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Published: December 2nd 2012
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La Planta de Piña
I planted the top of the pineapple that I bought the same day I bought the SIM card. It's on top of my refrigerator. Sorry for not updating as often as I should, but at least I have a reason- I keep forgetting until I get back to my house where I don't have internet.
What? Were you expecting a good reason?
Anyway, let's start with November 28th, the day after the SIM card fiasco. The day was normal, but the night, starting around 7pm, was awesome. We were supposed to leave for a "national parade" at 7, which of course meant that we left at 9. Fortunately, I decided to go look for frogs during those two free hours, and I found two Picado's Bromeliad Tree frogs! Now, I don't know if you all know this, but catching a frog out of a bromeliad is pretty difficult. They hang out in the pools of water in between the fronds and face up, so there's no sneaking up from behind them. I pretty much just have to reach in really fast and try to grab them before the swim to the bottom of the bromeliad where I can't reach them. Thankfully, they will come back up after a few minutes and I can try again, and again, and again.
Okay, now I
Rana
Cute lil tree frog. When you hold them upside down like that they stay perfectly still- made them much easier to swab. finally have a frog in my hand. I have a closed bag in my other hand. WHY DO HUMANS ONLY HAVE TWO HANDS?! I had to run back to the main office area where Jolanis, who is terrified of frogs, was sitting, and ask her to open the bag for me. She seemed to find it funny that I was so excited about catching frogs.
Eventually, we left for the "parade" which turned out to be a fair. The fair was just like an American fair, with food, music, games... and a crazy dance club in the middle. Oh wait- they don't have those at your fairs? We paid $7 for wrist bands to get into the dance, but didn't go in right away. We were hungry, so we bough chicken and fried yucca (which are kind of like french fries). Tomás hasn't paid me yet, so at this point I have a little bit less than $3 in cash to my name. I mean, I have money in the bank, but nobody takes cards in rural Panama. I told Indira and Jolanis that I needed more money, so we went to a bank that had an ATM. Unfortunately,
Otra Foto de la Rana
Another picture of the froggy. Less upside-down this time. I only had my credit card, not my debit card. I don't know my PIN number for that. In fact, I don't even remember setting up my PIN number for my credit card! I tried a few numbers and then told Jolanis and Indira "Esta no funciona. Necesito una carta plastico diferente." Hopefully that means "It's not working. I need a different card."
After that we went to the dance party and danced. And danced. And danced. And danced. And did I mention dancing? We didn't leave until 4am, and by that point I had a pet Panamanian who wouldn't leave me alone and wanted to keep dancing with me. He was very attractive, but I don't like dancing that much and it's hard to hold a conversation with someone in a language other than your own over blaring music. I kept telling him that "mis rodillas" (my knees) hurt.
When we finally left, Indira and Jolanis got more food, and I bought a pineapple slushie because that was all that I could afford and still be able to take the bus. It's now 4:30 when we get to the bus stop and we wait there until around
Moldy Binos
Just an observation that everything gets moldy here. After one month my binocular case is covered in gross. 5:30, watching buses pass us without stopping. Understandably, they don't want borrachos (drunks) puking all over their bus, but in the entire 6 hours of dancing, the three of us had each had two of the Panamanian equivalent of Mike's Hard Lemonade. We were not drunk or even slightly intoxicated at this point. At 5:30 we decided we had freezed on the curb for long enough and sprung for a $15 taxi back to Cerro Punta. I guess I'll pay one of them back for my $5 worth when I get paid. The taxi didn't even take us all the way to Finca Dracula, but only as far as the local grocery store. We hiked our way up the mountain and finally got back around 6am.
I was asleep by 6:30am and didn't get up until 2pm the next day.
When I woke up the next day, I realized that I had slept right through a call from Chris (the peace corps guy) at 9:30am. I sent him a quick text explaining why I didn't answer the phone, and then went downstairs to process my frogs. I swabbed each one for Chytrid and then weighed them. Again, more that two hands would be nice. When we did this on our Tropical Biology course in May, there were at least two of us processing each frog.
After frog-time, I went up to the office where Jolanis helped me figure out how to set up my voicemail account so that I could hear Chris's voicemail. He ended up calling back again, but I must have lost service at some point because I had a second voicemail, but no missed call. He texted me "we're playing phone tag and you're it!" Then said he'd call me at 5pm the next day.
The next day wasn't particularly exciting. I talked to Chris until we both ran out of "saldo" (phone credits), bugged my professors about writing me letter of recommendation, and then went back to my house to get the SVL (snout-vent length) and SUL (snout-urostyle length) of my frogs.
Then I tattooed them. I'll bet you don't know anyone else who can say that they've tattooed a frog. I need to be able to tell which frogs I've already collected, so I dip a needle (or in my case, a safety pin because that's all I had) into black India ink and then scratch it into their skin. After that, I went to bed, which brings me to today, which I'll write about tomorrow (if I remember).
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Pap & Gram
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Hey--frog girl! Do you kiss each frog to see if he turns into a handsome and rich prince? I'm assuming that none have so far. Pap was hunting this week, but he didn't get a deer. Uncle Dale got a nice 8-point buck. I've been nursing a sinus infection for several days. It's been a busy week for us with other activities,too. We haven't done much of our Christmas decorating yet and haven't decided whether we will even put up the tree this year. We really enjoy hearing from you. Please be careful and take care of yourself. Love, Pap and Gram