I am telling you my life revolves around unknowing uncaring unfeeling shrimp.
This is ridiculousness. Let me just share my sleep schedule from the last couple of days. On the 18th I woke up at about 11:00am and waited around all day for my shrimp to be done. They finished at 11:00pm. I was in the lab until 3:30. Then I took a shower. By that time it was 4:15 in the morning. Since breakfast was at 6:00 and I didn’t want to go to bed for two hours I decided I would just stay up. On eof the benefits of pulling and all-nighter was getting to see the sun rise. It was absolutely gorgeous. As I walked to breakfast, I stopped along the big suspension bridge that crosses the river. The fog handing over the river and enveloping the trees was breathtaking. Ok. I know that sounds like a line out of a tourist book, but it really was incredible. As I was standing there, I saw some movement in a nearby tree. It was a group of Toucans stopping to rest. I could see them pretty well from where I was one the bridge. I would have liked to have had binoculars, but it was impressive nonetheless. There must have been about 4 or 5 of them just sitting there. The whole scene was pretty moving.
Anywho, after that I headed off to breakfast until 6:30 when I returned to the cabin and slept until 12:30. I got up for lunch and was up until about 11:00 pm. I then decided to get some shut eye before I had to go check my shrimp at 3:00am. Easier said than done. I just couldn’t seem to fall asleep. Then once I did, I only stayed asleep for about an hour before waking up with a terrible throat ache. Luckily I had some fanta by my bed. After drinking about ½ the bottle I was ready to go back to bed until 2am when my alarm woke me up. Now, the alarm was supposed to be set for a little before 3:00 but it was set for a little before 2. I have no idea how that happened. My iPod (aka my alarm clock) was still set for Cleveland time, so it is two hours ahead. I can usually handle the subtraction, but I guess I wasn’t “firing on all cylinders” when I set it at 11. Anyway, it was only after I had walked through the jungle that I realized that it was 2am and I still had an hour left before my shrimp were ready. I decided to get some more shut-eye, so I curled up on two roll-ey chairs and tried to go to sleep. Funny side story, on the way there, I scared something in the woods next to the path. When it scurried away I was so frightened by the noise I started sprinting to the building. The noise was too loud to be a snake, too fast to be a peckerie (the disgusting smelly pig-like creatures that wander everywhere here), too big to be an iguana. Whatever it was though, I was quite rattled up, which made falling back asleep much more difficult.
When I woke up at 3 I counted shrimp until about 4:30 when I put the new batch of extracts into the dryer. Because I had the hotplate, I thought that it should only take about an hour for the samples to dry. So I went back to sleep on the chairs until 5:30. Then when I got up to check on the samples they still weren’t completely dry. I went back to sleep for 20 minutes and when I woke up they were ready. I put the shrimp in the wells and went off to breakfast at about 6:30. Then I came back to the room and simply haven’t been able to fall asleep. Strange, to say the least. Hopefully I’ll be able to go to bed at a descent hour tonight so that I can wake up bright and early at 6:00 tomorrow and catch come breakfast before counting the shrimp.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Day Twently Eight - July 18th 2010
Last night I woke up at about 2am because I thought I felt something on my chest. I grabbed it and I found it was an ant that had gotten under my shirt and was biting me. I was very angry. I squished it and put the body on top of my computer so I could take a picture of it in the morning. Then I realized that the carcass would attract other bugs, so I chucked its body across the room. It took me 30 minutes to fall back asleep because I kept imagining that there were more bugs on me. It was quite creepy to think that there were bugs that got under the covers under my clothes and crawled all over me while I slept. The only reason that I found that the ant was on me was because it bit me. It would have stayed on me all night and I wouldn’t have noticed. This morning when I woke up I thought that maybe I just dreamed the whole thing. But then I found one of its legs on top of my computer where I originally put the body. 12 hours later I still have a mark where it bit me. Quite creepy indeed.
