the island. It’s a reminder of the volcanic activity that originally created San Cristobal. It hosts El Progreso, a sleepy farming village left over from the original penal colony of the island (Yep, the Galápagos is yet another place that was originally settled through some mainland country sending all their criminals away to an isolated island). Above the town, there are many trails taking off into the national park, as well as Laguna El Junco, the only major freshwater source on the islands. It’s a whole different world. The slopes catch the southern winds which build up and create a cooler climate with regular rainfall. As a result, everything is green and lush and there are actually substantial trees and flowers and ferns and moss. And mud. Our walk to El Junco turned into more of a slippery muck climb. It didn’t help that the misty Garúa had turned into substantial fog and rain once we gained elevation.

To be honest, it reminded me of romping around in the rain and dirt in Oregon. It was just so refreshing to get out of town and the dry, prickly greyness of the coastal shrubs and cacti to become surrounded by messy, mucky, mudlicious life. I guess I’ve missed the rain more than I thought. I’m sure I’ll get over it REAL quick as soon as I come home, though.

We finished off the day with a few hours lounging on Puerto Chino, a secluded beach at the end of the road that traverses the highlands.  It was surprisingly busy. I guess it’s a favorite Sunday spot for locals. We napped in the sand until we had the beach to ourselves and then explored. We managed to forget food for the day, so an empanada stop was necessary on our return. Freshly fried, filled with cheese, and sprinkled with sugar - maybe it was my empty stomach talking, or my cold and thoroughly rain-soaked and truck-shaken body, but these were probably the best empanadas I’ve ever had.

The food continued when I came home. My host dad cooked up a heaping pile of canchalagua. In English, we call it chiton. It’s an intertidal mollusk that resembles, as my boyfriend so eloquently describes, a dinosaur turd. It tastes like the smell of dead shellfish and has a texture tougher than calamari. My host dad LOVES it. My host mom says it’s better in ceviche. I said “uhm….la textura es interesante….” I tried it (check another local “specialty off the list!) but it wasn’t really my thing. They foresaw my squeamishness, though, and had some lobster tails grilled up as backup for me. I was just fine with that.

This week is disappearing fast.  Between research projects, quizzes, volunteering in my professor’s lab, and multiple upcoming scuba trips, I feel busier than ever. No complaints though. I’m fully submerged in experiences relevant to everything I’ve ever wanted to do with my life. I’m still finding time to think about the future, too. I just sent off my application to spend my spring term studying at the Hatfield Marine Research Center in Newport. There, I’d literally live at the research center and spend every day taking marine science classes and going out into the field and working in labs. After this trip, it’s the next major opportunity I just can’t let myself miss. I’ll hear back in November. Fingers crossed!

So turns out over two weeks have flown past since I last posted. Oops. Sorry to leave you hanging there – let me get you all caught up on my life.

To refresh your memory: I’m in the Galápagos. Island of San Cristobal, town of Puerto Baquerezo Moreno. After two weeks, I’m starting to really settle into my life here. It was definitely a huge adjustment from Quito. Think of it this way: my flight took me from an Andean 35 km – long city of nearly 2 billion people at 9,000 feet elevation to a tiny sea level town of under 7,000 people (that’s about a quarter of the student body at my home university alone) on an island so isolated and barren in resources that most of our produce comes in bi-weekly deliveries by barge. Can you get culture shock when you’re coming from a place that was already relatively new to you?

In all honesty, the change has been more than welcome. The small, friendly town is much more my speed. One of the first words people here use to describe the island life is “tranquilo”: peaceful, relaxed, slow – take your pick. Still, the first few days flew by as I tried to adjust with a full schedule. The transfer happened in the middle of our second module of classes, so school started right after our orientation, which included a walk up to the tsunami evacuation zone. My classes are 9am to noon. More often than not, we have field excursions at least a couple times a week in the afternoons. Occasionally, we get to take a dive trip. A required trip to a nearby beach for snorkeling or boat ride to a dive location? Totally worth the field report assignment that follows and the associated scientific paper readings. My homework load helps alleviate the question of how to spend my open afternoons. I am in school, I assure you.

