Science Can Be Fun!

Ooh, ooh, ooh, so much to tell. First of all, just want to thank you all who have been leaving comments--I am much more inspired to write when I know people are reading and plus, it makes me feel connected despite the thousands of miles. Also, if you are interested in seeing more pictures, click on the link to the left that says "More Photos." I will continue to include a few within each post and then upload the rest to my Picasa photo page (which is where that link will take you).

The last two days have been pretty great. Yesterday was spent almost entirely indoors, but luckily our classroom is airy and well-lit, thanks to door-length windows, which also provide a lovely view of the hills surrounding the IPE campus. Also lucky was the fact that class was particularly interesting yesterday--it focussed on climate change and the idea of an "ecological footprint," which is a metaphorical way to quantify how much the human species consumes of the world's natural resources. The smaller the footprint, the healthier the environment, the less destructive climate change.

You can calculate your own individual ecological footprint (or that of your household's) on this website. After taking a fairly involved quiz that asks you things like how many miles you drive a year and where you buy your food, you learn how many earths would be needed to sustain the human population if all humans lived the same way you do. If everyone lived like I do, we would need 3.6 earths. Sounds high I know, but the class's results ranged from 7 earths to 2.9, so I was actually on the lower end of the scale. I am curious to know what my parents would get--all that composting and Goodwill shopping has to be good for something! I encourage anyone reading to take the quiz and post your results in the comment section--I find it really fascinating and would love to know what you get.

Later, after another gorgeous sunset (I almost didn't even put a picture up because it does NO justice), we met individually with our professor, Tim, and our three TAs--Kaitlyn, who is from the U.S. and just completed her Masters in conservation at Columbia, and Fernando and Juliana, who are Brazilian. Fernando studies ocelots and jaguars, as well as a variety of monkeys. We discussed our individual projects. I had wanted to do something with edible vegetation, because I assumed that people who live on the edges of such a rich forest would forage in some manner, whether for medicinal herbs, mushroom, or fruit. Apparently, they don't. They do grow herbs and fruit, but in gardens, and they don't hunt for mushrooms like they do in the U.S. and Europe. They suggested instead that I do something involving ponds, which I find vaguely interesting--a comparison of the biodiversity (a word we use a LOT here) of several ponds in the area, for example. Tomorrow is our day to explore on our own and try to narrow down our focus, so we'll have to see what I find.

Today was split between the classroom and the field. The subject was abiotic--meaning non-living--components of the environment. We set up camp in a small pasture-valley bordered by the forest, broke up into groups and compared things like air temperature, humidity, light, and soil pH at different along four 150-meter transects that ran from the pasture into the forest--two along each of the two slopes of the valley. Basically, we wanted to know how different conditions were in the pasture and in the forest, as well as on either slope of the valley. We collected data and then brought it back to the classroom where we struggled (most of us are not science and math people; this program is an easy and exciting way to fulfill Columbia's 6-credit science requirement) with statistics in an attempt to make sense of what we'd found.

What I found most interesting was the fact that the soil in the open, sunny pasture held more moisture than that in the dense, covered forest. The explanation for this is two-fold. For one, the forest has significantly more vegetation, or biomass, and plants suck up a lot of water. Two, the pasture collects dew every morning. Tricky. Another cool thing I learned is called Humboldt's rule. [Disclaimer: this might put you to sleep.] Scientists have determined, as a general trend, that for every 1000 meters that you go up in altitude, there is a decrease in temperature of about 6 ° C and concurrently observable changes in plant life. That decrease and those changes are equivalent to what you would see if you were to move latitudinally a linear distance of 500 to 750 km at the same elevation. In other words, hiking up 1000 meters is the same as walking 500 to 750 flat kilometers in terms of how much the environment around you changes.

Did that make sense? I find it so frustrating that it is incredibly difficult to write well about science. There are so few people who can explain things thoroughly and clearly, not to mention do so in finely-wrought prose. This guy is one of them, and it was a beautiful essay of his assigned in my first human evolution class that inspired me--and JD, if I remember correctly!--to study biological anthropology. For many years, beginning when I was 10, I wanted to be a food critic. But now that food writing has become such a massive and popular industry, I feel like my talents (how modest) might be better put to use improving the underdeveloped field of science writing.

