Epic!

So this trip home was epic. EPIC.

I'll save the stuff from the last night in Cayenne for another post, and we'll start with the trip to the airport. My Creole teacher— essentially the only person I know with a car— came to my apartment and picked me up. We drove to the airport and he told me much more about French Guiana including a funny story about problems with census taking in the department. The short version is that he was in the jungle in the interior without any means of getting gasoline for his car. He found someone who said to him, "Wait here" (like he was going anywhere— he was out of gas in the middle of the freakin' jungle). An hour and a half later, the guy returned with gas and a few other things, because he knew the paths of the jungle and was able to get to an officially undocumented village settled by Brazilians who immigrated to illegally prospect for gold. Imagine, then, trying to do a census on the interior of the largest department of France, when people avoid the main roads and instead rely on secret paths to get to illicit settlements.

We got to the airport with plenty of time to spare. He stuck around for a while, talking to me, correcting my creole (e.g. I said that the airline employee 'spoke to me in English' when I should have said she 'spoke English with me'), and buying me lunch. When he left, I went to board the plane, with no real problems to speak of. After a brief stop in Martinique, I landed in Guadeloupe. And there began the nightmare.

Disembarking was a disaster. We were held in various different hallways, with them not letting us proceed to the airport itself for several minutes at a time, mainly due to us having to go through fire exits. I really don't know why they had us go this way, but that's what they did. In any event, a little bit after we finally got into the airport, we were informed that the flight to Miami was cancelled. I was mortified, as my flight home was unconnected to the flight to Miami, and therefore I'd have to miss it. I didn't have enough credit on my phone to call the airline to switch it either, so I just hoped for the best. Despite this setback I had a pretty good time because AirFrance put me up in a four-star hotel, La Créole Beach. Check it out here. The room itself was over 130€ with breakfast, the delicious buffet dinner was 31€, and lunch was 21€, but that didn't matter to me because AirFrance paid it all. The only thing they didn't pay for was the 4€ bottle of Diet Coke, which I had specifically told the server I was ordering 'because AirFrance is paying.' It was a really nice place to stay for 24 hours, even though I couldn't do many of the fun things like go in the pool or on the beach due to the poor weather.

On our way back to the airport the next day, I made the taxi turn around, as I'd forgotten my wallet (and digital recorder, though I didn't realize it) in the lobby. Once at the airport, things went much more smoothly, except for a further delay in the take-off time. We finally got to Miami after a one-hour stop in Port-au-Prince. By the way, the security at the Port-au-Prince airport consists of one person checking your bag and another frisking you (and a dollop of hope, I gather).

Miami was another story. Quickly making my way through customs, I got to the U.S. Airways desk at midnight, where a sign said they would open at 2 a.m. Rather than trying to sleep I decided to stay up. I spent the time talking to a nice pair of folks who'd met on a flight back from Barbados, one of whom was from the same town that I live in. After chitchatting for two hours, I went to the U.S. Airways desk, which was still abandoned, so I went back to rejoin the two people I'd met, but they had disappeared (one mentioned something about having a hotel room and they seemed kind of into each other). I killed the downtime by shaving and brushing my teeth, eating at Subway, and talking to a very nice Argentinean woman who was visiting her nephew in L.A. At 4 a.m. U.S. Airways finally opened, and I was able to get my flight changed free of charge (though at first they told me it would be $150). From there it was a smooth ride to Philadelphia (where I missed my sister's call to surprise me at the airport), and then to Indy. One shuttle ride back and I was home at last.

EPIC!

