Back in cold foggy Berkeley!

Well, what a whorlwind vacation. I will give a brief summary of the recent adventures until such time that I have more pictures from people and more energies.


With the parents I went to Rangiroa, where I scuba dived with dolphins and sea turtles and millions of fish. I was pretty amazing and visually overwhelming. We swam with dozens of tiny black tip reef sharks, and watched several amazing sunsets. They saw the green flash of a sunset over the ocean. Then we spent a few days in Tahiti Iti and drove around the island a bit. Lots of good pictures that dad took, especially of waterfalls and waves. We found a hobbiton in the middle of Tahiti Iti, full of pasturelands of grazing milk cows. So weird! Then a few days near Papeete, which involved a good bit of shopping for souvenirs, eating good food, and seeing other thrills of Tahiti, like grottos you can swim in, and the Paul Gaugin museum, as well as the hotel pool and 'beach'. Tahiti ain't got nothing on Mo'orea!

All in all, a great vacation, but I am exhausted from traveling (got back yesterday) and super excited to go to Seattle for a visit with my well missed man! All the students were pretty upset about the cool weather here, and it is looking to be a good week and a bit of work work work! They still have the final presentations and papers to hand in, and then I have a whole mess of grading to work through. Bleh. So not as much fun as snorkeling!!!!!!!!

I miss Mo'orea already!

Farewell Mo'orea!

Well, today is the last day on the island. I have been neglectful of this blog because my last few weeks/days have been so packed with adventure!

Yesterday we made an attempt to climb Moa Puta. My camera is still MIA so I will have to post some retroactive blog posts with the amazing pictures. It started to rain when we were partway up, so alas, me and 5 students didn't get to summit and see the hole in the mountain. There is a hole in this mountain, did I mention? The legend is something along the lines of a jealous warrior throwing a spear from Tahiti to Raiatea to stab his wife-stealing enemy in the heart, which formed the hole in Moa Puta. Eight of my students made it up, but then it started pouring and I got pretty worried that someone was going to die (and so apparently were the other instructors worried, oops), but then I saw them all sliding down mudslides on their butts and laughing their heads off and it was all good. We were SOOOO muddy. It was pretty fun!

We had a delicious last dinner, and it was very sad. Today is the last day on the island and I have to pack, swim in the pool at my parent's hotel, drive around the island one last time, and then we're going to see the Samoan circus tonight. That should be fun. Hopefully I can also see the sunset from somewhere on the west side of the island, since we've never gotten a good chance to see it.

It's been an amazing time here, but I'm glad because now the vacation starts! I am sure you all thought I was on vacation already, but no! The real vacation starts tomorrow with first a trip to Rangiroa, where I hope to do some awesome scuba diving. Then to Tahiti Iti for some quiet beach time. Then over to the the sofitel in Papeete to finish up and hopefully enjoy some of the weekend life of the city. I am excited for the food carts! My parents are enjoying themselves a lot, but I think they are seeing what I like to do more than what they like to do. What I like is moving around, seeing lots of things and not spending tons of money. They like to sit and read. Which is a bit boring. :P

Anyways, internet will be patchy for the next bit, but when I am back in Berkeley I will post up some amazing vacation pictures!!!!

Rotui!

Last friday, we climbed Rotui, the 2nd tallest peak on Mo'orea. It was so beautiful!

We started the day bright and early at around 6 am. The hike is really quite marvelous because you are on a ridge line the entire time, and have views of the whole island the entire way up. We saw the sun coming up over Mo'orea, so right from the beginning it was very beautiful. The trail is a little bit scary looking as you can tell. Very narrow, and with steep cliffs on either side. Sometimes the trail isn't real ground, but just root masses that you're stepping on. I mean..... it's totally safe mom!

 

Here is the only picture I have of Sierra, Gwen and Katie climbing the mountain. They were our speedster group who went a bit faster than me and my comrades.

Here I am looking out at Oponohu Bay. Isn't that an incredible view? The weather was perfect for us, and stayed nice and without rain the whole day.

We did end up walking in cloud a bit. It was so beautiful the way the clouds would swoop up one side of the mountain and it would be clear on the other side.

Up up and up! Altogether it took us about 4 hours to get the top, and a bit longer to get down, because it sure is steep! There are some places where you need to use ropes to climb because it is too horizontal and there aren't enough roots and rocks to hold onto.

The great view on either side let us see both bays at the same time. We could even see our house from the trail!  There it is, our Gump Field Station. My house is the last green roof on the left, a little beachside bungalow that I have been sharing with the other GSIs. You can see the student dorm next to us, and the fare potee (gathering hours) next to the beach.