Speaking of Kicker Rock, that’s where we spent our first Saturday. Kicker Rock is called Leon Dormido (sleeping lion) locally. I’m still trying to figure out where the lion actually is in the formation. Anyway, it’s basically this huge rock formation jutting out of the ocean off the coast of San Cristobal. Most of it is cliff face. The secret geologist in me is absolutely fascinated by the fact that this rock is composed entirely of volcanic ash, and yet is a solid structure within rough open waters. Below the water line, the walls host a huge number of marine organisms. The cold water (no really, our dive went beneath the thermocline and reached 16°C – roughly 60°F. That’s pretty dang cold to dive in, even with a 5mm wetsuit.) and the mixing currents at the rocks swirl up nutrients and help turn this place into a productivity hotspot. Urchins and sea stars and algae and coral and other benthic organisms galore! There are huge variety of reef and semi-pelagic fishes as well, and sea turtles and sea lions frequent the area. Oh, did I mention sharks? Nearly every species of shark found in the Galápagos is represented at Kicker Rock, especially Hammerheads, Galapagos sharks, and Blacktips. Our Marine Life class trip was actually meant to function as a shark observation dive. Unfortunately, visibility was poor and shark numbers seem to be low right now (El Niño effects?) so we didn’t see much. Maybe it was just our location…the snorkelers at the surface claim they saw over 40 sharks during the same time period! That was frustrating, but at least I know I’ll be coming back soon, multiple times. I have another class dive there for the Marine Ecology class that just started up yesterday (Module 3, have I really already been abroad seven weeks??). I also have a dive there for another class….Advanced Diving.

It only took the couple of class dives so far to convince me that I seriously want to get the next level of certification. Scuba is incredible. I still get a little nervous before every dive, and breathing underwater is totally designed to kick off my anxiety…. But once you start exploring underwater you just get lost in it. It’s incredible. It’s everything that ever fascinated me in aquariums and marine books, and I get to be inside of all of that life.  I wanted to dive deeper, in more places, and also have my PADI ID card say advanced certified in the Galápagos. A couple other girls felt the same, so we are taking classes from a local dive shop. We already got to do a drift and fish ID dives at Punta Pitt, a location on the opposite side of the island with warmer, perfectly clear waters and blue-footed, red-footed, and masked boobies all nesting on the land above. We also did a night dive in the bay, which was terrifying and amazing. At one point, we turned off all of our lights and played with the bioluminescent planktonic organisms that fill the water. In the pitch dark, we waved our arms and ignited specks of green light. I also learned that if you smile too hard while diving, you’ll flood your mask. Also respirators aren’t conducive to laughing. But it’s pretty hard to flail around underwater and make a trail of living sparks with a straight face – it’s just too much fun!

Terrestrially speaking, life has otherwise gotten relatively more normalized. I’ve gotten back into running as close to daily as I can manage, which has helped me to really learn the town and the places to adventure around it. I’ve figured out the bakery that stays open even on Sundays where you can get enough fresh homemade whole wheat bread for the week for a dollar or any number of delicious treats for 50 cents. I’ve poked my head into enough minitiendas to know where you can hope to find avocados and apples and the like to save money on lunches. I’ve figured out the best restaurant for a cheap but incomparably delicious vegetarian meal and which stand to go to for a chocobanana – frozen chocolate covered banana. Obviously, food is a priority. I’ve found the best place for pay-by-the hour internet that actually works (the university technically has wifi. It can sometimes send e-mails. And my house’s router has a range of about ten feet). I know where to snorkel at low tide and which road to take for a good hill run. I’ve started recognizing locals to an extent where I can tell if an Ecuadorian is local to the islands or not. Of course, sometimes visitors make it obvious by sending a catcall our two our way. Locals here are generally more respectful than that, which is a nice change from Quito. Other visitors are obvious for other reasons: they travel in groups with khakis, backpacks, and binoculars, and are probably white. You can tell how long a gringo has been on the island based on their level of pale, freshly burnt, or well-tanned toning.

