New Year's and the Month of January

After the Christmas Festivities, it was right on into the New Year's Holiday. I decided that since my last few New Years' in Godfrey/Alton weren't that cool* I'd go visit some friends from my time in Iceland. No, unfortunately, I was not going to Iceland to see them, but just up to Madison, Wisconsin. My brother was home too at the time, and wanted to go visit our friend Andy who lives right on the way up there, so we drove up together. I dropped him off in the bustling metropolis of Standard, Illinois where he spent the holiday at Bellino's Tap, the neighborhood joint that just happened to be owned by Andy's family. To be honest, despite my fun in Madison, I was a little jealous of that.

The writing of this post is taking me about 2/3 longer than it should. 1/3 is the fact that I keep capitalizing the first letter of words for no reason and I have to go back and fix them, and the other 1/3 is that this stuff happened a long time ago and I am trying to remember details and still retain some sort of wittiness to my writing. Failure so far.

Anyway I got into Madison in time to watch the Notre Dame football team play in their bowl in El Paso. I was glad we won, but we (my family) were all pretty sad that we were playing in El Paso. We had been projected to go to the bowl in Orlando (I don't know the name, and I am too lazy to look it up), and had that been the case I think we would have tried to go down there for that one and maybe spend some time at Disney World as well. (The happiest place on earth and also the site of my 21st birthday celebration a couple years ago) This would have more than made up for my total lack of Notre Dame bowl involvement to date. I still hold a grudge about what I'm about to tell you. I'm not exactly sure who gets the blame on this one.... The ND football team under Charlie Weis and company my freshman year was pretty decent. We were ranked 9th or something at the end of the season and were BCS bound. We ended up in the Sugar Bowl against LSU, and the game was being played at the Superdome in New Orleans. I had some tickets spoken for. I had it all planned. I had a place to stay, and I was going to take the wonderful Amtrak down from St. Louis. I told my dad this plan and that's when he uttered those fateful words. "You're just a freshman and I don't want you going to New Orleans by yourself," I protested but he insisted,

"You're going to have plenty of opportunities to go to bowl games while you're at Notre Dame."


Little did either of us know that our team would proceed to be terrible for the remainder of my 3 years. Seriously, we lost to Navy for the first time in 40-something years. The next opportunity was the Hawaii bowl my senior year at a record of 6-6 or something, and let's be honest, there was no way any Notre Dame student was going to Hawaii to watch a .500 football team headed by Charlie Weis (oh wait, he got fired before then) play. After that little rant I know who the blame goes to. Charlie Weis. He sucks. Both as a football coach and a human being, by the way.

Do I sound bitter?

OK on a much lighter note New Years was fun. It was great to see Jamin and Bre and Steph 'Dodson' Burke. Whiskey River in Madison is Bizzaro Club Fever.

Other things I did in the month of January include: Taking lots of photos of birds, hiking, tying flies for fishing, eating a lot (unfortunate side effects from that one), being cold, splitting some wood and applying for jobs. I ended up being offered a job in Oregon surveying owls, such as the Barred Owl (same species that occasionally shows up and perches over our driveway, shown below) and Spotted Owl. After a long and painful decision-making process I decided that I would turn down that job in hopes of finding something in the field of aquatic ecology, which I plan on pursuing long term. I love owls, but that didn't really seem to fit my profile so much.

Well I'm crawling back toward blogger currency. Baby steps, people. Baby steps.

I'm not dead in case you were wondering

Hello there faithful blog fans! (that is if there are any of you left) Last time I wrote I was still in Trinidad! It's hard to believe that that was over two months ago. I did make it home safely, and boy has a whole lot (and really nothing at all) happened since I returned home. I'll give a short synopsis of what I've been up to since I've been back in the good ol' U.S. of A.

The return and Christmas
The Christmas season should have begun for me the day I got home, but it took me a little while to get into the spirit, admittedly. Even after all the Parang that had already been playing for months, I was still in the summertime mood, despite it being the middle of December. The night I arrived in St. Louis, the temperature was a whopping 9 degrees. That's in Fahrenheit, everyone. With it being approximately 90 in Port of Spain when I left, my body had to adjust to a nearly 80 degree temperature difference. I felt like I was at this place but instead of 3 minutes it lasted forever. I mean I don't want to complain, (yes I do. I love complaining) but it took me about 3 weeks to finally warm up. The real problem was that not only was I not physically prepared, I was totally unprepared mentally. For the last few weeks in Trinidad I was picturing my return home smack-dab in the middle of summer, which obviously was just an illusion in my mind because the weather was so pleasant in the Caribbean.

