Was up 'til about 5 AM last night due to a heavy cough and inability to sleep.

The Thai TV here isn't nearly as good as it was at the first hotel.

Bleh.

Monday, February 1st, roughly 9 AM local time

Sitting in the Great Residence Hotel near the Bangkok airport as I type this. Today was... more eventful than it should have been, let's say. Woke up around 7:30, had a tasty rice soup thing for breakfast, worked on packing and sat around on my netbook. Talked with Denny, John and Mike for a bit too. 10 came, no vans, 10:50 came, Denny called, vans should be there at 11. Well, the first van showed up at 11:30, we worked on packing bags (including the bags we had earlier left at the Bangkok train station), and got in the vans. I slept the first two hours or so, woke up to find out we were lost. Quite lost. The drivers didn't speak much English, but it was obvious from what was going on, we weren't going anywhere and they asked for directions multiple times. Anh tried to see if she could communicate with them at all, she couldn't, so she just started saying extremely vulgar things to see if they'd react to the English at all (oh, Anh), we all got tired and antsy from being in a car so long, especially the people awake for the whole thing, and when we arrived we were quite happy to be done with it. Course, the other van hadn't arrived yet, so some of us sat around and waited while others ate, after some snippiness about signing in, waited, waited, finally they showed up, bags got put in random rooms until we re-figured out where people were staying (Denny had reserved them arbitrarily as he had to do it before we decided where we were sleeping), I walked over with people to see the restaurant, didn't feel like eating, headed back. I sat around my room a fair bit, enjoying the AC and oh man a GREAT shower (they have a soap and shower dispenser, it's great), did some work with Brenna, Nate and Zypy on our literature blog, and that's about it for the evening. Bleh, hopefully tomorrow's transit to Delhi goes better.

Also, NOW I am missing my music. Alone in a hotel room, reading gaming PDFs and chatting online? Yeah, music time.

Sunday, January 31st, roughly 9:35-9:55 PM local time

A Fish, Big Hike #2 (mit Waterfall), and Divide and Conquer

I forgot to mention an event with the fish last night. So after we finished, they were gesturing to Mikey and asking him a question, and we tried to get across “yes, the fish was good, no thank you, don't bring us another one.” Well, it didn't work... they brought another whole fish, Mike had to turn it down, it was so sad.

So today. The Big Hike #2. (Denny apparently doesn't know how many hikes we have. I find that suspicious at best.) Interruption for shower, back to typing. We drove out in those trucks in the backs again, Nate, Becky, Matt, Clay, Anh and I. The wind whipping by was cold, it was dark, it was 5 in the morning after all, but I had long sleeves and my hat, so I was alright. Preparation for the win. So we had that drive, talked a bit, froze a bit, shifted positions a bit, I tried to write observations but when we hit the dust clouds it got a lot harder. (CUT THIS Poor Nate needed to piss the whole time, ended up trying to pee off the back of the truck while we were moving. He got a little bit out before he had to sit again because the next truck rounded the curve, but it relieved the pressure, I guess.) So we got there, had a little break for bathroom and breakfast, which was fried egg on rice, pretty good. We had LOTS of water this time, fortunately, we brought our own, and then they gave us even more. And oh hey dinner so I'll have to wrap this up later.

Saturday, January 30th, roughly 5:35 PM local time, break, 5:50-5:55 PM

So we get back in the trucks, head down a little ways, and start our hike. This was a true tropical wet forest, not like the one Denny lied to us about back at Haleakala. (Supposedly there was one there. We saw no such thing. Dry as a bone.) Lush, verdant, green, so on and so forth. Beautiful. It was very steep at points, but there were lots of trees and such to hold onto, so long as you were careful about what you touched. I was actually surprised at how few things tried to kill me. We hiked down and down, heard gibbons, saw elephant dung, lots of lianas, epiphytes which just created beautiful colors and patterns. Eventually we reached a river, crossed it, got a bit lost, lost track of each other, found each other, guide realized he had gone the wrong way, headed back, crossed the river, walked up the river (boots in hand), the water felt great on my legs. Very warm, very humid, luckily the humidity meant we lost less water than on Haleakala, but I sweated like a dog. My clothes at the end of the day were... interesting. Eventually we got to a waterfall, ate lunch (rice and meat and a tangerine), and swam a bit. Nate got in first, unsurprisingly, John swimming in his WHITE skivvies was... interesting. Eventually I joined, it was cold, what you might call “crisp and refreshing,” but just what we needed after hike. Even climbed up a bit and jumped into the water. Got out, surprisingly no leeches, tried to dry a bit but eh, got dressed, crossed the river again, put boots back on and continued. Now we were going up again, we went on a couple side trails for our guide to show us scenic views of the river and more falls. Pretty stuff, lots of butterflies. Also a lot of bees, especially at the first waterfall, they were rooting around in the firepit, probably for some leftover food or poured out drink. A couple spiders, a snail, lots of ants. Eventually we headed back up the way we came, though I didn't realize this for an extended period. The way back up was... tiring. Not as grueling as Haleakala, but tiring nonetheless. I ended up hanging back and talking to Michelle and Denny about post-college plans, which was interesting. Denny suggested against working at any university, though I'm not terribly shocked. So we got back up, rested, water, went up the last little bit to the trucks, drove back up, and had to wait until 4 to leave. I guess the road is only open specific hours in specific directions. So we chilled there, dried socks and shoes (not enough) people journaled, I got a cricket of some sort of my arm and he climbed me for a long time, I took 65 pictures all told and most of them aren't too bad, either. Hooray for macro settings. The truck back was Caitlin, Matt, Anh, Nate, Liz, Brenna, Clay and I. Our driver was a little bit insane, driving very fast, passing people, it was kind of hilarious. We all got shifted around a bit, I nearly fell out once I think, but yeah. Unsurprisingly with that crowd, “interesting” conversation. I swear the ride back was faster than the ride there, sat a bit, dinner (fish, vegetables, rice [I used a lot of sweet and sour], some other meat thing and more fried egg. Oh, and they gave us pepsi this time) and then back here to write this up. All in all, an excellent hike, though the fact that Denny isn't sure how many more of these we do is... worrying. Liz told him he was “breaking her spirit.” It was amusing. Great shower when I got back, too. I feel like I'm forgetting so much, and it's horrible, but SO MUCH happens on a 6 hour hike, it's hard to know what to say when you get back. Beautiful, though. Well worth the sweat and gross wet feet.

