Week 44 - Rains bring the slow floods

WOAH TWO POSTS IN A ROW!!!

Well, this week was excellent on the Coastal Resource Management front. On Wednesday I went diving in 100 Islands National Park (an area out of Alaminos, about 20 minutes from my town) to do some work underwater. This month is Environment Month (June 2009), so one of Garrett’s counterparts wanted to have an artificial reef finished and also some more giant clams moved from the garden where they are smothering each other. It was raining (of course, it hasn’t stopped raining for 2 weeks straight), which did not help with the visibility in the water or with the cold-heat...as in the temperature outside it relatively warm, but we were shivering in the cold rain. Several weeks ago cement/coral debris blocks were poured for the art reef and then transported out to the island nearest where the reef was to be constructed. Since that time the typhoon hit and most of the blocks were buried in sand and dead coral, so for the first couple of hours we all dug out the blocks and rolled them into the ocean so that we could then use a pole (pushed through a hole in the middle of the blocks) to lift them onto a floating raft of bamboo, then the motor boat pulled the raft burdened to breaking with blocks out to open water and they were pushed in. We did this for 19 blocks, then donned our SCUBA gear and headed down to the bottom to arrange the blocks into a pyramid, which is easier said than done. On the bottom the visibility was less than a meter (3 feet) so we couldn’t tell where the blocks were or where they were going very easily and the monsoon above only served to stir the bottom up more, making the ocean opaque around us. The blocks themselves were also extremely heavy even under water, we had the pole put between two people, but it was still a struggle to get them to the top of the pyramid. It took about 45 minutes, but we got all 19 blocks placed, and I only had minimal scratches and cuts from coral and the blocks themselves, hopefully the artificial reef will thrive!

After that we headed to one of the small islands to have lunch, we were all FREEZING, shivering and wet, it was hard to eat and even more difficult to think about having to get back in the boat and face the wind that came with motion that comes from motoring across the water. There was a bakla at the island who ran the little area where we ate, he was rather smitten with Garrett right off the bat, asking him to spend the night and also enquiring about his “live banana.” Garrett, polite as always, declined grudgingly, which was probably not the best course of action and may lead the man to believe that he is somewhat interested. Soon we left the island and headed to the giant clam garden nearby, we got into SCUBA gear again and headed down to the bottom where the visibility was more like 4 or 5 meters (still not good, but much better). I was blown away by the size of the giant clams, most of them were a direct representation of their name "giant", probably on the higher end of the maximum (they can be up to 440 lbs). We picked up one of the smallest ones we could find, even then I could barely lift it under water and it looked like the runt when compared to all the clams around it. We ended up cleaning the garden, removing items that were lying on top of clams and smothering them, then we separated some of the groups that seemed to be competing for space. The sheer number of clams was staggering, I had never seen so many in one place.

When we came in for the evening they had cooked a pot of crocodile for the group and we hung around for a short time before we headed to dry out at Garrett’s and then travel to Randy’s site for a surprise visit.

At my office I worked more on the report for Fish Catch Monitoring from 2008. I’m almost finished and will be happy if I never have to look at fish catch monitoring data ever again (although I know that I will be looking at it again in about 10 months for 2009 *sigh*).

As for my town post-typhoon, it has now been over 6 weeks and hardly anything has been repaired. Most of the houses that were damaged beyond simple repair have been torn down, and the debris has been moved out of the roads, but it’s mostly still piled up on the side of the street, roofs and second floors still remain open and in disrepair. I’m not sure what is going to happen, the rain has been continuous, and I know that these people are losing items to water damage, but there doesn’t seem to be any sense of urgency to get the houses back in order to weather the storms. I’m afraid that they are just consigned to the fact that they may lose a lot in this rainy season and are just waiting it out until the rains stop before they bother with fixing anything. My ceiling continues to leak, but I have devised a series of levies to keep the water confined to one corner and away from my things, then in the morning I sweep it into a dust pan, dump it in a bucket and then carry the bucket downstairs and outside to empty...it’s become a part of daily life. In addition to this, I went to Alaminos yesterday and noticed that the river has broken bank, all of the houses along the river are houses that had to be torn down after the typhoon, their foundations are completely submerged in the surging water and the houses nearby are slowly being flooded as well. Many of the houses within a kilometer of the river have calf deep water running through them. The water is creeping into town where I live, luckily my house has a cement moat around it to catch water and the actual first floor begins about 4 feet off ground level, the family I live with should be pretty safe of the flooding for now, and I am the safest being on the second floor as long as I can continue to manage the leaking ceiling. I love rain, but I don’t love flooding and typhoons, I will not be sad to see this rainy season go and am happy to only have one more before I leave, but for now making the best of it is the game plan. This includes playing in the water/rain with the kids, making slip n’ slides and rafts out of left over materials that haven’t been hauled away since the typhoon, and trying to decide whether the lack of participation by the parents means that they are relieved to have their kids entertained for a short amount of time or that they think I am a total loon...either way I'm cool with it :).