Blue skies, beautiful mountains, coral reef, what more could you ask for!?

 Hoorah, the summit! There were about 7 false peaks before the real summit, be we made it to the top after some treacherous climbing. There is a 360 view, and you can see every coastline in Mo'orea! Such an incredible peak to be on. Probably one of the best hikes I've yet done.

I had a delicious mango for lunch. And then we had a little photoshoot.

 The way down was almost more interesting than the way up. Scrambling down led to much dirt on our butts, and a few scary moments. We had to downclimb a few parts, and Jenny almost slipped off at one point. I mean....it's totally safe mom!

Because there are cliffs on either side of the trail, it leads to some breathtaking photos that look like you're floating in the middle of nowhere. Look at those cliffs!

 The reef is especially beautiful up there. Thousands of blues and greens and turquoises.

A lot of the trail is bushwacking over stupid Diacronopteris ferns, which are actually quite unpleasant when they are scraping your shins by the thousands. I did not listen to James' advice about wearing pants (well, and I also forgot my field pant zip-off bottoms, so I don't exactly HAVE pants here), but Jenny had an ingenious solution of cutting socks as leg protectors. I didn't. Oh well!

All in all, the Rotui hike made for another great day in Moorea!!! This is what paradise looks like!

A long overdue update!

Well, I have been much occupied with employment these last weeks, mostly in writing the Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant. This is the only grant through the NSF that I can apply for as a principal invesetigator, so it's kind of a big deal. It's only for 9k, because the University takes 6k in overhead, which is really quite ridiculous when you think about it; stealing from poor grad students now! Oh well, I have looked so much at the damn thing, that I don't want to think about it again for a while (studying the microbes that live inside of ant bodies inside of ant nests).

Aside from my grant, what have I been up to?

Well, we had a great halloween party, at which my camera got stolen, so alas this will be a photoless blog post. I am tracking down pictures from other people so that I can have at least some record of the past couple of weeks. I dressed up as the hinano girl, which I think was a pretty cute costume. Overall there was a lot of dancing and merriment. I really enjoyed everyone's costumes; many science themed. Alex dressed as the little kittens the students adopted for a few days and which I made them give away. Roxanne else came as a 'dolphin holding a bottle of rum' from that Mo'orea song that country guy sang at our Tahitian feast back in the day. Sierra was a scientist, and went around flagging everyone. Jenny was 'the black box of statistics' of which all our students are afeared. There was much cheering when she took the box off.

After Halloween, the two big events have been a trip to Tahiti, and a trip to Tetiaroa. These will have to have their own blog posts, because the pictures are necessary to understand the awesomeness (swimming under a beautiful jungle waterfall, free diving off a 50 foot coral wall etc).

I have been doing a lot of advising of students. Everyone's projects are coming along so well, and I'm so proud of all my larval scientists who are metamorphosing before my eyes into real scientists! I love when I tell them a shortcut and they tell me that it isn't cool to take shortcuts like that because it wouldn't be controlled/equivalent/right. This week I'm going to try to be buddies with some people as they finish up their fieldwork. I was a buddy with Camille and got to do some night snorkeling, which was a bit creepy but super cool. I saw an awesome swimming octopus!!!!! No pictures though, because we were trying to catch it (it got away).

OH! I almost forgot. I climbed Rotui. That was another exciting happening of the past couple of weeks. It is a large and scary mountain. Also deserving its own post with many many pictures. I'll have to do that early in the morning when everyone is asleep or I will just kill the internet connection here. SO many pictures from that beautiful hike.

We are busy learning Tahitian dance, but I missed the last lesson because I sprained my ankle on aforementioned mountain hike. We have about 6 hours of dancing next week to whip us in shape for our performance next Friday. It should be, uh, interesting. There is a part in the dance where we caress our bosoms. The boys are learning a sex hakka, which is a seduction dance of the Tahitians. OOOOH, I almost forgot to mention we got to see an awesome Tahitian dance performance. It was a troupe of traveling dancers, and they were AMAZING! At one point, five girls stood on top of five squatting dudes, and danced on top of them. The guy's dance is so impressive; they have enormous quads from all of the squatting and kicking in their dance. It is hard to explain in words what these dances look like, so go on youtube and search 'tahitian dance' and you'll be very impressed.

Now that my grant is done, I have an exciting two weeks of vacation! There will be some work too (advising students and being their chauffeur, shutting down the lab and packing everything away, dance performance etc), but I plan for the next couple weeks to be filled with lots of scuba diving, some hiking (Mao Puta!) and of course lots of lounging in my hammock. Parents arrive on Saturday, and it will be so fun to show them my island home!