Someone told me that a girl who went on this program last year lost 30 lbs by the time it was through. I was delighted by this news until I realized that I've been eating about 30 lbs a day. Sure, I am tromping around the forest, but I don't think I'm burning quite enough calories to cancel out the effects of the three enormous meals, plus frequent coffee breaks (with cake or cookies) and occasional Clif bar, that I consume a day. If you'd like to read more specific accounts of what I'm wolfing down, look no farther than food game, a blog that Brie Kluytenaar (sister of Van) recently started. Contributors to this blog (which include myself, known as "H," Van, his other sister Tara, and good old Dan Shapiro--what up, Beaver Hill!) post specific, descriptive lists of their daily meals. Some find this bizarre, but for me, who insists that everyone she knows tells her exactly what they ate at an interesting restaurant or what they cooked last night for dinner, it is like food pornography.

In biotic (living organisms) news: I take back what I said about the forest looking similar to those of the Northeast United States. I say this perhaps because my eye is a bit better-trained and because there are vines (lianas) everywhere and because I have seen some freaky plants. Plus, I saw another sloth! The problem with non-predatory forest mammals is that to protect themselves, they live very high up in the trees. Great for their survival, but they're very difficult to see without binoculars, and even then, all the leafy branches get in the way. I could only crane my neck for so long but I did catch a few glimpses of her sluggish body (did you know that sometimes it takes so long for a sloth to reach a food source that it STARVES on the way? absurd!). I know it was a her because she had a cub with her! Unless it was a really great single dad-sloth--unlikely. Unfortunately, I did not actually see the cub, but sighting of a smaller arm clutching the adult were reported. I did see some dainty butterflies (that's my arm pictured) and I took charge (and pictures) of an empty hummingbird nest that TA Fernando found on the forest floor.

I am hoping my entries will become more precise and thus concise as I get used to writing them, but until then, thanks for reading! It is 7 pm, time for jantar (aka dinner). Can't wait to find out what's on the menu. At 8:30 begins our social--we found out this morning that they're bringing in a Samba band! Looking forward to some cringeworthy scientist-dancing....

Things

Things I'm getting used to:
- not throwing toilet paper into the toilet (I guess they have a very basic sewage system but it's so hard to remember after 21 years of doing it a different way)
- taking cold showers (but it's good for the environment!)
- strange, unidentifiable bug bites that I hope aren't fatal
- stray dogs EVERYWHERE
- being woken up by bizarre animal noises: donkeys braying, parakeets, etc.

Things I could get used to:
- frequent monkey sightings
- cafe da tarde (a late afternoon coffee/tea break that very often involves a delicious cake)
- fresh juice at every meal
- local tropical fruit
- local organic food --yesterday I walked by a squash hanging from a vine in the insitute's garden and later that night, I ate it!
- daily hikes
- living next to a body of water

Speaking of water, apparently you're not supposed to drink it from the tap here, although all of the people in the community do and I can literally see the source from my bedroom window. Because our US immune systems aren't used to it, a few people have gotten sick and I have a sinking suspicion that I'm next--I haven't been drinking it but I've been using it to brush my teeth and I'm feeling some rumbling...cross your fingers for my gastrointestinal system!

Today was a lot of class, including two field experiments, one in which we learned how to use our compasses for some very basic orienteering and one in which, using stakes and string, we plotted eight meters of forest into two meter squares and then collected every single plant species we could find. Interesting in theory but incredibly tedious. That said, it did give me an idea for my individual project: I think I'm going to study medicinal herbs, mushrooms, or fruit that grow in this area of the rainforest (I think the latter includes persimmons and passion fruit, which I've been eating a lot of). I haven't narrowed it down yet but will do so as the week progresses and I develop a detailed proposal with the help of the TAs.

Interesting fact: less than 10% of the original Atlantic Forest remains today. That's a lot of decimation, and as you might suspect, it's mostly the result of destructive economic activity. But I think it's too easy to villanize the human species; as my sage father always says: everything's 20/20 in hindsight. I'm fascinated by the seemingly inherent conflict between human progression and survival methods and continued biodiversity. Of course it's not inherent, and there's a way to get around it by thinking outside the box a little, but it's really only recently occurred to anyone even try. (Hence, conservation biology.)