Last Day (for a while)

Today was a pretty good last day. Done with all the formal work I wanted to get done, I spent the day mostly having fun and taking care of things that needed attention (e.g. sweeping my room, cleaning the sink one last time, etc.). I spent most of the day with my Creole teacher, who took me on a tour of Cayenne. Unlike other tours that I had done myself, he was able to add personal touches, pointing out where he went to grade school, where he learned to swim, which neighborhoods were ethnic enclaves now and back in the day, etc.). We also went to some of the surrounding towns, which are much less developed and far more beautiful than Cayenne. We stopped at a local cocoa farm which used to be the plantation of the King's doctor in the 1700's. Across the street from there was an abandoned fort, which was underwhelming-- so underwhelming that even the colonial French people never really used it for much of anything. We also went to a beach on a dirt road full of potholes (or 'chicken nests' as we say in French), and we happened to meet a couple of friends of his who were fishing. Just after we got there, they caught a burbot (poson krapo 'toadfish' in the local creole). This fish sells for 25€ per kilo (16 bucks a pound) in France. But as seen in the picture from the web, it's an ugly fish.



After a quick visit to see some Amerindian stone drawings along the road, we then picked up his wife and went back to his house for lunch (keep in mind I was taking lots of vocabulary notes the whole time). At his house I had a very special meal called bouyon wara. Though its name indicates that it's a broth made from the local awara fruit, it's actually more of a stew with smoked fish, chicken and pork. It was quite yummy. The superstition is that anyone who eats it is doomed-- I mean, 'bound'-- to return to French Guiana someday. So I guess it's official.

In a few minutes I'll go to a bar to meet a friend and tomorrow I'll head to the airport, so in all likelihood, I won't post till at least Wednesday night. I do plan to keep posting once I'm back in the U.S., particularly pictures of things that I haven't been able to post yet due to the loss of my camera cord. So if you've enjoyed the blog, keep checking in for at least a little while.

Parépou

Yesterday I bought a container of parépous. Parépous are a local fruit, and I bought them thinking they'd be a nice, refreshing snack. I was wrong, but the results weren't that bad. It turns out that it's actually salty and starchy. It's like eating a cooked potato that tastes like an artichoke. Quite yummy and inexpensive. Below is picture taken from another blog.

Interview!

So here's what happened: A half hour before, I called the interviewer and one of the interviewees, both of whom had asked me to remind them shortly before
and the interviewer could make it, but the interviewee had, for the second time, completely forgotten about it and was far away with no transportation. I arrived at the house of where the interview was to take place, and there I was informed that the other interviewee could not be reached. He was out wandering or whatever. So, while waiting for my friend to call me back to see if she could arrive late bu still make it at all, a Haitian friend of one of the men passed by. We told him what was going on, and he agreed to help us out. So now, I have an interview with two of the same participants, and a third, new participant, but they are all Haitians. Now I can directly compare the changes in speech, if any. It's not the interview I wanted (with two new particpants, including a woman), but it's an acceptable replacement.

Art and conversation

So tonight is one of those nights I really wish I had my camera cord. After my elicitation session, my Creole teacher took me to his friend's house a town over (Matoury), where the friend was exhibiting some of his paintings. Really impressive work, even if the style wasn't always something I'd want hanging in my home. I met the son of an important local playwright (whose book I have in my suitcase), which was kind of cool. We stayed there for a while and they all spoke in creole and seemed impressed with my ability to speak (on the rare occasions when I saw fit to interject). It was a very productive night in terms of my own linguistic competence, which is half the reason I'm down here, after all.

Food, glorious food

Today I fulfilled two more food cravings, since I've run out of food in the house and I forgot to go to the supermarket. The first was for a crêpe; that one was a waste of money. The crêpe itself was bland, the cheese was a weak Swiss (tolerable), and the ham was good but I needed more flavor. I really shouldn't buy crêpes that don't have sugar in them; I always wind up unsatisfied.

Then tonight, I had a local specialty. They're called accras. It's a type of fried dough, but with meat ground up into the dough itself, then fried.They were 8 for 2 €, and I bought one order each of cod (pictured above) and chicken (below) thinking I could eat them all. But I got halfway through both and I was full, though I might heat up some frozen veggies and have them with leftover pasta sauce if I have room and I'm feeling guilty about the amount of fried food I had.

