A distinct lack of honey

This weekend I went on an adventure with my friend Carolina, her boyfriend Andres (both colombians), Mark (the other American exchange student), and Javier (a visiting Spanish doctoral student). 

It made for an interesting weekend due to a lack of a common language between all five of us, we had to keep shifting back and forth between spanish, portuguese, and english for everybody to understand what was going on.  

But anyway, Andres drove us out to Pontal do Sul (where I've had several plant geography classes by this point) and we caught a boat to Ilha do Mel (Island of Honey). Right now is the off season so it was really low key and the prices were about a third of what they are during the holidays. It was 35 reais (~15 bucks) per night in a pousada (local lodging) with cool hammocks hanging around. 

Once we picked a place to stay we got some lunch at a restaurante (with food bom bom bom according to the lady at our hotel (bom=good))  and then headed to the beach to relax and take a swim. The coolest thing about Ilha do Mel is that is still is very natural and there are only sandy footpaths to get around. Half of the island is a natural presearve. After a snooze on the beach we went for a hike up to the "farol" (lighthouse) to get a scenic view. After dinner we played cards and tried to drink some really horrid brazillian wine until we were informed that there was a "farro" (typical live beach music/dancing) at one of the bar/restaurants and headed over there for a caipirinha and some local entertainment. 

The next day we wisened up and took chairs to the very hard beach.  

Andres rented a surf board while Javier gave him lessons and Carolina and I got engulfed in waves trying to take a few pictures. yay waterproof camera! Overall a very successful weekend trip.  

Hey folks, just a quick post this week. I wanted to post a few pictures from my plant geography class. We visited a archeological site (a giant mound of sea shells) where we could get a look at the landscape. You can see the rolling ancient sand dunes by the height of the trees. But look again! 

The tallest trees are actually in the valleys where the water and soil settles. I thought that was neat. Not exactly rocket science but you don't tend to notice these things until somebody points it out (such as one of our profs is doing this the picture). And the guarani indians that live there were selling pretty baskets.  

I also learned this week that bug repellant, an umbrella,  and a rain jacket do very little good when left on the bus...

but honestly the biggest news of the week is that kyle bought a dEEp frEEzer for our house in raleigh!!! yay!  mmm...freezer jam. 

Weekend in Piracicaba

i'm back in curitiba after a weekend trip to Piracicaba (home of my advisor's former university). i left friday night, and arrived at 7am saturday morning and talked with my advisor, Stape, about what all i need to do. bascially, i need to decide where i want to collect my soil samples for my doctoral research. (We're going to look at carbon sequestion in soils in pasture vs forests). i'll meet up with him again in two weeks once i've had a chance to make some preliminary plans. of course everything changes once you actually get  to the field and realize there is a swamp, bee hive, or alligator where you wanted to take your samples.

Afterwards I went with the grad student i stayed with (Ana Paula) and a group of finlanders (who were in town for a two week course) to a fish churrascaria next to the river. it was sooooooo good and about 10 USD per person for 4 humungous fish (you can see the guy cooking the fish on the churrasco and the finlander that snuck in the picture with me). , rice, salad, and this amazing sort of mashed potato stuff but with manioc (or corn flour?) and shrimp and vegetables inside. they call it couscous but it's different than ours. yummy. (my name is rachel and i have an obscession with food) and then there was a little art/craft market along the river that we walked down and they all bought little souveniers. always in search of consumables, i found a fruit juice stand and asked the guy to make me his favorite kind (because they all looked good, note the picture of the fruit juice guy), so he whipped up an orange/pineapple/lime/apple juice that was just amazing! and i basically got a whole pitcher for 3 reais (~$1.25). i loved it so much i had everyone in our group try it and then they all had to buy one too. after making about 10 more juices for everyone he said he would hire me to promote his business ;) 

From there ana paula and i went back to her house and she went in search of a bed while i watched tv, then we ordered a pizza and just hung out and chatted for the rest of the night. both her and her roommate were super cool and ana paula even gave me a cd of a superb brazilian musician. but i need to get an mp3 player for the nine and a half hour bus ride home. bah. the bus on the way back takes more stops and is in the afternoon/evening so it's harder to sleep the whole way. but i at least had time to read almost a hundred pages of my new harry potter book (O Prisioneiro de Azkaban). yay!

Mango Flinging Madness

Alright folks, after a slight disaster with a plate of sliced mango (ending up all over my computer, desk, and wall, which is now a lovely shade of orange), I have managed to start my blog! hurray!!  

There are a few things to catch up on I guess... 

This week was the first real week of classes. Tuesday I had my first class of essential plant nutrition. The professor is super nice and kept checking in with me to see if I was understanding the material. The biggest hang up we had was when he was trying to explain grafting...luckily a chalkboard came to the rescue. It feels a little strange to be the slow kid in class that requires extra attention. Hopefully the situation will improve...

Monday and Wednesday I had my first Intermediate 2 Portuguese classes. We've got a nice mix of internationals- Japan, China, Germany, Poland, Spain, and Scotland all in one class. Makes for interesting conversation, especially considering the topic of this course is influences on language. Our first assignment was to try to write in the languague of the internet  (for example: R u going 2?) but in portuguese. quite difficult.

This Thursday was the cherry on top. I managed to get a spot in a Plant Geography/Forest Ecology class that takes field trips every thursday to different forest ecosystems around the state. We started at the beach taking about soil formation and movements of plants during ice ages and then went on to look at sand dunes farther and farther from the sea and how they get colonized by different species. Then we went slogging through a mangrove forest with water up to our thighs and mud that smells of rotten eggs and lots of cool crabs. Our bus broke down a few times and we had to push it to get it started everytime (think "Little Miss Sunshine"). It finally bit the dust in the mountain on the way back to curitiba and we got to spend some quality time together eating bananas and fried manioc stuffed with chicken (coxinhas) at a road side stop.  Overall it was a grand adventure. You know you're in a good group when someone in your class has to bring home two branchs of a tree species because ones female and the other is male. what exactly he's planning on doing with the vegetation I'm not so sure.

Today I'm packing up to go to Piracicaba again. Prof. Stape, my advisor, is going to be in town and we are going to start working on my project sampling plan and what all I'm going to do with myself while I'm here. I'm really looking forward to getting started on my research.  

Alright, that's it for now, i'm off to see some lecture that supposedly is really good, though I have no idea what it's going to be about. hopefully he has a chalkboard.