So yeah, you could say I am adjusting well. I’ve almost established a set routine already. Of course, there are challenges too. The Spanish here is a little bit different. It’s fast and slurred and I have a lot of trouble with it. When I speak, I still pleasantly surprise locals with my decent Spanish skills, but I’m more likely to get scared from talking here because I can’t follow a full conversation nearly as well in the local dialect. The charm of the town also faded pretty quickly as soon as I realized how many anthropogenic issues the Galápagos has, and how much they’ve progressed in recent years with population booms and spikes in tourism. Example: Here I am walking along a path in this birthplace of evolution, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, portrayed in science classes as one of the last pristine sanctuaries for rare and endemic species….and a local teen bikes past me and TOSSES AN EMPTY PLASTIC WATER BOTTLE INTO THE BUSHES which are sadly already littered with refuse that had only accumulated since an island clean-up effort less than a month ago.  Other Example: The bay tends to suffer periodic sewage leaks due to haphazard piping and at least one oil spill per year from one of the weekly tankers that ship in the gas and diesel for the island. There’s more. There’s so much more. And it kills me. But a rant on human impacts and the need for sustainable system is for another blog post.

One other challenge has been home life. I’m taking longer to mesh into my new host family than I did in Quito. I like them, and I think they like me. They feed me well, and are polite and friendly, but it’s not especially comfortable yet. Especially in the first week, I felt like an awkward guest who happens to be staying way too long. It’s gotten better, but could use more progress. My host mom still won’t let me help cook or anything, and insists on doing my laundry for me, and I always get served first at meals. I should feel pampered, but instead just feel like I make a lot of extra work. Part of the issue is the more difficult language barrier here, and that I spend probably 80% of my day at the school or elsewhere out of the house, and a good portion of my time in the house is spent on homework, so I don’t really get to connect with my host family. Other than my four-year-old brother, of course. He’s not shy at all about coming into my room and talking and drawing with me, which is awesome.

It also helps that dinners spent at home are family meals. We students have three meals a week in restaurants with other students as part of the program, four meals a week at home with family, and two meals a week where we are expected to provide for ourselves. Unlike most of Ecuador, people on the islands tend to eat three big meals a day – more like in the States. Of course, it’s still mostly rice and meat. But they do eat together, which does make for good interaction time with the family in the evenings. Last week, we spent almost every dinner with my host mom’s extended family at her mom’s house. There, 15 people share a meal in a two-room wood hut. It was loads of fun. One cousin is a bit younger than me and keen on practicing his English while I practice my Spanish in return – bilingual conversation. He has a lot of questions and weird ideas about the states so talking to him is pretty entertaining. My host mom’s sisters are all plenty chatty as well, and it’s just a lot of fun to be around a big family. I’ve actually started looking forward to family dinners. We didn’t go last night, though. Instead, we grilled up some slipper lobster. It’s lobster season in San Cristobal right now and they are everywhere as fisherman bring in new catches every day to sell locally. In the states, I was never much one for steamed lobster or crab. I’m not sure what exactly my host mom did – somewhere between grilling and pan frying - but this lobster was insanely delicious. Most of my meals at home are, really. So the food situation is great, and that’s definitely helping with feeling more comfortable here.

That’s pretty much what my life is like now. I’ll work on updating more frequently so that I’m not always just posting ridiculously long narratives on my day to day activities and can actually talk about more substantial topics. 

So last week, we had another long field trip to the coast. This time, the academic purpose was to collect DNA samples and observe the behavior of humpback whales. So basically, I had three days of whale watching in a row.

We returned to the Las Esmeraldas region and once again found ourselves in a small, private complex of bungalow-like cabins above a beach. Our base was called El Acantilado, and it was gorgeous. The beach below stretched for a ways at low tide, to a town called Same (Tsah-meh) to the north. Of course, our time was spent more on the open ocean than on land. Each day, we would head out for around 5 hours to chase whales.

