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!
No comments:
Post a Comment