Neglect

My last few posts have been short, and this one will likely not be an exception. Without a means to put up pictures, I have less to discuss in each post. Also, my days are becoming increasingly mundane. Yesterday, I spent several hours in a laundromat. I was able to use the internet there, though, which was nice. I paid almost 10€ for one washing load and one drying load (with a price only slightly elevated because of the internet-- my landlords charge 8€ for the same amount).

This morning, with nothing scheduled, I went back to the library to look at some books that would be helpful. Rather than actually reading most of them, I just skimmed and then took down their citation information, so that I could order them through the library or through Amazon, if I thought they were particularly valuable. I'm hoping to spend this fall doing background reading on the region and on immigration particularly. That should help put things in context better.

In a few minutes, I'm going to have an elicitation session with a professor of English who works on phonetics (the actual sounds of a language), so we're going to go over some sentence types and figure out a few basic intonation patterns. Then, my other Creole teacher will come pick me up and then I think we might go exploring, possibly to Kourou (home to the space center) if it's not too far.

In any event, I'm super eager to get home. I'm already packed, souvenirs for immediate family have been purchased (others will have to wait for my return trip-- I can only afford to take one suitcase with the new luggage prices, multiplied by two since I've got two separate flights). In less than 5 days, I'll be back in my bed with a wide selection of clean clothing to wear. Life will be good.

Gahhhh

Again, no one showed up for the interview. Rescheduled for Sunday at 5 p.m. I might add a person to the mix just to be sure of having even one person show up.

Things that are around the corner

-My trip home!

-A professor of phonetics who will help me with my Creole

-A Haitian restaurant owner who serves local specialties

-A sex shop, a short walk from a public pre-school (spme of you might know that back home, it's the Tea Party candidate whose offices separate my apartment from the sex shop).

Odd neighborhood.

Food experiments

OK, so I think I've mentioned I don't have a way to cook beyond heating things up in the microwave. This has forced me to be creative. For example, I have some pasta leftover from when Jorge told me he'd ask his friend if I could cook at her house (he didn't). So without a means to cook it, I decided to let it soak overnight. Big mistake. I was hoping it would turn out better than my brussels sprouts/lentils/mayonnaise concoction, but no dice. It was not an experiment that I'll repeat.

Bastille Day

Note: the cord to my camera seems to be lost, so no more pictures or videos on the blog till I get back to the U.S. and can figure out how to replace it.

So Bastille Day here was quite dull. Last night however, there were several events, starting with a ceremony honoring a number of individuals stationed here in Cayenne. At one point, a soldier with a big gun seemed to be losing consciousness, likely due to the bright light shining right in her eyes, a light that was there to light up each regiment in the dark. Scary moment. That was followed by a military parade, complete with a helicopter flying overhead, which was cool. Fun fact: the firefighters are considered part of the military.

But today, EVERYTHING seemed to be closed, except for a couple souvenir shops and restaurants (and my internet café). So after a couple hours chatting with Matt and editing a paper, I headed to the beach. I forgot that I don't really like the beach, though, so I forgot my notebook and other reading material. I ended up going into the ocean very briefly, then relaxing on the towel, fascinated by two yellow crabs (one adult, one baby) that kept popping in and out of the holes they'd made in the sand.

And tonight there is some entertainment in the Place des Palmistes, including traditional and hip-hop dancing. That's where I'll go soon. Tomorrow, I have my final interview as well as an elicitation session, and my research goals for this stage of the trip will have been met, which is good, because after the cancellation last time, I got worried. But I'm pretty confident that tomorrow's will go well, and that the trip won't have been a bust.

No post?

I have no idea whether the internet cafés I usually use in order to post will be open during the holiday tomorrow. So it's entirely possible that I won't be able to post. By no means should anyone connect my absence tomorrow with the post about crime from earlier today.

