In the two weeks since we arrived back from Island Hopping, I have started the fourth of the five courses that I am taking. This one is called Political Ecology, which is a socially-focused study of ecology and human activities. I really enjoy the subject matter and the readings are the most engaging that I’ve encountered so far! We discuss different considerations associated with conservation, the perspectives and histories of different actors in conservation, and the specifics about the political and social history of Ecuador. We took one field trip this Tuesday the 13th to ElecGalapagos (the electricity plant), the miconia forest around the Toma de los Americanos water source of the island, and the windmills.
Instead of describing in detail exactly what I’ve done every day, here are a few pictures. Also refer to the tagged pictures of me on facebook to see a little more.
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| Toma de los Americanos. The pipes are not the best quality... |
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| Miconia trees. This is what it looks like without invasive species around it - the trees should be the only covering. Blackberry aka mora and guava are both really intensely invasive species overtaking the miconia forests here. The National Park has stopped putting intensive effort into the island because the conditions have gotten so out of control, so the University is the only one trying to eradicate invasive species. |
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| Lobos napping under a tree on the Malecón. I saw a group of tourists yelling at another group of tourists for coming too near the lobos one time, and I was glad. |
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| Savannah and I on a kayak. We're not the best kayakers, BUT it was fun. |
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| View of Playa Mann and the University from kayak on the sea. |
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| Amy is Genesis' cousin of, I think, 6 years of age. Sometimes Amy will randomly spend the night. This is the morning after I got back from Island Hopping and Amy had spent the night and we decided we would take pictures in masks by the Christmas tree, which was set up the day after Halloween aka El Día de los Muertos in Latin America, where they commemorate the dead by having colada morada fruit porridge drinks and go to Mass. |
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| Amy and I. Amy is all sorts of energetic. They finger-painted t-shirts later that morning. |
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| My host mom, Dorys, and her sister-in-law Rosie. Rosie is Amy's grandmother and she gets migraines, and when she does Dorys helps care for her. I had a snorkeling date with Genesis for one Sunday but they never came back to the house after going to Rosie's because they were going to get seawater to boil for a vapor therapy-type thing that they do with it for migraines. |
Other interesting things to note about my happenings:
- I’m volunteering at the weekly Friday bike to school program that is being managed by Meredith, one of the graduate students in my class. We get up at 6 am on Friday, go to pick up the rental bikes, and ride off to our assigned posts to wait for kids, and join the group as it bikes to school. Then we all go to school and repeat the process in reverse - we meet the kids at their schools and bike to the stops and return the bikes. It’s a great way to get the kids active and interacting with the foreign university students, as well as to help convince parents that it’s okay to encourage their kids to ride bikes.
- I’m writing a report on English teaching/learning on the island for my Political Ecology class and had some interesting interviews with different players in the system. I interviewed my host mom Dorys, Larry the teacher of the English teachers whom we’ve befriended at Aqui Si (see next bullet point), Anna Mae the teacher at Nueva Era (a night class for English for kids in town), Emma one of the USFQ volunteer university English teachers, David one of the USFQ students, and chatted with some 12-year-olds during a volunteer hour practicing conversation at Nueva Era.
- The Diensthuber family makes me happy when I go around town. Iris is the owner of a restaurant called Aqui Si, which she opened two years ago after moving her three kids and parents from NYC. Her dad Herbert is from Austria and her mom, whose name I haven’t gotten, is from Esmeraldas, Ecuador and they’ve lived in the US for most of Iris’ life. Her kids are two 11-year-old twins who are more mature than most and are named Osiris and Maximis, and a 9-year-old sassy little girl named Mia.
I go by for lunch or walk past and stop by to chat often. Sometimes the kids will see me and my friends walking in town while they ride their bikes and come by to chat as well. The other day, Mia chased me down on her bike during my run to La Lobería and attempted to come the rest of the way with me until she got tired about 5 minutes later. We took them on a tour of the Galapagos Science Center, which is attached and associated with the GAIAS establishment, the week after Island Hopping and ended up eating ice cream and walking them back to their house for the rest of the day.
They have a ton of pets. They have somewhere around 12 chickens, 6 of which are rescue chickens from a factory farm in Ecuador, three cats, and a goat and dog who are the same color and sleep on each other at night. They invited us to Thanksgiving dinner with their family and family friends, but we are going to Santa Cruz for class this coming week. =(
So yes. This coming week is the final week of Political Ecology class, and we will be in Santa Cruz from Monday until Friday and staying at the Lobo del Mar hotel just like last time. People keep talking about a restaurant that serves real desserts instead of the sadly dissatisfying desserts that we try to buy in San Cristóbal.
Stay tuned!
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