Day Twenty Seven - July 17th 2010
Nothing much happened… I got stood up by the guy who was supposed to into the field with me. Other than that, nothing much. Rice and beans for dinner and lunch. Yum Yum.
Day Twenty Six - July 16th 2010
I got up early (at around 6:00) and went to count my shrimp. I did that and then I'm not sure what happened. The days are just all starting to blur together and I can’t really differentiate from day to day. I'm getting about ready to go home. Its time.
Anyway on my way back from lunch a lady from reception pulled me aside and said that there had been some complaints from the people below and next to us. They said that the three of us in our room came in late at night and slammed doors. Apparently we also walk up the stairs loudly. I apologized if it was me and said I would relay the message to my roommates.
Ok. So the cabin has walls made of paper thin plaster and the top of each wall is just screens. Of course you can hear everything that happens. As far as walking up the stairs go, they are made of wood and are completely hollow. Of course you can head people walking up them! It’s not like we are intentionally clomping up them, but they do make some noise… They also said that we lock the bathroom door too loudly. The bolt a piece of metal that one must slide through a metal hole on the door frame. There is going to be some noise – its metal on metal… It gets sucks and you have to wiggle it to get out. Plus, the people next door (who complained) have a 1 year old child who will scream for a ½ an hour during the middle of the night. And they are yelling at us for closing the doors…? I mean I'm sorry that my tests end at 2 in the morning, but what do you want me to do? Sleep at the lab?
Anyway, I was trying to be quieter and I would hold all of the doors so that they didn’t slam, etc. So I got back late from the lab and I was walking up the steps as quietly as possible trying not to step on any of the beetles that were crawling all over them and a bat flew into my face. Yes a bat. In the stairwell. Into my face. So I screamed. It’s a natural reflex when something flies into your face. And then I fell down the stairs. Talk about being light-footed… it was really bad.
Anyway on my way back from lunch a lady from reception pulled me aside and said that there had been some complaints from the people below and next to us. They said that the three of us in our room came in late at night and slammed doors. Apparently we also walk up the stairs loudly. I apologized if it was me and said I would relay the message to my roommates.
Ok. So the cabin has walls made of paper thin plaster and the top of each wall is just screens. Of course you can hear everything that happens. As far as walking up the stairs go, they are made of wood and are completely hollow. Of course you can head people walking up them! It’s not like we are intentionally clomping up them, but they do make some noise… They also said that we lock the bathroom door too loudly. The bolt a piece of metal that one must slide through a metal hole on the door frame. There is going to be some noise – its metal on metal… It gets sucks and you have to wiggle it to get out. Plus, the people next door (who complained) have a 1 year old child who will scream for a ½ an hour during the middle of the night. And they are yelling at us for closing the doors…? I mean I'm sorry that my tests end at 2 in the morning, but what do you want me to do? Sleep at the lab?
Anyway, I was trying to be quieter and I would hold all of the doors so that they didn’t slam, etc. So I got back late from the lab and I was walking up the steps as quietly as possible trying not to step on any of the beetles that were crawling all over them and a bat flew into my face. Yes a bat. In the stairwell. Into my face. So I screamed. It’s a natural reflex when something flies into your face. And then I fell down the stairs. Talk about being light-footed… it was really bad.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Day Twenty Five - July 15th 2010
At 6:00 it was still raining, but I decided that I really needed to get the shrimp into the wells so I put on rainboots and splashed my way through puddles to get to the lab. Sure enough the samples were dry. In the shrimp went and shortly later, off I went to breakfast. After breakfast, I wasn’t quite tired enough to go back to sleep. So I took a shower and did some more paper work. (there is a awful lot of recording and rerecording that goes on. It’s quite silly if you ask me). Anyway, I’ve just been doing that (and, of course a bit of relaxing as well :) all day. It’s been quite nice. Although I'm sure that I will sleep well tonight, after sleeping for three 2 hour intervals. On the upside though, I'm feeling much better and my throat doesn’t hurt nearly as much. Exciting stuff.