I’ve been whale watching before, but this was totally different. Instead of the small yacht-like vessel that one usually takes when whale watching for tourism or for research with a solid financial base, our group was split between two tiny boats smaller than those of most local fisherman.  It was kind of like riding in a tin can with a speedboat motor attached. The sides were lower than most swells, even though the weather was incredibly calm, and bouncing across waves at full speed sprayed water across the whole thing. By the end of the first day, it became pretty clear that wearing anything other than a swimsuit under our life vests was pretty much pointless. I escaped seasickness, but the hour of fast oceanic travel at the start and end of each venture made me pretty sure we would capsize and I’d die right there at sea. Of course, our captains knew exactly what they were doing so we were totally safe,  even if it felt like we were on a roller coaster ride about to launch into barrel rolls.

The whales were incredible. It’s the end of the season here, so most mothers have already moved south with their calves to feed in the more productive southern waters of Chile and the Antarctic. We managed to get lucky, though, and had plenty of sightings the first two days. One boat would approach as close as possible in the hopes that our professor could shoot a specialized dart when the whales surfaced. The darts, when they make contact, make a small puncture to catch skin and a small amount of blubber, and bounce back off to float until we picked them up. The procedure is supposedly painless, but it was still weird to be “shooting” at whales. We managed to collect five samples, which is apparently a huge accomplishment even in high season. The second boat followed and recorded the whales’ behaviors: how many in the group, type of group (mother and calf, with or without escort, et cetera), location coordinates and direction of travel, number of blows, type of surface activity, and any reaction to the boats.  Our little boats were so low we could drag our hands in the water next to the whales that were easily twice as long as us.  I’ve never been so close to these creatures before. We could look into their blowholes and could even hear them singing at the surface a couple of times. We even got to see some fin slaps, flukes, and a breach or two!

Did I mention we got to swim in the pelagic ocean? It started out as addressing the need for bathroom breaks in a boat too small to have a toilet: jump in. It eventually turned into a group swimming session an hour and a half from land in clear, open ocean water. We had no idea of the depth and couldn’t see a creature in sight besides us, but you could hear distant whale songs just by diving a few feet down. It was honestly probably one of the more dangerous things I’ve done when you think about it, but it was also definitely an amazing experience I will never forget. Nor will I forget the final afternoon when we actually ended up swimming back to shore from at least 700 meters out. I still don’t know why we did that, and it was probably the most difficult swim I’ve done (swimming through waves against a current was a new challenge for me), but I felt pretty cool for doing it.

The afternoons were spent doing data entry and lounging in the sun. I liked running on the beach, but most of us stopped going down to it solo after an unfortunate incident with a couple of other students. I’d prefer not to go into it because it was a very personal and serious ordeal. It scared us away from the beach, but did start an important conversation: bad people exist everywhere. That beach is considered one of the safest locations our group of students travels to. Most people in our group spent over a month in Quito without incident but consider it scary in comparison to the majority of locations in the States. In reality, one can be almost anywhere in the world and still become a victim. It’s important to recognize that even with this knowledge, it’s impractical to be afraid of every location and situation. The best thing to do is take precautions for safety and know how to respond when something like an assault does occur. You can’t let fear of what might happen stop you from pursuing goals and exploring new places, no matter where you are.

Speaking of new places....I'm now in the Galapagos. I've made it to the Islands!! We flew in to the island of San Cristobal yesterday afternoon after a surprisingly difficult goodbye with our Quito host families. This Island is the farthest east of the large islands, and has a single small town called Puerto Baquerezo Maureno. The airport is on one side, the main street curves around a little bay, and the university and National Park Interpretive Center is on the other side of town. In total, about 5,000 people live here, with a couple hundred tourists here at any given time. The University hosts a bit under 200 students and consists of a single building of classrooms and a laboratory research building. A beach called Playa Mann is right across the street, and sea lions lounge next to people. The last day and a half have been full of orientation sessions and some free time to wander around the little town. Everything just feels so relaxed! It's a great change from Quito, which honestly kind of overwhelmed me. My new host family seems really nice, too. I definitely lucked out: the mother enjoys cooking, the home is clean and nice with tile floors and a full bathroom (to compare, some other students have a single bucket of fresh water for a shower), and I have a 4-year old brother who is quickly becoming my new best friend. I absolutely cannot believe how lucky I am. I am FINALLY here! I remember learning about these islands in second grade by pure chance, and my interest grew ever since. By the time I was in high school and had learned more about them in the context of Darwin and the progression of evolutionary science, they had become a dream destination for me. I am SO lucky to be here and it's just incredible that I can be studying all of the things I love in the islands that inspired one of the most significant scientific developments of all time: Evolutionary Theory.