Exciting times in Mo'orea, and I will really be sad when I have to leave in a few weeks. Now it's off to the beach!

The view from my office....

Sitting up on the porch of the Gump Station lab, I can't believe how great the view is that I get to enjoy every day. The view is even better from my bungalow, so I'll have to post 'another view from my office' at a later date. You can see here the wet-lab for aquariums, which is now housing a long-term project on coral health and ocean acidification, and also on the left there the fare potee, which is where our outside parties gather. We danced in the sand under there one night and it was a lot of fun.

The little orange sailboat in this picture is being captained by Professor George Roderick, from which he has been holding some of his office hours. I am pretty sure the view from his office is pretty damn good too.

Work, work, work

Well, it's hard to believe it's been more than a month that we've been here in Mo'orea. I think all the work has made things move real quickly by. It may not be as exciting as sharks and dolphins, but teaching is why I'm here, and there are a lot of exciting things about it that I'm really enjoying.

Us three GSIs each work about 2 days a week (well, now that we are in more of a routine that is). You get up and take people to the grocery store, if that's on the schedule, and then at 8 am, everyone gets driven out into the field. After coming back to the station, it's a couple of hours of office hours, which involves trouble shooting everything from identifying rays by the scars on their backs, to setting up aquariums so that hermit crabs don't escape. Etc. This part of the job is the most interesting, challenging and rewarding. All our little wee larval scientists are getting very into their projects, and it's great seeing how much progress they make each day.

After the many hours of advising (my stats brain is getting a bit of a workout already, and I'm not so excited about the end of the course!) I whip back out to pick up everyone in the mid afternoon. Usually they are smelling of bug spray or dripping with sea water and have some good stories about how many plants they collected or how many spiders they measured.

Back at the station, if it's Thursday or Friday there is a Tahitian language or dance lesson, but mostly we just cook and eat and talk.

Lather, rinse, repeat!


I have been trying to fill my days off with exciting things like scuba diving, and hopefully soon some good hiking, but more often than not I find myself doing dissertation work. All this typing makes me jealous of the students who get to spend their days collecting data instead of just interpreting it and writing about it! I guess they'll get to this point eventually too. But ah, the days of being a larval scientist when you could shut off your brain for a little bit and play Catan until all hours of the night.

Scuuuuuuuuuuuba!

Jenny and I went scuba diving today. It was amazing! I haven't scuba-ed in more than 3 years, so there was a lot to remember really fast.

Here I am on the boat. I have a stupid hair catcher on to keep the hairs out of my face, which is probably one of the best things I could have purchased here. My eyes are closed because it was such beautiful sunny weather!

 

Here's Jenny on the boat. She is pretty excited too.

That's what we're going down to scuba with- sharks! 

Our scuba leader, Henri, was pretty chill in the water the whole time. It was a good thing we went with him since I would have never known where to go down there and would have stuck around staring at one tiny patch of ocean for ages. Everything is super cool when it's your first time seeing it! 

Hello! I am breathing underwater. Isn't that cool!? I haven't yet learned the pro scuba trick of NOT exhaling while a picture is being taken. Woops. Haha, but isn't this pretty awesome in general! 

There were tons of friendly fish down there- not shy at all! I kept turning my head and seeing fish right in front of my face. It was pretty neat.

We got pretty close the sharks- Henri took us down to a cleaning staton. The little cleaner fishes go right inside of the sharks mouths and take out all the ectoparasites.

 

Look! It's me with a shark!

Here is a pretty cool picture of a shark with its mouth open. The little cleaners just swim right inside the sharks mouths.

Here I am, with sharks again! This whole blog post is going to be pretty boring because all I can really say is I SWAM UNDERWATER WITH SHARKS! And I had a sweet scuba buddy who took a ton of pictures of me BREATHING UNDERWATER WITH SHARKS!

I gotta say, scuba gear is certainly not the most flattering. I always forget you can't really smile with scuba gear in. Overall, a pretty sweet day under the sea!

Escape to Tahiti! also, OMG I SAW DOLPHINS!

After the feast day, all three of us GSIs had the day off. So, Thursday escape to Tahiti!

We took the white truck and got on the ferry over to Tahiti Nui bright and early in the morning.

It is so nice to get away from the students. When you live just a house down from them, even on your day off you are pestered with questions. I feel like more of a mom than a GSI most of the time. I keep having to remind them to drink water, lock up their stuff, clean their dishes properly, pick up after themselves, don’t get spined by urchins, swim with a buddy, etc etc etc

 

Our escape was certainly long overdue. It is hard to believe we have already been here nearly a month! We have all been working really hard for this course, more than for any course we’d be GSIing for in Berkeley. I am sure the three of us all had grand plans of things we would get done in Mo’orea, and we have not accomplished most of those goals. Hopefully now that the student’s projects are set and we are getting more into our duty rotation I will find more time off.