Day Twenty Four - July 14th 2010
Day14
Hmmmm. What happened yesterday? Well, I woke up feeling quite sick. My throat hurt terribly, almost as if it were dry. Which is quite impossible, as the humidity here is, o well, I would say about 135%. Anyway I was miserable all day long and couldn’t really swallow. Luckily my tests were in the nighttime so I was able to stay in bed all day and do work from there. I actually got a lot done. I input my data into the program, recorded my results, made a powerpoint, went through e-mail, and napped quite frequently. Like I said, good day. (Other than the whole being-so-sick-I-didn’t-want-to-move bit).
My tests were done at 3:45 and 4:00. I counted my shrimp, got my totals, cleaned the wells, and got the new extract in by 6:30. I was quite impressed with myself. Anyway, 6 hours from 6 put my samples as being dry by 12:00 at night. It was quite unfortunate. So I had to wait up until then. When I trekked out the lab at 12 though the samples STILL weren’t dry. That made me very angry. So I decided to come back in two hours. So I waited up until 2:00am. And I went to check again. Still not dry. My alarm went off at 4:00am but I could hear it pouring rain outside my window and thought to myself “there is no way in hell I'm getting out of bed to get totally soaked”. So I stayed in bed until 6:00.
Hmmmm. What happened yesterday? Well, I woke up feeling quite sick. My throat hurt terribly, almost as if it were dry. Which is quite impossible, as the humidity here is, o well, I would say about 135%. Anyway I was miserable all day long and couldn’t really swallow. Luckily my tests were in the nighttime so I was able to stay in bed all day and do work from there. I actually got a lot done. I input my data into the program, recorded my results, made a powerpoint, went through e-mail, and napped quite frequently. Like I said, good day. (Other than the whole being-so-sick-I-didn’t-want-to-move bit).
My tests were done at 3:45 and 4:00. I counted my shrimp, got my totals, cleaned the wells, and got the new extract in by 6:30. I was quite impressed with myself. Anyway, 6 hours from 6 put my samples as being dry by 12:00 at night. It was quite unfortunate. So I had to wait up until then. When I trekked out the lab at 12 though the samples STILL weren’t dry. That made me very angry. So I decided to come back in two hours. So I waited up until 2:00am. And I went to check again. Still not dry. My alarm went off at 4:00am but I could hear it pouring rain outside my window and thought to myself “there is no way in hell I'm getting out of bed to get totally soaked”. So I stayed in bed until 6:00.
Day Twenty Three Part B
Day 13
After dinner, two other REU (research experience for under-grads) and I went to the swamp. We didn’t really plan it, but, well, it’s a long story.
So we were all walking back from dinner because we agreed that none of us liked walking back from dinner in the dark. When we got to the suspension bridge, I stopped for a moment and looked up at the stars. I grabbed their arms and told them to just look up. With all the light pollution by my house, I rarely see so many stars. It wasn’t even a super clear night, but to me it was incredible. So we spent about 20 minutes on the bridge laughing and looking for constellations. When none of us could find the big or little dipper we resorted to making up our own constellations. I saw a cat. I named it kitty. Dennis (one of the other people there) thought it should be called tiger while Jimena was on my side and liked kitty. Anyway after standing on the bridge for almost a half an hour, the topic of bioluminescent bacteria came up. (yes, I know. well what else are three self-classified nerds going to talk about?) Anywho, there had been some students claiming they had seen some in the woods nearby. (The bioluminescence can only be seen in the complete dark, with all flashlights turned off. How they “stumbled” upon some I'm not so sure of… I know the last thing that I would want is my flashlight turned off where bursting into the cafeteria saying you found a venomous snake doesn’t turn heads.) We decided that we wanted to go to the swamp and look for some. There is a marshey-esque body of water close to the river station. I agreed to come on the condition that they would walk me back to the lab afterwards. (There was no way I was doing that river station walk by myself again if I could avoid it.) So off we headed into the “bosque” to the “cantaranas”. We didn’t get very far. They suggested that I put on some closed toed shoes (I was wearing my flip-flops and that is a “no-no” when traversing the “bosque”. So I stopped in the cabin and changed into my Toms (Toms, for those of you who don’t know, are canvas shoes that are made by a company who donates one pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair they sell. One for one.) Anywho, they aren’t really mud-wear. Then we stopped at the Lab so the others could get their boots. I decided that I would run back to the cabin because, although my Toms have been “well loved” I didn’t want them covered in mud. Anyway I ran really fast because I thought that I was holding them up, but when I got back to the lab Jimena still wasn’t’ ready. It was nice not to be the last one back. Jimena is from here in Costa Rica and all of the Ticos (the Costa Ricans) are on “Tico-Time”. It makes me look like an early bird. I love it.