All kinds of awesome

Today I had my meeting with my Creole teacher (who, incidentally, appears to be only a little older than my dad, but is already a great-grandfather!). It started off great, as he gave me a copy of a dissertation that I had previously borrowed through interlibrary loan, but hadn't been able to finish scanning. So now I have it to keep.

We then went to his house, where he turned on the Tour de France in the background. Anyhow, we had a fairly productive session in which I found out all sorts of things that have never been documented in the language, like you can ask a question that translates as 'Who and Mary went to the store?' (and other things that I'll put in a later post). And then he took me to meet his friend, and I ended up meeting the whole Creole-speaking family.

In addition to being a good day for research (which by that point it already had been), at this point it was a good day for conversation. I hadn't really been conversing much in Creole at this point. The elicitation sessions were conducted in French, mainly doing translations, identifications, etc., but when I was with the teacher and his friend (the two main people I spoke to), we spoke in Creole,
and despite a few errors (mainly inserting Haitianisms), they said I spoke better Creole than some people raised here. So I took it to be indicative of several things:

1) I'm all kinds of awesome.

2) I'm learning to compartmentalize the two creoles better than when I arrived. Most speakers of the local creole are exposed to a variety of different creoles, such that many don't even realize when a form is not historically a part of the local creole, but is in fact a recent borrowing from Haitian, Antillean, etc. They learn their language naturally, and generally don't study it in school. I, on the other hand, learned the differences from books, so even when I mix, I realize soon after that I mixed them up and I know how to correct myself.


So with the best compliment I've received since I got here, I decided to treat myself to McDonald's. I'd been having major cravings for that and for crêpes since I got here, so I finally gave in. I wanted to see if they customized it to the region (following Brazil or Surinam), or if they followed France. Answer: France. Disappointing.

Now I'll go spend the rest of the day wandering and reading, in preparation for tomorrow's national holiday, Bastille Day.

Crime

My day started off slow. I had a morning appointment with my Creole teacher, and he called at the last minute to move the location. I got off the bus a bit earlier than I should have, and I ran into a friend on her way to the hospital. She was flagging over a large black woman to ask directions, and it turned out that the woman was Dominican, which was good for my friend, because her French is not good. The woman sent my friend on her way then continued walking with me toward my destination (a gas station), and we were talking and she kept telling me how dangerous it is here, that everyone carries a gun, that it's dangerous to go to Chicago (the local term for Chinatown) at night, and how racist the black people are. Now this isn't the first time I've heard accusations of racism, but it was the first time I'd heard it from a person who was herself black. I myself don't tend to go out late at night, partly due to my nature as a homebody and partly because there seems to be nothing open after 9, 10, 11 o'clock (and I'm sure as hell not going out late now).

I'm not prepared to offer any evaluations of her statements; they may or may not be true. I can say anecdotally that I know someone who says his house was broken into 4 times, and someone else who's never had any problems. I also know that the income gap here is heavily pronounced, as is the rate of unemployment, and that that frequently leads to high crime rates. I always take precautions, never carrying much cash, leaving my passport home (where people need to get past two locks to get to it), wearing clothing that isn't obviously pricey, etc. (don't worry Mom!).

Around Cayenne

Some miscellany:

A crowd gathered to watch the World Cup finals:



A pair of painted buildings. The second one was featured in the local paper.

Entertainment at the big sales:

Two of the many, many bike lanes here:

Rain

I woke up today with no appointments but a desire to work, so I packed up and went to the beach with my notebook and suntan lotion in my backpack. Unfortunately, by the time I got to the beach it was raining. I don't know if I've complained much about the rain. Mostly it's just drizzles, which is actually quite a relief from the oppressive heat (although it's still quite stuffy out with the rain). But occasionally, there are nights like last night, where it just pours. This video was taken just after I completed a blog post last week.