Everyone is looking forward to Thursday, the evening of our first "social," whatever that means, planned by the "social coordinator." Regardless of what we do, we're promised beer and it's been one of the most popular topics of conversation for the past few days (followed closely by Miley Cyrus, natch). Saturday should be even more exciting; we get to leave the site to go out in the closest town, which I think is about an hour away. It will be nice to wear something other than "field clothes," which are about as flattering as they sound.

Well, once again I have an enormous amount of assigned reading, so I'd better get to it. I'm sure that in a month or two I will start to get homesick, but right now I feel just really, really happy to be here. It's amazing how much your surroundings affect your mental state and at the moment I'm very grateful for the radical change of scenery. Plus, the food is GREAT. Have I mentioned that?

P.S. I took none of these photos--except the one of Miley Cyrus.

Sloth is not a sin

Good news: the dream continues! It's too bad that even a thorough combination of photographs and written description can never fully capture the experience of actually existing in a specific place. That said, I will try my very best to paint a rich picture. Conveniently, doing so will kill two birds: it turns out that we're expected to keep a daily journal to hand in at the end of the program.

The Atlantic Forest is absolutely beautiful. Though it is technically a tropical rainforest, it is not at all the "jungle," which is the first association I make with the word rainforest (specifically, I think of the Second Voyage of the Mimi). It is not the Amazon. It isn't particular wet (it hasn't rained at all since I got here); there are not huge tropical flowers bursting out of every nook and cranny; and while the vegetation is lush, and largely different species-wise from say, that of the Northeast United States, to the untrained eye a lot of the inner forest does not feel so drastically different overall from the woods of Vermont, or upstate New York, or even parts of Connecticut. In fact, the Pacific Northwest, in Oregon and outside of Seattle, where I was last summer, struck me as much more exotic.

The most noticeable and exciting difference is the fauna. As I mentioned in the last post, there are very large flocks of parakeets that race around the trees right above the small campus of the institute. They move too fast (and fly too high) to really get a good look but I'm pretty sure they're green and they're definitely very noisy. But beyond the gates of the institute is where the wildlife gets really good. I've been on two hikes so far.

The first was yesterday, and calling it a hike is sort of a stretch--it was more of a stroll around the clay-like red dirt roads (and through the woods a bit) of the "neighborhood," which is a very rural and, as far as I can tell, fairly poor part of Brazil.

After oohing and ahing over some large and involved spider webs, we saw our first mammal: a sloth! Some deemed it creepy, some were thrilled and delighted (myself among them; I think they're cute and endearing and did a project on them in 5th grade), but all were fascinated and stood under the tree from which it was hanging, gape-mouthed and snapping pictures like the bumbling tourists we are. It did little but move very slowly and hang from a branch, looking kind of nervous.


My luck continued: later, having lagged behind the rest of the group a bit, two of the TAs and I caught sight of a few marmosets, which are New World Monkeys, high up in the trees. They are very small and move a lot like squirrels (but not to be confused with squirrel monkeys), running along branches and leaping from tree to tree. The one we could see best was very clearly sending warning signals via oral calls and a funny head motion--he was systematically jerking his head from side to side. I'm sure I sound like a huge monkey nerd and I guess it's true--after [inexplicably] taking two classes on primates, it was really, really exciting to see them in the flesh and in their natural habitat, no less. I only wish I could have gotten a little closer; my pictures are pretty much indistinguishable.

The second hike was today. We took a boat across the reservoir to place called Fazendinha (the Little Farm, in English), which is at the base of a mountainous woods. We plunged right into these woods but were joined, unfortunately, by a few stray dogs (there are SO MANY freaking dogs here, it's unbelievable) which pretty much shot our chances of seeing any wild animals. Despite that, it was a really nice hike along a path zig-zagging up a small peak and we saw a lot of traces of animals (armadillo holes, termite mounds, etc.) and some cool lichen.

At the top we sat on what our professor referred to as a "rocky outcrop" and took in a gorgeous view of the reservoir and the surrounding land. He pointed out eucalyptus plantations, which are abundant here, and we talked about some of the environmental laws in place, which are often ignored despite the incentive of lowered taxes. Farmers are supposed to leave twenty percent of their land as forest, and they're not supposed to build or farm within certain distance of the reservoir.

