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!?

Tahitian feast

So, I am writing this on Friday, and we have now been abandoned by all professors. It is a GSI-only show for the next week and a bit!

To celebrate the departure of our two first illustrious professors (Pat and Jere) we had a delicious Tahitian feast on Wednesday. It is also the 20th anniversary of this course, and after seeing the logistical work going into it, I'm impressed it has continued uninterrupted for so long! It is great that there is such a community of alumni of this course. 

The best part of the feast was that the students and all of us got to help with preparing the food, as well as weaving the baskets that food was cooked and served in. 

First there was the grating of the coconut. We used these ingenious little stool tools that help you scrape out the coconut. To get coconut milk, you squeeze the ground coconut through some cheesecloth. The dried stuff gets used in cakes, and for our feast, in coconut bread (mmmm!).

The coconut milk got used for us in making some poisson cru. Poisson cru is a traditional dish, which is very slowly growing on me. I don’t like eating fish very much, so eating raw fish is a whole other ball game. Usually it is tuna, which I am told because is a deep sea fish has fewer parasites and is therefore safer to eat raw. I am so glad none of the students are working on fish parasites, or I might not eat fish again.

Here are some students making po’e. This involves mashing up various vegetables and roots, in our cases tapioca and squash, and the wrapping in banana leaves to cook in the oven, and then mixing with coconut milk to make a sweet dessert.

Breadfruit (uru) is an old staple which here we are peeling with a cut cowrie shell. I think the students are also peeling the taro, which is going to get baked until it turns deep purple. Everyone learned how to weave, with some people picking it up faster than others. Jenny was getting frustrated because her baskets were not perfect.

The coconut fronds do lend themselves well to weaving. Here are us three GSIs with the serving dishes our food will soon be displayed in. These more beautiful weaved plates were done by the locals (they ended up using our half-assed creations for holding food food cooking).

One student, Courtney, picked it up better than others and made herself a little hat!

Aha, the fire pit (hima’a)! I didn’t get any pictures of everything getting put in, because I was playing with a little girl named Sherina, who is the daughter of one of the station employees. But I did get some pictures of the epic unveiling, so here we will see the process in reverse.

First, the sand which has been covering everything is shoveled off. Already it is steaming from the inside.

Then you take off the burlap covers which have been keep off the sand and holding in the heat.

Next are some banana leaves, and for the modern hima’a, they use a metal cage. Traditionally the food would have been placed directly onto the hot stones in the bottom of the pit. The cage helps keep everything contained and makes it easier to take out. 

Banana leaves cover all of the food, which is contained in pots, our weaved baskets, wrapped in leaves, and I think the pig was just laid directly onto the hot stones in the bottom of the basket.

Our students all helped with taking the food out of the now burnt baskets and arranging it nicely on the platters. 

Everyone seemed to have had a tiare flower (the white ones) or some other behind their ear. I understand that putting it on the left means you are taken, and on the right means you are interested, but I think there has been so much confusion over this that half of us are getting it backwards!

The food looked so delicious! Here is a picture of the dessert end of the table, with po’e, and baked coconut bread (on the left) and some breadfruit.

My plate was quite overflowing, because even though I only took a small bit of everything, I ended up taking too much! Ok, let’s see what we have. Starting with the big purple root vegetable (taro!), going clockwise, we have the banana po’e, coconut bread, squash po’e, baked tapioca, poisson cru, pig, more pig cooked with spinach, chicken stew with carrots, fafaru (more on this below), and baked breadfruit, all with some delicious coconut milk for dipping. Delicious!

So, fafaru.  This special dish is definitely ‘interesting’. It is a local delight for some, but not for all (Hianano, the station manager told me she hates the stuff). It is fermented fish. Jelma, who works here too, told me that they take a fresh fish, usually tuna, but you can make it with almost anything. Cut it up. Put it in a jar with fresh seawater, for three days. After three days of sitting in the seawater, you rinse it a few times with more seawater, and then add the fafaru sauce, which is made of other fermented fishes, for flavour. Hmmm, not delicious. I tried a bit of it, and it was so, um, unusual, that it threw off the rest of my meal. I am glad I tried it, but I don’t think I will be eating this again!

We enjoyed a lot of good company in the fare potee (gathering house). The pig seemed to enjoy himself too. And Bier should did enjoy the pig skin!

Of course the night was rounded out by some music and dancing. Strangely, some country singer (center) from LA joined us for our feast, and he sang a few pretty bad songs after eating. One of his songs about Mo’orea included the phrase ‘dolphin holding a bottle of rum, meet me at the tiki bar’. Reeeeeeally bad singing, but I think Tahiri, one of Hinano’s sons, had taken them out to film a music video where the shark feeding happens, and paid him so much for it, it would have been rude not to invite them. Fortunately it wasn’t long until the traditional Tahitian music started up.

I finished my night by breaking into the student dorms since the key I gave them didn’t work in their door (woops). I am not sure if there is photographic evidence, but that is probably for the best. I am sure they are glad they didn’t have to sleep outside, thought the fare potee would have been pretty spacious and comfortable.

Hoorah! What a delicious feast and great night!