Anyway then we really headed off to the “cantaranas”. The word cantaranas in Spanish means swamp, but its origins are actually quite cute. It took me a while to make the connection, but now that I have I know that I won’t forget this word. Canta comes from the verb cantar which means to sing. Ranas is the Spanish word for frogs. Put those two together and you get the place where frogs sing. I thought it was quite lovely really. Anyway, neither my nor Jimena’s flashlight was really strong compared to the one that Dennis had, so we made him shine his beam was in front of us and then we got the stuff close by our feet. Originally it was Jimena then Dennis then me. But I kept getting freaked out by being at the back and so I made Dennis switch spots with me. After about 10 or 15 minutes of walking we arrived at the boardwalk that goes through the swamp. But it was filled with tourists. Which, inevitably meant that all of the cool frogs were long-gone. So we passed them up and kept walking. We stopped a couple of times looking for the bioluminescent bacteria but they were nowhere to be found. Right before we turned around to head home we turned off our flashlights one more time (by this time we already had the rule in place that once the flashlights were turned off no one was allowed to move lest I get confused and think them a snake). So we were all standing really still and suddenly Jimena screams LOOK LOOK LOOK scaring the rest of us quite badly. Anyway she had found some. We isolated where it was coming from and picked up a stick that was covered in it. It was SO cool. I had done transformations with it before in bio class, so I knew it existed, but to see it out in the forest on a decomposing log was just too cool. I wonder how the indigenous people explained that! Imagine seeing something glowing in the dark! How amazing.
Anyway on our way back we stopped at the cantaranas again. Unfortunately the tourists were still there but we made our way to an empty part of the bridge and looked for frogs. Now, saying we “looked” for frogs is completely misleading. There were so many there was really no looking involved. They were everywhere! We saw some really cool frogs though. The tourists were actually helpful. Jimena can speak French as well as Spanish and English and so she cozied up to the French tour guide and got him to show us two snakes. These were just babies and not poisonous, but it was still really neat. Then on our way out we saw an alligator. Well, no, it was technically a caiman. Dennis who lived in Florida was very quick to correct me of this grave mistake. It was not an alligator. It was a caiman. In fact I was informed that caiman are more closely related to crocodiles if you’re going to get picky. Apparently we were going to get picky. It was probably only about 5 feet long, but it was still quite cool. Then we walked back to the lab and I headed off to my cabina. It was quite a fun night.
After dinner, two other REU (research experience for under-grads) and I went to the swamp. We didn’t really plan it, but, well, it’s a long story.
