Field work or You can learn French in ten minutes or less!

Hello everyone!

So things are going good! Living at the French station has turned into quite a learning experience. It is small compared to Gump. At meals, we all eat together, and there is typically about ten people at the table. Yesterday, Jada and I were assigned to cook. I think everyone was expecting some American dish, but we made a chicken and rice stir fry with a soy sauce base. Every other meal I've had here as had a cream base, so this was probably considered out of the ordinary. It turned out pretty good. I think I am a hit here, if only for everyone to laugh at my ridiculous attempts at French. Mohsen is a student here who speaks English quite well. He had the bad idea to sit next to me at dinner last night, so all night long I was asking him, “How do you say “You taught me that?”” or “Ok, for the tenth time, how do you pronounce dessert and desert in French? No, I do not put an L in every word I say.” Everyone thought my pronunciation of the word fork was particularly hilarious, and that's when I turned the tables on them by making them pronounce everything in English as well. I told them (in French, how impressive) “I will learn French, and you will learn English.” Dacord (ok, or agreed).

Yesterday we also went up to visit Matahi at the Botanical Gardens. Matahi is a Maori from New Zealand who is here to do a bunch of wood carvings. His bigger project is that he is building a boat (sort of like a canoe) to travel from Tahiti to New Zealand. They are supposed to travel without modern day ship navigating techniques, though I think this idea has been vetoed. Anyway, in the past when they have done this they bring little water, and eat things they catch and water they collect from rain. The idea is to see how people would have done the trip thousands of years ago. Until he sails out, he is doing a bunch of wood carvings right down the road from Gump. He actually just sold a bunch of them to a Polynesian Musuem in Bora Bora. Jada is taking pictures of them for him and helping him compile a slideshow. Matt, the captain of the Braveheart, came up with us yesterday to give him a book and a cd that has ship routes on it so the trip will go easier. I went up, and when we got there, Matt and I were put to work. Some of Matahi's carvings are 12 feet tall, and Matt and I were given the task of staining one of them. Matt rubbed on oil, and I had to rub it off. It looked quite nice when we were done with it. Anyways, needless to say, Matahi is a pretty interesting guy. I fear that most of the people I meet here are much more interesting than I am.

Since I've gotten over my initial “Moorea stomach” when I got here, I have been eating voraciously. Part of it is that we are in the water burning tons of calories (did you know that you burn 500 calories an hour scuba diving?) and now that we are at CRIOBE we are riding ten miles a day on our bikes getting to and from work. Anyways, because of this, I am always hungry. I am pretty good about what I eat in general, and don't tend to eat processed foods, but since I don't get to cook that much here (ONE oven in all of Gump works, and we eat meals together at CRIOBE), I have been eating cookies and crackers and such from the package. There is also this awesome place called Snack Rotui that has all sorts of lunch stuff, and Jada and I go there really frequently for lunch. Today we went and I had hachis (basically, hamburger on baguette with this special sauce that's my favorite), gateau au chocolat (chocolate cake), pommes de frites (french fries) and the crown jewel, a coconut. The owner of Snack Rotui, Bob, gets coconuts when they are still green, sands off the bottom so they sit flat, then drills a hole in the top, and places them in the fridge. It is essentially coconut water. The allure of drinking out of a coconut in a tropical paradise appealed to me, though I wasn't really crazy about it. Jada documented it on camera, so there will be a super cheesy picture of it when I get around to posting it.

Tomorrow we have been instructed that we must be at CRIOBE in the morning because the French ambassador is coming for a visit. This was exciting to me, but apparently she comes a lot. Not to mention, all the students here (and Jada and I) have to prepare food for them. But it means I get to sleep in a bit, which is great.

I don't think I've mentioned Erika on this blog, and I was remiss not to. Erika is one of only three terrestrial biologists at Gump currently. For about 4 weeks, she was my roommate too. She's pretty awesome, and I think she's psyched that Jada and I are here because we go on all sorts of fun adventures, though I have regularly distracted her from her work. The reason why I mention her is because she got to drive the Princess of Thailand around when she visited a month ago. So I think the Princess beats the Ambassador anyday, though it just goes to show you how small, though important, Moorea is if we get Princesses and Ambassadors and that's considered ho hum.

David is another terrestrial biologist here, from the same university as Erika. He is here for a year, and has been traveling extensively throughout the South Pacific. He just got back from Rapa Iti on a collecting trip. This is a pretty small island, where boats go out every couple of months to bring people in. Apparently, the only people who come in regularly are scientists and some government officials. Upon getting there, all of the people heard that he was from America, and they all asked, “Oh, do you know Gustav?” Gustav is one of Jada and I's advisors at UF. He is a bit of a legend in the scientific collection world, and has made trips collecting specimens everywhere. All the people on Rapa are apparently eagerly awaiting Gustav's return. One day, I teased David, they will ask visitors, “Do you know Gustav and David?”

I know that this was a particularly long entry. I have been getting complaints from various people that I haven't been posting enough, so I hope this will tide all of my angry critics over in case I don't write for a while.

Lots of love,
Emily