My winter days:

Family outing on the bay:



What is all this stuff???



My field assistant Boy works the crowd:



Right now I'm in Naga (you may want to consult Google Earth for this one) in a very spiffy coffee shop with free wireless (!!!), minimalist leather couches, Alicia Keys playing and sub-freezing air con. I might as well be in the USA. Except that outside, tricycles and jeepneys still rule supreme. All's going well and I'm having a really good time. How can it be otherwise, on a day when you got the honor of being the first white person a bunch of village children EVER saw?!?!

Fieldwork galore

The last few days since arriving in the Philippines have been busy. My adviser and I arrived in Manila on Wednesday afternoon and already by Thursday morning we were on our way to the Zambales mountains to sample some streams. Now it's 14 samples and many many hundred kilometers later and we're staying at this fancy schmanzy resort on the shores of the South China Sea (apparently in this neck of the woods the only places that have hot water are fancy schmanzy resorts on the shores of the South China Sea). It's been too busy to read email or anything, but I hope to be able to pick up the slack on Tuesday or Wednesday.

On the plane again

Finally on the beach!

Kiholo Bay, Haleakala Volcano

Headwaters of Waipi'o Valley

In Waipi'o Valley

Saddle Road

Fieldwork II

Fieldwork I

Leaving town

The trip starts tomorrow and I can't say that I'm ready. My flight out of Ithaca is at quarter of six in the morning, i.e. in six hours and a half. If I had any sense I'd be done packing and snoring in bed by now but instead I'm buying the fourth season of Grey's Anatomy on iTunes and syncing it to my iPod so that I have something to pass the time with while in the outland.

One thing that I'm glad about is that this will be my last field trip as a Ph.D. student. As exciting as field work is, I've had enough for now. All I want to do now is make enough sense of the data I already have to get my degree. I really don't want to spend months on end in the lab again, processing the samples I'll bring home from this trip. Guess I don't have a choice, though.

Ok, I'm off to Hawaii, then!

Sick

I am sick. Since Saturday morning. And I'm almost out of comfort food - the Lübeck marzipan I brought home years ago for my boyfriend who doesn't like marzipan at all.

Fortunately it's only Tuesday. Five more days to get well before I leave the continent.

New Years Resolution(-s)

I read somewhere that New Year's resolutions are bad for your health. Therefore, I didn't make any.

Or so goes my excuse. Honestly, I didn't make a single NY resolution. Is that bad?

Administrative assistant in the tropics

The New Year has taken off and looks set to be an interesting one. For starters, it's cold in Ithaca


and the ground is covered in snow. If that isn't a reason to party, I don't know what is!

As I may have mentioned before, my life as a grad student sometimes resembles that of a secretary or an administrative assistant more than anything. Sometimes I think that if I ever get this bloody degree, it should be in online shopping for airline deals (and dishwashing, let's not forget). I've spent most of today and yesterday shopping for airfares between Ithaca, Honolulu and Hilo, hunting down bargains on rental cars, and looking for hotels and applying for permits for lodgings in state parks. In between, I've been to the supermarket buying dishwashing gloves and brushes, so that I can continue the dish washing required for my research, and, erm, I also did some dish washing. Yes, science really is an uninterrupted string of landmark discoveries and intellectual bliss. Or not.

However, I'm not one to complain (ehemm...). From January 14th to 22nd, you'll find me on the Big Island of Hawaii. On the 22nd the dateline will be crossed, into the 23rd, on a Philippine Airlines flight to Manila. After three weeks of fieldwork on Luzon I'll return to Honolulu, spend 3 nights on O'ahu and then return to Ithaca on the 16th of February. This should be interesting. I'm especially excited about the days on O'ahu; they'll be all mine. North Shore, here I come!!