That rain kept me here an extra hour because I'd forgotten my umbrella. Finally I just gave in and got soaked.


The other disappointing part of the beach is that I haven't seen any turtles. This is supposed to be the end of the egg-laying season for the biggest of the turtles, so I shouldn't be too surprised, but I keep hoping against hope that I'll see some turtles coming ashore to lay their eggs.

On the bright side, I did see this tree, known as a kapok or ceiba tree (in French: un fromager). It only blooms every few years, so I'm glad I got to see the flowers.







I also happened to see these crabs. I watched them scatter about around this drain pipe and the stream it flowed into. Mesmerizing.

Oops

Soooo today I went to meet a speaker of the local creole. When I got there and I met him, it turned out that he didn't actually speak the language. D'oh! In any event, he told me where I should go locally to request funds to finance my project when I come back, and that I should go with someone with local importance.

Then I watched Spain win its first World Cup, mqking the Netherlands the only team to lose the World Cup final three times without winning (Germany lost 4 times, but it's also won 3). It was really funny to see all the people gathered in the street watching and overreacting to every little thing. Photos to appear when I can find the cord to the camera.

Verbal smackdown

While wandering around today, I witnessed a wonderful verbal smackdown today. I'm not EXACTLY sure what provoked it, because I stumbled upon it partway through (and several others were standing around staring, so I felt okay about staring too). Essentially a woman was letting a guy have it because (I think) the guy pushed her kid, or manhandled him in some way, because she was saying the guy was big, and the kid was small.

The great thing about it for me was that when I got there, the woman was scolding in French. But after about a minute of the guy just standing there taking it, she moved into Haitian Creole. And another minute of the guy just not reacting or moving, she transitioned to Guianese French Creole. And after that, I'm pretty sure she just got tired and realized the guy was about as remorseful as he was going to be. It was the kind of linguistic event that anthropologists just can't elicit (unless, apparently, we shove children, which I don't recommend and I'm pretty sure is against the rules). I kind of wish I had taken notes. Alas.

Cancelled interview

The work I had for today was cancelled when I couldn't find my interviewer and the interviewee couldn't mae it. I'm going to try to make it up during the week, perhaps on Wednesday since it's a national holiday. Other than that, a normal day of wandering in Cayenne.

Point Buzaré

I stumbled upon this site today. A nice spot for a picnic.

Elicitation session

So today I met with a teacher of Guianese French Creole, a very nice man who spent a couple hours talking to me. We made a map of the different towns in the region, labelled different body parts (eyeball: coconut-eye; iris: middle-eye; pupil: middle-middle-eye), and also went over focus structures, which have a lot in common with Haitian, but have a few important differences (nerd alert: in Haitian, you cannot extract more than the main verb to put it in focus, so you'd have to say something equivalent to She started to run; in this creole, you HAVE to extract the all the verbs, so you have to say something equivalent to She started to run). In any event, it was very useful. I now have to prepare a new set of things to ask about for a future session, because this one lasted twice as long as expected. Tomorrow I have another interview, so I'm hoping that will go well.

Yesterday

Yesterday I didn't have much time to spend online, so there was an abbreviated post. But before that, I had a nice morning of wandering around, first passing by the cemetery and finally finding the path to Fort Céperou, named after a Kali'na king who ruled the area when the French first arrived. It was built as a fort to fend off attakers from the troops who mistakenly believed the land would turn out to be profitable in any way, shape, or form. Today, it is in ruins, but it provides a nice view of the city.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow I finally have an elicitation session with a speaker of the local creole. He actually teaches the language at a local high school, and I'll be meeting with him at 10 a.m. at the school. Tonight I'll work on preparing more materials, in case we get through things fairly quickly.

No swimming?

Occasionally in Cayenne, you will see oddly placed 'No Swimming' signs, like this one:




Why put up such a sign in a green area? Because there is so much water in Cayenne, and so much dirt that gets brought ashore from the ocean, that wild plants take root and grow quickly, obscuring beautiful views and colonizing new wetlands, as seen near the Old Port.