A bit about the Islands in general:
- The Galapagos are relatively young, only 10 million years old. Each formed through the buildup of lava flows from volcanic eruptions, so the ground is primarily volcanic rock. 
- The full archipelago consists of 13 main islands, 6 smaller ones, and over 40 little islets. It's actually really big and kind of spread out, covering 8000 square km of land and 45000 square km of sea.
- The islands are about 960 km from the main continent, but are actually drifting closer by about 6mm each year. This is caused by the shifting of continental plates, with one pushing under another just west of the islands, pushing them eastward. It generates the same volcanic activity that created the islands, so the islands closest to the activity are the youngest.
- For being on the equator, the islands are a lot drier and less tropical feeling than one might expect, with most islands being rocky with relatively little vegetation. This has a lot to do with them being younger formations with lava flow substrates. 
-Right now, it is especially warm and dry (especially for it being the "cool") season, since we are currently in the middle of an El Niño event.
- The animals' populations originated mostly through long distance migrations in the past, so the types of land animals are mostly limited to reptiles and birds (think Iguanas, Giant Tortoises, and finches). The ocean here is absolutely full of life, which I will hopefully start experiencing tomorrow during a class snorkel trip.
-San Cristobal is the only island with a significant source of fresh water. pretty much everything else, including clean drinking water, has to be imported here and to the neighboring Island, Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz has a slightly larger town, but in total 90% of the islands are pristine, unoccupied by people and preserved as National Park and Marine Reserve areas.

I'm currently sitting in the upstairs open sitting and eating area of the university with some other students. Some of the finches come and keep us company up here, fearlessly flying in and hopping around for a bit to check us out. I should be writing a report for my Marine Life class, so I'll get back to that. 

Prepare yourself. This post is going to be a long one.

First, let's talk about the last few days. This week consisted of just regular old classes at USFQ, finishing our papers for Marine Research. It was stressful, but mostly uneventful until my computer mysteriously acquired a very broken screen. It'll be fixed soon enough, thankfully, but until then I'm borrowing gadgets and won't be able to share pictures. 

That day finished off with a rather negative reminder of which city I'm currently in. Someone must have watched me get my money to pay for my computer troubles, because directly after, I got knocked down and a man took off with a portion of that money. I was fine, and in reality I lost nothing of significant value, but it put a pretty nasty cast on Quito for me, at least temporarily.

It was Friday and I desperately needed to turn my mood around. The obvious solution? Going out! A couple friends and I ventured to La Ronda, a lively area in Old Quito. Sitting beneath the lookout of the "winged virgin" statue that towers over the historic part of Quito, this long cobblestone street is lined by a continuous wall of colonial buildings with curling iron balconies on the windows and doors open to the hidden plazas inside.. It's beautiful and very famous for the number of artisanal shops and cafes where one can eat traditional, freshly fried empanadas to your heart's content. It's even more famous for its night life. The streets are brightly and colorfully lit and well watched by policemen, so it's much safer than the rest of Old Quito at night. The shops and cafes stay open and are joined by bars and dance clubs and hoards of people out to have a good time. We started the night off by trying out a local drink: Canelazo.

If you like hot cider and/or rum, you would love Canelazo. It's essentially a rich juice (usually based with oranges I think) filled with brown sugar, cinnamon, cloves, and a generous serving of aguardiente ("firewater"), a very strong sugar cane alcohol. As if the fire water wouldn't warm you up, it's served piping hot. It's delicious. It's also apparently dangerously easy to overdo it, so we stuck to just one mug each before exploring more. 

