10/9/12 The day we met the Major Mayor Mare

School is located on the direct left of the National Park Office, and I live somewhere near the intersection of Carlos Mora and Alsacio Northia. I don't actually have a street address.

Natural Resource Management class is focused on the conservation and sustainable development of water resources in the island of San Cristóbal, and I’m really enjoying it so far! We started Monday with an introduction to the class (of course) and jumped into the theoretical framework of a conceptual map for environmental problems. I thought it was pretty intuitive, and we worked in groups for the last part of class to come up with some of the most broad portions of the conceptual map we’d build for water conservation on the island. 

I was surprised, either pleasantly or unpleasantly, today (according to when I wrote it, which is Tuesday, but I have limited internet capacity so I’ll have to try hard to update in a timely and relevant manner) by several things: 

• yoga at 7 am lead by Mick, and Australian guy who was doing sea lion research with USFQ but now is having research permit problems, involved variations of leg pulses and the expectation that doing a headstand would come easily to everyone. I do not like either of these things very much, but yoga is going to be twice a week on the beach for free and I am thankful for that. It’s a wonderful way to start the morning, even if there are unpleasant core exercises with which to contend.
• I didn’t bring a change of clothes for after yoga because I had forgotten that we were going to meet the town mayor during the second half of class.
• Ecuador only has wastewater treatment plants in two towns: Cuenca and San Cristóbal (which doesn’t currently have one running, but more on that in a bit). Quito is the largest municipality in the country and it has NO WASTEWATER TREATMENT FACILITY. All of the water used in basically all of the cities is taken directly from the ecosystems, used, and then discharged back into the waterways - this means it eventually goes into the Amazon or to the sea. Ecuador technically isn’t a water stressed country, but there are really delicate ecosystems here and clean water is not actually renewable if it is being taken and relocated from these ecosystems. This is really, really unbelievable!!
• San Cristóbal is installing the nation’s first bio-wastewater treatment plant in late March of next year, and it’s expected to greatly improve the availability, distribution, and quality of potable water for its citizens. This means they will no longer be taking freshwater out of the lake here - the only source of fresh water in all of the Galápagos Islands - and that they will be reliably providing potable water to its citizens. They are also changing the payment structure so it is not $3 a month no matter the usage as it is right now, but will be a metered payment and parties more able to pay (businesses, hotels, etc) will pay a nominally higher fee (something like $1.20 versus $1 per 1000 liters). 

I am actually pretty fascinated by how wastewater treatment works. I am signed up to give the presentation about the research paper on wastewater treatment next week. 

The meeting with the mayor went well, and he didn’t have much pomp and circumstance. Dress wasn’t an issue after all. Our professor kept calling him the “Major” and Louise, our resident Australian classmate, pronounces the word like “mare”, and thus I have explained the title of this post. He partially explained things extemporaneously and partially went off of pictures on a presentation about the plans for the treatment plant. We had lots of questions for him, and he gladly answered all of them. The idea in our Resource Management class is to come up with final projects that will be selected amongst, and two of the proposed water solutions will actually be pursued in the months to come and our ideas would come into fruition as an implemented measure. 

Also, Billy take notes: I gave a piece of milk chocolate to Genesis today and she was really happy to get it -- but the first thing she did was show her mom, open the chocolate, and then break it into even pieces to share with everyone in the room. I told her about my increasing mosquito bites from the nighttime this morning too, and she sprayed my room for me while I brushed my teeth and left a note saying, “The bomb has been planted.” 

Round of applause for Genesis for being an awesome 11-year-old! She has a dance recital in town tomorrow and I will be in attendance.

This is a picture of the recital - Genesis is on the left!