We headed back down to the Little Farm, where we ate an enormous lunch at the farm's restaurant. Lunch is clearly the big meal here: the spread included a salad bar (lettuce, which everyone here seems to eat in whole leaves, beets, green beans and carrots, cucumbers), potatoes, rice and red beans, pot roast, breaded chicken, pasta, and, of course, fresh juice. Dessert was dulce de leche and a repeat of what I earlier described as a sweet potato-orange concoction--I found out it is actually pumpkin. Pretty good but overwhelmingly sweet. After lunch, the brave among us took a swim in the farm's tiny pool. The water was frigid, but thanks to 18 summers in Nova Scotia, I have the highest tolerance for cold water of anyone I know (besides Dad, naturally) and remained undeterred.

Tragically, though I feel like I'm at summer camp for [almost] grown-ups, the program is not all outdoor activity and binge eating; I also have homework, which I should be doing right now, but old habits die hard and camp is supposed to FUN. We've been assigned a ton of reading and by tomorrow must hand in a paragraph proposing the individual projects that are going to be our main focus throughout the class. I'm thinking I will do something involving monkeys, but no idea what.

For those two of you who have made it this far, a few more details! My roommate, Olivia, who is great, happens to be Brazilian, though she grew up in Connecticut. Like my friend from the plane, she has three passports and speaks five languages (uh, me too?). She's been teaching me key Portuguese phrases, and is planning to stay in Brazil after the program ends, so we've been talking about me following her around for awhile--she has family in Rio, her grandmother lives on a farm somewhere between Rio and Sao Paulo, and she might be headed to Argentina at some point as well. The smiling, goldfish-shaped patch of lichen at right reminds me of her.

I should sign off here and prepare for my 9 am quiz tomorrow.... I'd be pissed about that but it's hard to worry about anything when you're watching the sun set over a calm, glistening body of water and rolling green pastures. Before I left, I was feeling wistful about missing late spring/early summer in the Tristate area, but winter here is very similar to that season in the U.S. and so I'm getting my fill and then some. Still, I wish I'd been in Amagansett for Memorial Day, hangin' poolside with the Selwyns and Minnie Driver...!

P.S. My biggest pet peeve re:blogs is that they are never well edited because they're so... timely? Please accept my obsessive compulsive apologies; if I had the hours it would take to obsessively and extensively edit myself, I would.

Also: Mom, because I know you're going to ask: yes, I took all the pictures.

Brazil, where hearts were entertaining June

So I arrived in Sao Paulo this morning at about 6:30 AM after a fun-filled flight next to a kid who spoke four languages and had three passports and would not. stop. talking. Judging from my experience at the airport, Brazil is a country fraught with bureaucracy. The line for going through customs was one of the most inane, inefficient systems I have ever witnessed--it snaked around like six times and at the end there was ONE guy taking literally hundreds of people's forms and then just throwing them into a box next to him. We finally made it through and met our driver, Eduardo, in front of the airport Pizza Hut. The Pizza Hut smelled worse than any eating establishment I have ever encountered and didn't appear to be selling pizza so much as ham and cheese sandwiches....

We piled into a very small, very tin can-like VW and then sped away from the airport and into the outskirts of sprawling Sao Paulo. If there was a car even 50 yards ahead of us, Eduardo decided it would be a good idea to pass it by racing up the left lane, despite the fact that we were often on a curvy mountain pass. A bit terrifying but the landscape was significantly distracting in its beauty. The two words that come to mind are leafy--long, high grass and dense foliage (it is the rainforest, after all)--and dusty--bumpy dirt roads and crumbling facades. We passed a ton of dogs, most of them seemingly stray and trotting nonchalantly across our path.

After about an hour we arrived at our destination: IPE (Insituto de Pesquisas Ecologicas). The accommodations have exceeded everybody's wildest expectations; I feel like I'm staying at a resort. We're sleeping in tidy little double rooms (with a shared bathroom in between each two) in a beautiful, two-story brick and wood building with red-painted shutters and a wrap-around veranda. It looks over a small garden with benches and and a grassy lawn, which gives way to a hill (grazed by cows and a braying donkey) that slopes into a valley, at the base of which is shimmering reservoir. This evening we watched the brilliantly orange sun set behind the opposite rim of the valley--truly spectacular (see picture above).