Pis

Week 43 - ikot ikot

So, this week of work went really fast because it had a holiday in it: Philippine Independence Day was Friday, June 12. I was wondering what they considered as their independence(i.e. whether it was from the Spanish, US, etc.) so I looked it up and this is what I found:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine_Declaration_of_Independence

ends up it's independence from those Spaniards.

During the week my counterparts and I went to a meeting for OPAL (One Pangasinan Alliance of LGU’s), it’s a new organization that brings together 7 municipalities in Pangasinan (the province I live in). OPAL’s goals are to improve water quality/availability for farmers and rural community members, increase eco-tourism for economic development, and to make more job opportunities for people in the municipalities. Right now, 70% of Pangasinan’s lands are used for farming, yet less than 10% of those lands are irrigated. This means that 90% of farmers can only have one harvest season a year, which may also contribute to the fact that the poverty rate in our 7 municipalities is 34%, 20% higher than the national average*. An NGO in Canada has given the alliance a 15 month grant to work on the things listed above, I have 15.5 months left, so I should be here for a lot of those changes (as long as con-ass doesn’t cause us to be evacuated for political reasons! - ).

*these data points are based off the presentation from the Canadian NGO, I did not verify them yet, so they are subject to future change.

Also last week I worked on fish catch monitoring. BFAR (Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources) did a report for Bani a few years ago that took them 6 months to do, my LGU wants me to produce the same report for the 2008 year in a matter of 1 week. I’m overdue to say the least.

Friday there was no work, celebrating freedom from Spain, so me, Garrett, Randy and some other PCV’s headed out for a trip for Garrett’s birthday (Garrett’s 30 now, whew)! We went up north to go caving. The trip was rediculous, we had some ups and downs (broken down transportation, closed bridges causing 5 hour detours, 100 stops, etc.), but we all agree that it was one of, if not the, most memorable trip any of us have ever been on.

Once we were there we moved on to caving and hiking in the area. We opted for the long caving experience in which you entered at one cave and came out at another further down the mountain. It was beautiful! I love caves, and have been in many in Tennessee, but it was a really amazing experience to see how different the rock formations are here, I had never put much thought into the fact that all caves do not look that much alike. In these caves water rises and falls throughout the year depending on the season, the etchings in the rocks from years of water flow and changes were gorgeous. It’s fascinating to see these “photographs” of changes that have been carved into the rock. Inside the cave there was a lot of climbing, descending, slipping, and getting muddy...basically it was the most fun I’ve had in a long time. We also had a top-notch guide, Jollybee (yes, like the food chain here), who jumped from rock to slippery rock and hand hold to unseen hand hold like he could have done it with a blind fold and an arm tied behind his back. The caving took about 4 hours, afterwards we were all useless since we were running on about 3 hours of sleep after a 17 hour drive...basically we ate Korean food, took showers, napped, and played Hearts the rest of the night (woah, watch out, we are too much).

The next night we stayed with Travis, a friend from the batch before mine, and then headed home the next morning. It was a long, but awesome weekend that I think we all needed in a bad way.

Coming up:
June – Taco Beach Party with the volunteers from Dagupan who are leaving for America in August
July – Trip to Dumaguete! Then a VAC meeting at the end of the month.

Sa susunod na lang

Pis

Week 41

So, I "misplaced" my "planner" (a notebook I bought in the nearest town with a "real" store), but found it again and realized that I somehow got skewed on my weeks. Last week was week 41. So consider yourselves warned as to why there will be an apparent 3 week gap in my blogging (apparent in the same sense as the apparent world where, from where we stand, it appears that the sun is circling the Earth where in reality it is the other way around. Just as such, it appears that there are 3 weeks to be missing from my blog, but in reality I just can't read a calendar). Over the weekend I heard from two different people at Trees for the Future, they seem REALLY awesome, I passed their info along to the other environment volunteers here and will hopefully be meeting with them soon!