So we were all walking back from dinner because we agreed that none of us liked walking back from dinner in the dark. When we got to the suspension bridge, I stopped for a moment and looked up at the stars. I grabbed their arms and told them to just look up. With all the light pollution by my house, I rarely see so many stars. It wasn’t even a super clear night, but to me it was incredible. So we spent about 20 minutes on the bridge laughing and looking for constellations. When none of us could find the big or little dipper we resorted to making up our own constellations. I saw a cat. I named it kitty. Dennis (one of the other people there) thought it should be called tiger while Jimena was on my side and liked kitty. Anyway after standing on the bridge for almost a half an hour, the topic of bioluminescent bacteria came up. (yes, I know. well what else are three self-classified nerds going to talk about?) Anywho, there had been some students claiming they had seen some in the woods nearby. (The bioluminescence can only be seen in the complete dark, with all flashlights turned off. How they “stumbled” upon some I'm not so sure of… I know the last thing that I would want is my flashlight turned off where bursting into the cafeteria saying you found a venomous snake doesn’t turn heads.) We decided that we wanted to go to the swamp and look for some. There is a marshey-esque body of water close to the river station. I agreed to come on the condition that they would walk me back to the lab afterwards. (There was no way I was doing that river station walk by myself again if I could avoid it.) So off we headed into the “bosque” to the “cantaranas”. We didn’t get very far. They suggested that I put on some closed toed shoes (I was wearing my flip-flops and that is a “no-no” when traversing the “bosque”. So I stopped in the cabin and changed into my Toms (Toms, for those of you who don’t know, are canvas shoes that are made by a company who donates one pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair they sell. One for one.) Anywho, they aren’t really mud-wear. Then we stopped at the Lab so the others could get their boots. I decided that I would run back to the cabin because, although my Toms have been “well loved” I didn’t want them covered in mud. Anyway I ran really fast because I thought that I was holding them up, but when I got back to the lab Jimena still wasn’t’ ready. It was nice not to be the last one back. Jimena is from here in Costa Rica and all of the Ticos (the Costa Ricans) are on “Tico-Time”. It makes me look like an early bird. I love it.
Anyway then we really headed off to the “cantaranas”. The word cantaranas in Spanish means swamp, but its origins are actually quite cute. It took me a while to make the connection, but now that I have I know that I won’t forget this word. Canta comes from the verb cantar which means to sing. Ranas is the Spanish word for frogs. Put those two together and you get the place where frogs sing. I thought it was quite lovely really. Anyway, neither my nor Jimena’s flashlight was really strong compared to the one that Dennis had, so we made him shine his beam was in front of us and then we got the stuff close by our feet. Originally it was Jimena then Dennis then me. But I kept getting freaked out by being at the back and so I made Dennis switch spots with me. After about 10 or 15 minutes of walking we arrived at the boardwalk that goes through the swamp. But it was filled with tourists. Which, inevitably meant that all of the cool frogs were long-gone. So we passed them up and kept walking. We stopped a couple of times looking for the bioluminescent bacteria but they were nowhere to be found. Right before we turned around to head home we turned off our flashlights one more time (by this time we already had the rule in place that once the flashlights were turned off no one was allowed to move lest I get confused and think them a snake). So we were all standing really still and suddenly Jimena screams LOOK LOOK LOOK scaring the rest of us quite badly. Anyway she had found some. We isolated where it was coming from and picked up a stick that was covered in it. It was SO cool. I had done transformations with it before in bio class, so I knew it existed, but to see it out in the forest on a decomposing log was just too cool. I wonder how the indigenous people explained that! Imagine seeing something glowing in the dark! How amazing.
Anyway on our way back we stopped at the cantaranas again. Unfortunately the tourists were still there but we made our way to an empty part of the bridge and looked for frogs. Now, saying we “looked” for frogs is completely misleading. There were so many there was really no looking involved. They were everywhere! We saw some really cool frogs though. The tourists were actually helpful. Jimena can speak French as well as Spanish and English and so she cozied up to the French tour guide and got him to show us two snakes. These were just babies and not poisonous, but it was still really neat. Then on our way out we saw an alligator. Well, no, it was technically a caiman. Dennis who lived in Florida was very quick to correct me of this grave mistake. It was not an alligator. It was a caiman. In fact I was informed that caiman are more closely related to crocodiles if you’re going to get picky. Apparently we were going to get picky. It was probably only about 5 feet long, but it was still quite cool. Then we walked back to the lab and I headed off to my cabina. It was quite a fun night.
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