Anyway it didn't take me too long to get into the Christmas Spirit because two of my favorite holiday "traditions" were taking place within a week. (aside: The only reason I put quotations around the word traditions is because I have only taken part in both these events twice, and although I do believe that these two events are actually legitimate traditions for many, I have only participated a limited number of times, which means that it may not yet be a tradition for me. whatever.) The first is the Heimann Family Christmas Sing Along.

Yes. We have a Christmas sing along.

And it's awesome. The population estimate at this thing was 80 this year. And that was small. Just imagine 80 people all holding a beverage of some sort (let's get serious. mostly A-B products with some of those classier people holding a wine, scotch or gin) singing Christmas songs and the occasional German drinking song. Good fun was had by all. Sorry no pictures are in my possession.

The next Christmas tradition was a family trip up to Chicago. There were a good number of us this year which made for a great weekend of shopping and such. Chris and I spent much of our time shopping together, and much of that shopping time was spent looking for a classy raincoat for his then upcoming semester in Ireland. We were unsuccessful in that venture. We found some that looked good at Banana Republic, but they weren't actually waterproof. Smart. We did, however, manage to get a gift for my cousin and god child Owen. Our visit to the Lego store was a trip down memory lane. It seriously made me want to go home and build some stuff. After dinner one night the older cousins and our Uncle Joe and Aunt Cindy went out for some drinks. We hit the Billy Goat Tavern under Michigan Ave and met an interesting character who bought us some drinks, and who had pissed away more money than he cared to realize. We decided to jump ship, so to speak, and head to another place. We ended up hitting a pretty good brew pub (the name escapes me) where Chris proceeded to teach us a pretty fun drinking game. (It's top secret, and I cannot reveal its name or rules in order to keep the shock value alive in case I ever decide to break it out in your presence)

Christmas was a fun affair at both the Kratschmers and Henkens. Not a whole lot to report from either location. It was nice to see my cousin Mary and her husband Bob, as well as the rest of all the families. Christmas day was as loud as every other year, and a bit more dangerous, with my cousin Erin's boyfriend Tom receiving an antique bayonet (which of course was passed around and brandished threateningly).

Ok so this post is going to have to be in parts. I started writing because I couldn't go to sleep. (wow what a surprise) and now I think I'm sufficiently tired. Better than counting sheep.

Well since I am stuck here in our house recovering from the infamous dengue fever while everyone else gets to go out and play in the jungle I suppose I will write a blog post catching up on all the stories and little anecdotes that I have been neglecting to write down, mostly due to laziness I guess.

Life in Trinidad has been quite interesting. We get some chance to interact with locals, whether it is with Mahase and Jogie, our neighbors and landlords of sorts; people at the grocery store, people at the bar or just random acquaintances. We learn bits and pieces about the culture of Trinidad from all these people. The country is made up most basically of two groups of people, Indians and blacks. The Indians are mostly descendent from the time in Trinidad’s history when it was a British colony. The British would have Indian indentured servants working on their farms, and when their servitude was up, they themselves became farmers. The blacks, like in most of the Caribbean, are descendent of the time of the slave trade. The striking thing about this though, is that white people are basically nonexistent. It has been a very interesting experience living in a country where your race is the distinct minority. It is such a departure from what I have been used to at home. I feel like I haven’t really been able to take full advantage of the juxtaposition of my situation, mostly because I live and work and recreate with 9 other white people, and we rarely have the opportunity to travel outside of our little circle. Which on one hand is fine because they are all good people that I enjoy being around for the most part, but when one goes to the grocery store or to town to do whatever, it is a bit annoying walking around in a pack.

Anyway, that is neither here nor there, except some interesting situations arise from our whiteness. One, is that we are often asked if we are enjoying our holiday in Trinidad, and I can say with confidence that outside of Arima 99% of the populous just assumes we are tourists. Which is, when you live in a place for months at a time, a little annoying. At the same time it is totally satisfying to be able to say that no, I am not a tourist, and yes I live just outside of town, I have been here for a number of months and I probably know way more about some things in your country than you do. Another interesting situation that arises is that I am often referred to as “White Boy” or “Whitey.” This occurs especially when I am in the car driving through town. I have found through numerous experiences is that the best way to deal with the situation is not to ignore the cat caller, but to respond in the most nerdy American white-boy voice I can muster and inquire as to how the civilian’s day is proceeding. In addition, Trini men like to show their appreciation for women, especially white women, by making an extraordinarily loud kissing noise as they walk or drive by. I have also found that the offenders are usually quite surprised when a male in the group of women returns fire with a kissing noise of his own....