*disclaimer - excessive use of "quotations" are a recent development as it's been brought to my attention that my perception of "normal" has changed to what is normal here in the Philippines but not in the US, so I "quote" words which may have had a different meaning to me pre-Peace Corps.

Hanggang sa susunod na lang
Pis

Week 38 and 39 – Pista ng Pawikan, a bridge, and (some) electricity

So, week 38 I went to Palawan to help another PCV with a Sea Turtle (pawikan) conservation project at her site near Puerto Princessa. The whole trip was an absolute blast. Saturday morning I was the first to arrive at the airport (by an entire day) so Emily and I went ukay-ukay shopping (think salvation army, but better), purchasing some great t-shirts, skirts, and such (such being a very complicated and fancy harmonica for Emily). Then we went and ate real cheese at a Swiss shop in town. Later that night other PCVs started to arrive, so we hung out at Emily and Jon’s house outside the city.

Day 2 was rest day, Lauren arrived on the ferry from Busuanga (an island north of Palawan) and Beth arrived on her flight from Manila, we did some scarf shopping and Lauren bought a beautiful “Chinese drug lord” jacket that she will take back to the states with her to wear in the Chinatowns of Indiana. Afterwards we met up with a former volunteer from Armenia who lives in Palawan now, some dutch guy, and Jon (Emily’s husband) at a restaurant called Fresh where the night’s activities ended in Lauren and I wearing “Shark pants” and Lauren throwing Emily’s harmonica out of the trike while we were riding down the road back to Emily and Jon’s. In Lauren’s defense, Emily did say that if she didn’t do it then it meant that she didn’t have any balls, and Lauren has balls, so she was obligated to do it.

After getting all caught up on personal things and despite some rain and ride issues, we made it out to Napsan (the remote barangay where the turtle project is taking place). It’s a beautiful trip, 2 hours from the city through the jungles of Palawan. The barangay has no cell service, and we had no electricity in the barangay function area that we were working with (there was a generator that we ran for activities that needed power), there was also no pump for water, any water for showers or going to the restroom had to be pumped and brought over from the barangay captain’s house, so we did a lot of not showering over the course of the 3 days there.

The first day of the project we made posters, banners, and templates for the activities to be present for the kids and adults at the fiesta. There was face painting, a sea turtle poster contest (with the theme “a day in the life of a sea turtle”), mask making, an activities center with facts on sea turtles, and the night was to be ended with a beauty pageant (of course), the search for Miss Pawikan 2009. Everything was done in Tagalog, so there was some translating and checking of spelling to make sure that we were talking about turtle eggs (itlog) instead of rivers (ilog), etc. That night we showed Planet Earth episodes of “Shallow Seas” and “Deep Ocean” and the Lorax (!!!), a Dr. Suess story about the consequences of overuse of the environment. Since most of the households do not have electricity the movies were a special treat and drew a major crowd that was there until late in the night.

The second day we walked down to the ocean to plant some grass along the river as a project of CFARMC. It was fun working with Emily’s counterparts, she has a great office...but it was really muddy and we were without water for showering, so it didn’t help us to look any nicer for the fiesta. The fiesta started at 3 pm, the face painting was the biggest hit, Beth was originally assigned to it alone, but there was a swarm (literally) of kids wanting 4 -10 things painted on them, so I soon joined her and we painted faces, arms, hands, etc. for hours. My specialties were the pawikan (sea turtle), dragon, and butterfly if anyone is interested in getting one of those...After the poster making, a treasure hunt and face painting, we started the 6 pm beauty pageant promptly at 7:30 pm. Emily, Lauren, and I were the sole judges making it an interesting night. The pageant lasted until almost 12 midnight and consisted of ethnic wear, beach wear, recycle wear, talent, and question/answer for the top 5 contestants. There were 11 contestants in total and intermissions between each section filled with local children booty dancing to popular songs here. There were a couple of ethnic intermission numbers that were interesting though...Emily, Lauren and I also got bamboozled into doing an intermission number around 11 pm which consisted of Lauren singing half of a tagalong song and then the three of us stumbling through the song “Bahay Kubo” and resorting to dancing awkwardly on stage. Luckily there were only 4 or 5 city officials there taking pictures/videos so maybe it won’t get around too much....