At times, I really wish Cayenne would do more eco-engineering to prevent this, because it would make the city much more tourist-friendly if there were always views where guidebooks say there are. But I have a feeling Cayenne has ceded the tourist attractions to the areas around the city, with more nature and fewer people.

My room

Once my room was clean, I decided to take some pictures so people would be able to see how I'm living.

Cultural Museum

I had planned to spend this morning at the Museum of French Guianese Cultures. However, it was so small, I could only spend about a half-hour there. There was some neat stuff though, including hats that were about 3 feet wide (not pictured) and a vase with a cool face on it. I'll go back next time I'm down here to take more pictures and copy down some words for a future dictionary project.

Then, since I had extra time and the library was closed, I went shopping at the big sales. It was disappointing. Not a lot of good selections, especially for sandals (which I really want).

Then, since my work for the rest of the week depends on others' availability, and since they're not available until later in the week, I had nothing else to do, so I watched soccer and cleaned my room. I also read the newspaper, because the lead story was Cayenne: 2nd richest city in France. And I can tell you, you would never guess that there was any real wealth from being downtown, as demonstrated by this fairly typical building.

The sales

Tomorrow is the official beginning of the sales period here. In France, stors are generally prohibited from running sales except in January and in July (with a few loopholes here and there). And unlike in Paris, where I once said "Prices go from 'ridiculous' to merely 'unaffordable,'" here the sales seem pretty awesome. 5 € for a shirt, 20-50 € for shoes (marked down 70% in some cases), and more. So I'm on the look out for sandals so I can stop being overheated so much, and maybe a new shirt or two. I'll re-post if I find anything good.

Netherlands wins!

What a game! This was definitely the best game I've watched so far. The first half had two of the best goals I've seen, both launched from far away by each team. There was also a brutal moment where a Dutch player went for a header and a Uruguayan guy did a bicycle kick, striking the ball and the Dutch guy's head. There was a nice display of sportsmanship soon after, with the Uruguayan guy clearly concerned for the guy he kicked and a Dutch player patting him on the back to console him. And Uruguay really stayed in it to win it, scoring a goal in the last few minutes and really putting pressure on the Netherlands to stay on offense right until the end. Amazing! And my desire to see a new team win the Cup is now closer than ever to coming true.

Pati pa rivé

Talk about an up and down day. This morning was fun. I spoke to an immigrant from Cuba for about 45 minutes right outside where I post these blog entries. I'm not sure if I've already said this, but at times I wish I was doing an anthropology thesis, because I have really great access to the Hispanophone community here. I'll probably try to get IRB approval (i.e. university approval) to study them for when I come back, just so I can ethically collect data and report on my conversations with them, assuming they don't mind.

I then went to a local high school to drop off a letter for the Creole teacher, explaining why I'm here and giving him my number so that he can contact me if he wants to help me in any way. I also met the principal, who wrote her dissertation on the language (which I had ordered on inter-library loan long before coming here). So there's some leads. Also, I was surprised to see so many students there, since school was out of session. But it turned out that today was the day that all over France, students were receiving the results of the bac, the college entrance exam that all graduating students take. After a brief stop at the supermarket (where I purchased comou and soursop ice cream, among other things), I went home. While home, I made a phone call to the linguist I talked about recently, and I got no further than 'I'm doing a study on Guianese French Creole' when the phone slammed onto the hook. I felt depressed and rejected by someone I was told would be open and helpful, and the snacks I'd bought for the next couple weeks are now half-gone.

In an effort to avoid being hung up on being hung up on, I went to take a hike to places where I was told I'd see great views of the city, but instead, all I found at the top of a very long, very steep climb were signs forbidding entry. But I felt better having exercised strenously, and I went home, where I relaxed with World Cup soccer. I then went to one of my informants' houses, and he told me that he'd set up another interview for this Saturday, when his friends wouldn't be tired from working all day. And then I came here to type this blog post, and on the way, I received a call from someone I'd given my number to, offering to get together to speak in the local creole within the next few days.