Tropically Diseased

I have a real excuse for not posting for a while. I swear. For the last week and a half I have had Dengue Fever. It was without a doubt the most miserable week of my life so far… and I really, really hope I never have a worse week. It started out as just feeling really tired. We had just returned from the mall and a movie (Megamind 3D, which was actually fairly entertaining), it was around 7:00 pm and I just wanted to go to bed. Which was quite opposite of my recent norm, as I had been staying up until at least 1:00 or 2:00 am and getting usually around 5-6 hours of sleep. So at first I just thought that it was just the night-owling that I’d been doing catching up with me. And then I started getting a bit cold while wearing jeans, shoes and a long sleeve shirt in our house. Which just doesn’t happen. So I went to bed. I woke up the next morning with a terrible headache and feeling pretty worn out. I pretty much stayed in bed for the next three days trying to wait out a fever that was ranging from 99.5 F to 102.8 F. It was three of the worst days ever. My eyeballs hurt like hell, my back hurt like hell, my knees, shoulders, head and all my muscles just plain hurt.  I would go to bed sometimes feeling quite warm then wake up freezing cold. And sometimes I would wake up freezing cold with blankets piled on top of me but I would be sweating uncontrollably. It was weird. And quite unpleasant. The worst part about it was I would have dreams that I was feeling great, then when I awoke I would feel worse than ever.  Finally on the fourth morning I woke up and took my temperature and the thermometer read 103.6.

So it was time to go to the hospital. I had to wait for the truck to get back from the field in the early afternoon, but then it was on to the emergency room. I got to the ER, signed in, got triaged, and sat. For 3 hours, all the while alternately freezing and burning up. In that time a total of 4 people were called to be seen. The rest gave up and left I suppose, because when the head nurse finally came out with the doctor to see the patients who were waiting there were only 5 of us. And I happened to be first in line to be seen, which was cool, but also it meant that I had been waiting the longest, which was discouraging. I told the doctor my symptoms and he said that he suspected it was Dengue, which didn’t really surprise me. So I had a blood test (Yes mom, the needle was sterile. Despite the less than amazing conditions they still run a real hospital). Which came back positive. (Surprise!) I got this cool paper with the results on it.

So I was referred to the Dengue Management Unit at the hospital in the morning where I was to have another blood test, this one to measure my platelet levels. The reason being that if my platelets were to drop too low as a result of the Dengue I might start bleeding from places including, but not limited to, my gums eyes and ears. Luckily my platelet levels were fairly normal even though I still had a fever and was pretty achy. But at least now I knew that I wasn’t going to bleed out. The doctor wanted to see me again the next day, and so I went for another blood test feeling great, at least comparatively. And I was discharged since I was on day 8 of the illness and I was feeling alright. So I will spend the next couple of weeks in Trinidad, my last couple, sitting around the house and helping to process. This illness and my pending recovery mean that my field season is effectively over. Which is a bummer. It’s going to be a long couple of weeks I’m afraid.

Tobago, and Farewells

The past couple of weeks have been a whirlwind! We finished up our FIBR guppy mark-recapture, celebrated the Hindu holiday Diwali with our village, vacationed on beautiful Tobago and then began and finished the Funk guppy mark-recapture. Not only that, a new crop of interns have arrived, and a few of the veterans have left.

I don't have time to elaborate on the happenings currently, but here are a few pictures to tide you over until I write again.

Halfway

So yesterday marked my halfway point, and things are going swimmingly here in balmy Trinidad. We've been working extra hard the past couple of weeks (hence the lack of blogging activity) in order that we get an extra day off to make a trip to beautiful Tobago! Work has been going well, we did indeed gain an extra day off, and thank God we were ahead of schedule because Hurricane Tomas passed right by our little island, and showered us with a steady rain that would have certainly put us at least a day behind schedule had we not been working in the lab instead of in the field like we were previously scheduled to do. So Tobago is on. Except not how we had anticipated. We actually are sticking around an extra couple of days in order to participate in a celebration with our neighbors. We live in a Hindu village of about 50 people, and this week marks the end of their holiday, Divali. So we'll stick around and participate in the lighting of candles, busting of bamboo and fireworks. Which is really exciting, I think it will be great. The preparations look amazing so far. Pictures will follow.

We have also on our couple of days off done some great stuff. We went to Caroni swamp and saw some great birds, mostly the Scarlet Ibis, of which I have a few pictures. This bird is really quite striking.

Also I have been spending some time up at our other house, called "The Duchess's" (it is owned by a supposed wife of some duke in Norway... no one really knows...). It was a very relaxing time, as there is no electricity, and very few people. It is nestled up in the Northern Range of Trinidad, and is very hard to get to, seriously the SUV we have could not make it up the hill carrying four people, so half of us had to get out and walk.

                                           

Internet time is at a premium so I am finding it harder to and harder to make posts here, which is unfortunate, because I really do like blogging. I will make more of an effort to write posts (I swear this time. Really.)

Bird Photos

Here are some photos of birds that I took from on our front porch.