Overall I think it was a success, Emily was able to do a small survey with registration on the people including information on who is currently or has eaten seas turtle eggs in the barangay. It was also a foot in the door for IEC (education) in the barangay to stimulate future conservation efforts. It was also a load of fun.

Week 39 I headed down to Calatagan where Ryan and Sam are posted. Ryan’s birthday was the 21st so we had a beach party planned for him over the weekend. We rented a little shack on the beach (literally) and a balsa (a floating shack). I had gotten Sam and Anna shark shorts like mine from the ukay-ukay in Palawan so we all spent the first night wearing those around the beach and enjoying each other’s company. On Saturday we got up early and headed out to the balsa to swim/nap, then we cooked some fish on the grill, swam some more, and watched the sunset. Saturday night we all shoved into Sam and Ryan’s cute (but tiny house). Sam, Anna, and I slept on the bed and the boys barely shoved in around on the floor.

Then there was......HARLEM GLOBE TROTTERS!!!...yes, the Harlem Globetrotters came to Manila and we saw them for 105 pesos (about $2 US), it was pretty great entertainment and well worth the pesos. This also gave us an opportunity to say goodbye to some friends of ours that are leaving the Philippines, Adam, Sharifa, Amanda, and Dr. E who were here working with the PIRE project (Adam was a Peace Corps Volunteer as well), are leaving for Bali next week to do sampling there. We stayed with them one last time and got to hang out for a couple of days before they move on to Indonesia.

Now I am back at site and found that the bridge has been finished! If you have forgotten, the bridge to my town was closed about 2 weeks after I got to site, making getting out of town a circus, now the bridge is fixed and therefore there is a PAVED road that leads to my town now. Very exciting, this cuts like an hour off my trip anywhere (the detour took an hour). Also, they have restored electricity at the Municipal Hall in Bani, so I can do work! Also, since my house is right across the “street” from the LGU, we have electricity too. It extends to the two main buildings in town (the police station and the Municipal Hall) and houses that are adjacent to those two buildings, so I am really lucky to be included. My office mates are concerned that now there will be no incentive to get electricity restored to other parts of Bani, I hope they are wrong, I’ve also been letting them come to my room to charge things like cell phones, etc. I’m hoping it won’t last much longer for them either.

Tomorrow I have water quality testing in which I am going to start using the rural testing kits for Ecoli that I was given as a pilot program at my site. I also contacted an NGO called Trees for the Future who claim to give free training and resources to PCVs working on agroforestry projects, I'm hoping I can get some good stuff from them in reference to the upland watershed forest area in Bani.

Coming up I have a 10K in Manila with May Lynn and then my advanced SCUBA certification next month!

Pis (peace)

Week 37 cont. - Man Hunt

I forgot to regale the story of the manhunt that Garrett and I planned and nearly executed on the day after the typhoon for our good friend Randy “Ray-ray” Johnson (pictured above with me on a jeepney). The day after the typhoon, I got up after falling asleep on some boxes in a part of the upstairs that was only slightly flooded, and went to find my phone (I was sure that Peace Corps would be looking for us to make sure we were ok). I found it in-tact but without cell service. I went on a mission outside to find somewhere that I could contact them, I had heard stories of volunteers who failed to communicate their state of being, causing PC to have to send someone out to look for them and I did not want to be that volunteer in future tales. After wandering for about an hour, I found a broken cement fence where, if I stood on it and held the phone in the air a bit, I could just get a bar of signal. I texted Garrett (my friend and warden) and my regional manager, and Randy (my close friend and located next to me) to let the first two know I was ok, and to get Randy’s status (and the status of Johnny Rocket, his dog). I heard back from Garrett and my Regional Manager, hung out for a little bit and then decided to head back in to start surveying the damage. I went back out later and still had not heard from Randy. I texted Garrett who had not heard from him either. Garrett and I decided that the next best option was a man hunt.

Garrett had talked to our safety and security officer who had tried alternative contacts in Randy’s town, but had not gotten through, so he checked with our country director and cleared our plans. Now there is only one road which runs from Garrett’s town to mine and then on to Randy’s, this was blocked at various points and ALL transportation had been shut down. Garrett and I immediately start planning our Bear Gryll’s Man-vs.-Wild style man hunt attack on Randy’s town where we would find him buried (safely) somewhere, or stuck in a tree, or in the middle of a raging flooded river and save him from certain peril. Garrett went about hiring a guy with a sidecar on his motorcycle to carry him as close to my town as possible, from which we would walk until the road cleared towards Randy’s town (maybe miles, we weren’t sure), where we would hire another guy with a sidecar to take us as close to Randy’s outlying barangay as possible. From there we would make our way to Randy’s house and start looking for clues as to his where-a-bouts.