We REALLY wanted to dance, but it was harder to make happen than expected. All bars with dance floors wouldn't let us dance without buying drinks first, but given that we were a 45 minute taxi ride from home in a not particularly safe district, more drinks were not on our agenda. We joined another group en route to a very promising Salsa club, but got turned away at the door. The reason? Word for word (translated): "We can't let you in because you have too many white girls with you." 

I remember being told that the culture here can come off as racist, but that experience totally baffled me. We were literally turned away for our skin color. We had no idea how to respond. We brushed it off, though, and instead focused the night on exploring the street itself, which was still plenty fun and a great turnaround to my previously not so great day.

Canelazo, La Ronda, and falling victim to some petty theft = pretty classic Quito experience, I believe.

Let's see, what else...oh yeah, I need to get around to sharing about our class trip to the coast!

It began with an 8 hour bus ride. Not a great start, but the destination was well worth it. We arrived in the northern coastal province of Las Esmeraldas. We passed through the city of the same name and ended up at a very quiet and secluded spot named La Escondida, "the hidden beach." It turned out to be our home for the next two nights. We slept in bungalows with leafed roofs, swam in the ocean, and got sunburned. Can you say paradise? Our next stop was in the city of La Manta (less beautiful - the whole city smelled like canned tuna), and our last few nights were spent in the small coastal fishing town of Puerto Lopez. We even spent an incredible day scuba diving at an island called Isla de la Plata ("island of gold"), which is nicknamed little Galapagos and is famous for the enormous Manta Rays that congregate there and the whales that migrate nearby. I tested out my gopro on the dive and collected some cool clips of what I saw down there. If you want, you can check it out here: http://vimeo.com/106459814 

I assure you, this trip had an educational purpose. Every single day (other than the dive day) was spent conducting field work. We were split into groups working on research projects. Mine spent the days running transects through the intertidal zone and counting and measuring whelks (intertidal predatory snails). The purpose? To find out if the impact of human food - foraging (because whelks are among many beach critters eaten here) has greater strength in determining the populations of whelks along the Ecuadorian coast. Answer? People have enough impact to lower the average size of individuals in these populations, but abundances are so variable that we couldn't really conclude much else. Of course, our projects were pretty limited as far as actual research goes. This is just an introductory class on techniques, after all. 6 field days in a row was more exhausting than I expected - I have yet to adjust to spending so much time directly under the equatorial sun with serious heat and humidity (It's not very tropical or warm in Quito, so the coast was a big change). Still, the whole experience was absolutely one of my most fantastic adventures yet.

It's like this class was designed for me specifically. I've been wanting more practice in field work techniques, and I've been curious to find out what the intertidal zone here looks like. My ongoing thesis based out of the Novak Lab at OSU is actually on whelks. I'm checking out if color polymorphisms that determine thermal stress tolerance in individuals correlate with their predation behavior. Sounds riveting, I know. The point is that I can go 4,000 miles from home and still make these incredibly relevant connections. This research track is what I want to do with my life (I think...). I'm learning so much about a new culture, and I'm seeing so many things, but I'm also building really significant experience for my future life goals. I think that's pretty cool.

Other trip highlights (or lowlights, you decide):
- Buying a still-green coconut for a bus ride refresher: the man selling them lopped off the top with a machete and stuck a straw in it
- Trying cebiche (basically a cold seafood soup). The verdict? Probably better without conch. I'm not much of a mollusc-eater.
- Coming face to face with a sea turtle.
- Collecting hoards of beautiful shells and inspiration for what to make with them
- Coming down with a solid flue-like sickness for a day or two, probably caused by some suspicious water.
- So many variations of spicy sauces to put on all the foods! I have found a new love, and it's name is ahi. 
- Discussing the local beers with our professors.
-Getting up close and personal with some blue-footed boobie birds.


I'll hopefully have my computer back by next weekend, and I'll be sure to share some photos from the coast. Chao!

I'm still working on gathering my thoughts on the coast trip. In the mean time, let me share more pictures with you. Remember the awesome weekend I unintentionally spent in Mindo? Let's check out some of the things I saw there.