After two days of blog entries with the exact same title, I put a bit more thought into this entry's title. It's a creole dolo (roughly, 'proverb'), meaning 'leaving is not arriving'. It felt really appropriate for today, where I started a lot of things, or continued things, but still didn't feel like I'd reached the point I wanted to. But since the day ended well, it's nice to know I won't wake up angry tomorrow.

Long day

Today, Jorge and I went to the doctor so he could have an exam done. Once he was under anesthesia, I went exploring and came across one of the hikes in my guide. It was hard! A LOT of uphill climbing, loose soil going down hill, hot sun, and hard to follow paths. And honestly, it wasn't worth it. But there were a couple of nice views. There was also a pilgrimage site, but since people were there worshipping, I didn't take pictures, except for the one of the lit candles (in the forest, around dried leaves...). The path led to a beach, which was a nice place to relax and prepare some elicitation materials, mainly drawings of faces and parts of the body. (nerd alert) I'm trying to find out the names for a lot of 'unimportant' body parts, such as the pupil, fingerprints, cuticles, etc., as well as the names for the different fingers.



I went back to the hospital and the doctor was very impatient with us. He spoke to us for no more than 5 minutes, mainly just telling us that there was nothing in the test and that we should leave.

Note: there were going to be pictures, but the internet here is telling me no.

Long day

I went to a party late last night with the woman from my building. To sxay I had fun would be an overstatement, but people were nice and one of them even promised to give my number to the person who wrote the last grammar of the local creole, immortalized in the name of this school (http://frenchguianaandbeyond.blogspot.com/2010/06/college-auxence-contout.html). I got home entirely too late and I decided to sleep in.

I woke up this morning and I thought Jorge and I would make a quick stop at the pharmacy and then I'd go food shopping and have a relaxing day. But it turns out all the pharmacies in Cayenne are closed on Sundays. So we had to go one town over, where there was an open one (French law requires that at least one pharmacy within a certain radius be open at all times). We went to the Haitian priest's office to see if he was going in that direction. And there was someone there that volunteered to take us. So we went, and it's about a 20 minute drive. We got there and Jorge said he forgot the prescription at the priest's office. So we call the priest, who's gone, having told his friend to come from 50 minutes away to open the office to get the prescription. So we waited for over an hour, and then, once the prescription arrived we were fifth in line, with each prescription taking a half hour to fill. And then we had to wait another hour for someone to take us home (who was very nice and might help me with the project). In short, a grueling day.

Computer

My computer won't turn on anymore and I don't know why. I do know that blog posts will probably have fewer pictures now, because I used to reduced my 5 megabyte photos to 0.4 MB using a program on my laptop, but now I can't do that and it takes forever to upload the larger photos. I'm hoping that the problem will magically solve itself (it has in the past), but I'm not counting on it.

Montabo Hill

I woke up a bit early today to beat the intense sun to go climb Montabo Hill, an easy hike that I have in my handy-dandy guidebook to hikes in the region. I packed my iPod (for the first time since I got here), my guidebook and my sunglasses and set out. It was a great hike. I saw a few cool animals, including the spider, lizard, and birds seen below, as well as a monkey and butterflies that just proved too elusive for my amateur camera skills. Even though I went alone, I was able to get a few good shots of myself, as requested. I also found some great views of the ocean, including the third picture, which is my new desktop photo.
















Notice the spikes on this tree. In the local creole, this is a pegn makak (literally a monkey comb(er)).

This is a picture of a sponge that magically made its way into the forest.



This was a restuarant at the end of the trail.





There's a bird on the big rock on the right.


This was a gate at a dojo.




(For those curious, this was my old desktop photo:)