It was almost noon and we still had not heard from Randy or any of the contacts (such as the police in his town). I had packed the essentials: my first aid kit (just in case we needed to perform minor surgery), tons of water (in case we were on the hunt for days), crackers (see last reason), paper and a pen (to leave notes as to our where-a-bouts if we had to blaze a trail), my headlamp, dive knife, and money. Garrett let me know that he had hopped on the sidecar and was on his way when my phone beeps...message from Randy...”Hey guys, what’s up?” – man hunt off, booo.

Week 37 - Typhoon Emong

So, this week my town was devastated by Typhoon Emong. Friday at work, around lunch we got the call that we were at signal 3 (not good) and were sent home. They told me that Bani has never really been that affected by the typhoons so I was completely unprepared for the events that followed.

It had been raining for 3 days straight up to this point, but around 1 pm the wind and the rains started picking up visibly, by 3 pm the power and cell service had been knocked out and trees were beginning to drop. By 4 the sky was dark and houses were losing their roofs, walls, and unsecured items. By 7 the storm had reached full swing and my room on the second floor was flooded because we lost a portion of our roof. Our house is one of the only concrete houses in town, so those who had lost their homes or were just afraid of the imminent loss were gathering in our downstairs, huddled together with candles, praying for family members who didn’t make it out of the outlying barangays before the storm hit. This went on until around 11 pm, it was terrifying, there was 4 or 5 inches of water on both floors of our house, so I was standing in filthy stagnant water most of the night and now I am paying for it (i.e. super weird rash on my legs).

Friday morning we all got up to survey the damage, most of the houses around me had lost their roofs, walls, second stories, or had been knocked down all together. Our only road through town was blocked in both directions, our pump to the well had been blown out, and all the power lines were lying on the ground under pieces of houses and trees. At first no one really did anything, everyone just sat outside, chatted with each other and kind of stared around. Saturday they started fixing roofs and we started dragging things out of the roads and picking up debri. Sunday the roads out of town were clear enough for transportation to start again. By then my rash was in full swing, I had ascertained that we are expected not to have power for at least a month, and my phone was lost to the typhoon, so I headed to Manila to go to the PC doctor, get a new phone, and get purification tablets to make well water drinkable and other necessities for me and Randy (we live in adjacent towns and his was struck just as badly). Doc Ferdie did a blood test on me and my WBC (white blood cells, not world baseball classic – Craig) were really low so I’m going to be in Manila until tomorrow having that checked out.

At this point it’s just all truly overwhelming, Randy’s site has a death toll of 33 with more still missing, in my site all the roads to the outer barangays are still blocked so we can’t even speculate as to how many were lost.

I’m not sure how this will affect my current projects, but it’s an opening for new things like water and sanitation since potable water is going to be a scarce resource...also maybe natural disaster preparedness since we were caught unprepared and communication is a big issue even now, 5 days later. I can still go through with my upland watershed management planning since reforestation is bound to be an issue (seeing as the forest area is located right off the coast on the side that the typhoon came from). I’m just looking at it as an opportunity to regroup and focus on the most important projects rather than all the grandiose plans that I have been trying to orchestrate the last few months. It will be a good thing in the long run, I’m sure of it.

I still have the Sea Turtle project in a week, then next month I’m thinking about heading to Duma to get my advanced SCUBA certification, so I won’t be completely without internet and such in the coming weeks.

Sa susunod na lang,
Pis (Peace)

Weeks 33 - 36

So, I’ve been really really busy since March so not only am I behind on writing here, but I also don’t have enough time (or patience  ) to write about all that has gone down. I will give you the abridged version though.