Up a short hill in the other direction are the classroom/labs and the dining hall, which is staffed by a friendly team of local women who cook mostly local, organic food--much from the organic garden on the premises. We're served breakfast, lunch, dinner, and two coffee breaks. Today lunch consisted of: grilled beef with onions, two types of rice (white and brown with chopped vegetables), red beans, lettuce and tomato salad, a sort of broccoli bread-cake, an assortment of fresh fruit, fresh squeezed juices (pineapple and acerola), and a gelatinous mush (for lack of a better word) made of I think sweet potato and orange for dessert. This afternoon's coffee break offered coffee, mate tea, and a delicious, moist coconut cake, and dinner is at seven! I'm in heaven.

The weather, too, is just about perfect: warm and sunny but also breezy and dry. Without the sun the air has a bit of a bite to it, but I'm pretty comfortable in flip-flops and a sweatshirt. Tomorrow we take our first hike, through our immediate environs in order to orientate ourselves a bit and start to brainstorm topics for our individual research projects, which seem to be the focus of the class. Still not exactly sure of what the academics here entail, but I am clear on the fact that we will have a good amount of free time in which to make use of the reservoir (swimming, kayaking), bikes, etc. and that we are going to spend one full week at the beach, which should be great.

It seems that life here is going to be relaxing and very healthy--sleeping and rising with the sun (and the huge flocks of squawking parakeets), hearty, nutritious meals, lots of sun and outdoor exercise. So far, so good, but that said, it feels a lot like a dream at present. We'll see what happens when (if!) reality sets in. Here's hoping I don't wake up!

Welcome

to my blog. I have very mixed feelings about blogs, but one with a purpose such as this one's--to simply log my experience traveling around [some of] South America, for the sake of my nervous parents, curious friends (Hi Ashby!) and fleeting memory--seems OK. Fair warning: most of what I write about will probably have to do with food, which has and always will be my top priority in life.

I leave for Brazil in three days. I have some kind of stomach bug and a sore throat and am hoping that these ailments are due to a hilarious, preemptive cosmic attack--i.e. if I am sick now I can't possibly get sick from bad water/tropical disease/food poisoning during my time abroad, right?

Here is the program with which I am going to Brazil. I will be living in the Atlantic Forest outside of São Paulo (in case you can't tell, I am really into hyperlinks) for five weeks, studying conservation biology. To be perfectly honest, I am not really sure what I will be doing, but I am hoping to see some monkeys, go on some hikes, and eat some delicious organic food (apparently there is a small farm on the premises of where we are staying).

After that, I have 3.5 weeks before I'm expected to arrive in Buenos Aires, Argentina (thought I should specify because I was earlier on the phone to a woman at HSBC who asked me if it was in Spain...). I am not quite sure what I'm going to do with this time. I'd like to see more of Brazil and I'd like to meet up with any and all of the people I know who are going to be there at the same time (Lucian, Tamar, Cora) but both my funds and knowledge of how easy it is to travel there are limited--plus, I really don't speak Portuguese, which is a problem, apparently.

Northeast Brazil (Salvador, Recife, Fortaleza) seems most appealing but, seeing that Argentina is decidedly southwest, it doesn't make much sense to go that far out of my way. I've heard good things about Curitiba and Porto Alegre, which are both south of Sao Paulo, and I'd love to spend some time in Uruguay, where I'd be able to practice my Spanish.

Then it's on to Buenos Aires, aka the Paris of the South or, as The New York Times recently dubbed it,"a throbbing hothouse of cool," which might be my favorite phrase of all time. I am trying not to develop specific expectations about any of my travel destinations/experiences but I cannot help but be extraordinarily excited about getting to know Bs. As. I've heard literally only good things and I just finished up a class called "Buenos Aires and New York," in which we watched a few really excellent movies filmed in and about the city. I highly recommend El abrazo partido, a comedy about a third generation Jewish immigrant coming of age in Once, a barrio (neighborhood) of B.A. and Bolivia, about an illegal Bolivian immigrant (oh wait, sorry, a person can't be illegal) who moves to B.A. to support his family back home. Unfortunately for him, he has arrived right in the middle of the Argentine economic crisis.

Speaking of economics, I just found this: a fantastic site with an itemized guide to the cost of living in a selection of major cities around the world. You have to register (for free) but it's worth it. I love/hate the internet.