Anyways, our adventure!

There is currently a drought here on Mo’orea and in many of the Pacific islands, with considerably less rain than in past years. That being said, it has been a bit rainy in the past couple of days, which is very good for the island. Fortunately, the rain clouds, and the sunlight and everything lined up perfectly and we got a great big RAINBOW to send us on our way. Mo’orea looks like some fairytale tropical paradise even moreso with a rainbow hanging over it. It reminds me a lot of pictures from Peter Pan of Neverneverland.

 

The island of Tahiti is a much newer island, and has a great geologically educational cone shape to it. From far away I find it more pretty, but up close you really see how inhabited the island is! I like Mo’orea better for its smaller, more quaint feel, but I’m excited to get to Tahiti Iti and the south side of the big island to experience a bit less of a metropolitan Tahiti.

After our rainbow treat, we also saw a whale breaching off the reef. I doubt I will ever get to post any whale pictures; they are quite tricky to get. We might go whale watching someday next week, so maybe I will eat those words.

I DID however get a picture of ….. DOLPHINS! There was a great pod of about 50 of them swimming in our wake as we came into the port. This is probably the most exciting thing that has happened to me since coming here. I have never seen dolphins before! They are so graceful and playful in the water. This is my best dolphin picture. DOLPHINS!!!!!

We parked the car and walked down to the big yellow church, a classic tourist orienting spot, and certainly a very pretty church indeed. 

 


The stained glass had some very interesting classic  Christian symbols mixed with local Tahitian symbols, such as flying fish, breadfruit, and coconuts. Mom and Dad, you will definitely enjoy going to mass here on Sundays; all the churches are so pretty!

To market to market to buy a paréo! The Marche Municipal was very lively for a Thursday morning, and I enjoyed seeing all the different foods and things for sale. I’d like to come on a weekend when the locals are more numerous than the tourists. It was interesting to be greated by ‘Bonjour’ before ‘Ia’rana’, but perhaps that is a Tahiti-Mo’orea difference more than anything. 

Lots of tourist junk for sale, like Hawaiian stamped purses, and shell necklaces and SHARK JAWS. Jenny and I got some strings of shells for making our own necklaces, and Bier got a new print shirt to blend in with the locals. We enjoyed some delicious fresh squeezed pineapple juice, and I had a great conversation with a guy selling healing balms that solve all your problems, from migraines to tummy aches, to insomnia and fatness. ‘This one is for fat people- you put it on the skin, and it makes you skinny from the inside out’. 

After the market we drove down the coast to the west, trying to find a dirt road leading up to a nice hike we’d been recommended. Alas, we couldn’t find the damn turnoff, so instead we stopped in at the Tahitian museum. It was really interesting to see all kinds of old artifacts and tools, especially the intricate fishing hooks. 

I found it interesting to learn many of the ornaments were made from human hair, especially old men’s white beards.

The kitchen display was interesting, since we’d just enjoyed our own Tahitian feast.

My favorite part was the giant clubs and spears used in warfare. How interesting it must have been to see hundreds of tattooed warriors wielding these impressive weapons in battle!

Of course the canoes were impressive, given how far and wide they travelled in their wooden vessels. Such impressive navigation skills, and what adventurous spirits to just shoot off in any old direction and hope to come upon land. Jenny played a bit of Pocahontas with one of the outriggers.

 

I was impressed at the size of the whale skull on display. Bigger than me!

We gave up on finding our obscure road after a while, and decided instead to go east a bit and see a different part of the island. We ended up at Venus point, the most northern tip of Tahiti. There was a beautiful black sand beach there, from which we could see our own home, Mo’orea.  We hadn’t brought lunch, so we grabbed a random hamburger and frites with rotui ananas juice and enjoyed it on the beach. Hmmm, delicious!

We only had time for a quick swim in the water, but I am so glad we did because it was lovely to swim with barefeet for once. The sand was so soft between our toes, and the beach was so peaceful and quiet. I look like a postcard in front of Mo’orea on this nice beach, don’t I?

We zipped back and made it on the ferry to get back in time for our Tahitian dance lessons with Sam (to continue every Friday until the end of the course, so hopefully I learn to swivel those hips!). Home sweet home!

Bier was pooped after our day of vacationing, and it was definitely a well-deserved break. Such a nice day away!

Of course, we were also glad to be home; how can you not be happy when you live somewhere so beautiful, with such clear and blue water and skies!?