I’ll start it off with CRM work-wise stuff for the month. Before my mom got here at the end of March we did another water quality testing as well as another mangrove assessment on the riverine mangroves. While at PDM my counterpart and I planned our large project for the coming months for which we will be requesting funds from grants such as VEG (volunteers for environmental governance), PCPP (a peace corps program where they post your project online and your friends, family, and anyone else at home can contribute to the funds online), and also other grants from USAID or private funders. Our project is on the upland watershed area in Bani. We have 161 hectares (down from 185 due to illegal logging) of forest (think bamboo, ipil-ipil, nepa, and other tropical species). It’s a really gorgeous area and is home to wildcats, monkeys, pythons, and other interesting species and also the aquifers underneath it are the only source of potable water in Bani. The area currently has no management plan, any signage, and no IEC has been done to teach the people in the area the importance of preserving the forest. The forest is really far from town so it’s been pushed off to the side for a long time, but the water production from the aquifers is declining rapidly and people’s homes (tin huts) are being washed away by mudslides from the trees that have been cut uphill from those homes.

I think it will be a good project, we are starting with IEC in the 8 barangays around the forest area, including working in the schools and taking the kids to the area to show them the wildlife. We are also going to put up signage and develop a management plan for the area so that there are laws on illegal logging to enforce. We’re going to do plantings in the areas of illegal logging with the community and maybe start some organic farming or something as a livelihood project for those who might be illegally logging right now for sustenance. It will be really difficult and will take many months, but I'm up for the challenge!

On to the schedule of the last month!

End of March – Mom came to visit! We had a great time, I’m not sure how much she liked my site, haha, I think that it was a little too small and quiet (aka boring) for her taste. The rest of the trip was awesome, we went to Bicol and swam with the Whale Sharks (Butanding), we saw about 10 whale sharks and chased them around in our snorkels and fins until they would dive too deep to see. It was amazing, they were 4-10 meters long (they get up to 12 meters, but the largest we swam with was 10 or about 32 feet). They were so close that I was able to touch them, we could also free dive down beside them and swim below them. Crazy.

After that we went to the Bohol Bee Farm in Bohol. There we ate amazing organic food, went on a dolphin watching trip (where we also had the day to explore a tiny island), went to the chocolate hills, a butterfly conservancy, and to see the tarsiers (the world’s tiniest primate – not a monkey). It was a great trip and I’m so glad I got to see my mom!

April – We had trainings upon trainings in Cebu City (a city on the island of Cebu in the visayas), we had language camp, In service training, and PDM (along with our counterparts, we project planned and this made us eligible to apply for grants). We had a GREAT 10 days hanging out with each other, a group of my closest friends here went diving, it was the best dives I have been on here in the Philippines. I did get in trouble though, we were told to stay at around 20 meters (66 feet), but it was so clear and I was chasing some huge Bat Fish and accidentally got down to 35 meters (120 feet)...oops...but it was gorgeous and very serine being down there all by myself. Sam’s birthday was while we were in Cebu so we sang videoke and had great Thai food, it was wonderful.

We made plans for next year as well, several of us are going to dive Tubbataha Reef, it’s in the middle of the Sulu Sea south of Palawan, there is no land, only miles and miles of beautiful shallow reefs. You live on a boat for 5 days and can dive as many times as you want. A group of PCV’s went this year and their videos were amazing, they saw tons of sharks on every dive, manta rays, pawikan (sea turtles), gorgeous corals, and fish (clearly). We are going next year on Holy Week and I CAN’T WAIT, but I will.

At the end of the PDM I made a trip to the Camotes Islands, a remote tiny group of islands above Cebu, and went diving there as well on the way back to Manila for my second Volunteer Advisory Committee meeting.

The VAC meeting went well, again, and afterwards out Country Director invited those of us on VAC to her house for dinner, it was amazing Indian food and was really nice to hang out with her.

After the VAC meeting I transferred over to Quezon City to work on the PIRE project at the UPMSI (University of the Philippines Marine Science Institute). Dr Kent Carpenter from Old Dominion University in the states is working on a project here using the DNA sequencing of specific reef fish to prove the diversity of the Philippines’ marine life. A few of us PCV’s were invited to work in the lab on the project, sequencing DNA from fish that we collected from the damsel fish Acanthachromis polyacanthus. It was a really great week, we did extractions, PCR (polymerase chain reaction), and ran our results on gels to see what DNA amplified. I LOVE THE LAB! Sometimes I forget, it was really nice to remember how much I like it.

That brings us to the present, this weekend I am helping my two friends, Anna and Sam work on the curriculum for a climate change project we are working on called 350. Then I am headed back to site for about 2 weeks before I head to Palawan for a Sea Turtle Conservation project. Life is busy and really picking up, I don’t know how I will get it all done in the measly year and a half that I have left. I can always extend though!!
Until next week...
Peace