PS at 7:45 PM I also had a chat with John while waiting to leave about his philosophy on life. I called him very Machiavellian, apparently, “divide and conquer” is the answer to every situation. Unfortunately, I was unable to present him with something that he couldn't apply it to. It was very amusing. Who knows, by the end of the trip he may win me over.

Saturday, January 30th, roughly 6:30-6:55 PM local time

We seem to have entered some sort of food-bringing ping-pong-playing paradise. But I'll get there later.

Anh negotiated for us to get a bus, which was interesting. This guy definitely had a Rasta bus – the guy who helped with luggage had a knit cap, the bus was all different colors, the inside had different color lights, it was awesome. He drove us to the first cave of the day, though we took a wrong turn, we got there eventually. We drove through a lot of shrimp farms. Apparently it's cheaper to farm shrimp here and send them to the US than it is to get them from US fisheries. So we climbed up to the cave entrance, which was more difficult than expected, I lent Becky a pair of socks because she couldn't find any, and down the rickety ladder we went. So that was cool, some nice rock formations, some tight spots we had to crawl through, lots of bats (mostly on the ceiling). At one point we did shut off all the lights, which I enjoyed. We climbed out, a little bit treacherous, Liz bumped her head, and then back down to the bus. From there we went to the national park whose name I swear I'll spell eventually, got little boats that we waded out to which took us around the mountain, instead of hiking over the mountain with all our gear. We got there, dropped our baggage off at the front desk while they set up our tents, and ate lunch. Sweet and sour pork, sprite and water for me. Tents set up, we moved our stuff over, and I went and hand-washed laundry. Poorly. Very poorly. First off, I didn't do it in the sinks I was supposed to use, secondly, the woolite was INCREDIBLY sudsy... yeah. Fail. But it was better than nothing, I suppose. Hung my stuff up on the big clothesline we set up (Denny made a bad Bermuda Triangle joke), and got into the ocean. The beach was a lot of ground-up shells, which were... interesting. We also saw a live sea anemone (small), and lots of hermit crabs. Most stayed in their shells but one came out kind of aggressively, it was amusing. Tossed around in the water for a bit, we all almost got taken out by a ripcurrent, and eventually came back in. I kind of considered the ocean my shower. From there it was a hike to another cave, which was at our leisure. Beautiful hike, the planted stuff (pines) on the beach gave way to more a more natural forest, saw a great spider, a few different ants, and most excitingly, monkeys. Macaques, maybe, they were at a distance swinging up the mountain. Climb climb climb, a bit down, it got cooler as we got into the cave, thankfully. Otherwise it was VERY warm, less so on the beach. So we got down into the first part of the cave, this one had a collapsed ceiling so it was open, plants growing in the bottom, beautiful. In the second part there was a pavilion built to memorialize the visit of a king, as well as some ceremonial things and lots of little stone structures, the function of which I'm not sure of. There was also “Crocodile Stone,” which did look a lot like its namesake, especially for no carving, and “poison plants” which were obviously planted by humans. We decided, y'know, just in case you needed them there. Came back out, hiked down somewhat more quickly, and then Matt gave me a “shh” from down below. He was at the same platform where we had seen the monkeys earlier. I came down slowly and saw that there were some in the trees RIGHT next to the platform. So close. It was absolutely amazing, got some good pictures. Some guys came down (I later found out 3 Argentinians and 2 Thai) who were kind of the “ugly Americans” of the area: talking loudly, not looking around much, one of the Thai guys had his cell phone out all the time, in the cave they even climbed up on a large rock to take a picture. So I gave them a finger on the lips, the guy in front caught on and they came down, they saw the monkeys, about 3 got really excited, stayed quiet, were good about it, the other 2 looked bored, but did keep quiet. That was awesome. So we headed down once the monkeys moved on, I ended up with Liz at the bottom when we saw one in a tree right near us. Took some pictures, followed him over, and then a bigger group showed up, climbing and swinging RIGHT over us. The closest I got to them all day, and the pictures show it. Fantastic. Even got to seem them eating a bit, at a range where I could tell what they were doing. Ran into the Argentinians and Thai again, talked to them a little bit more on the way out, and that was that. I napped for 15-20, pretty conked out from the hiking. We had dinner, pineapple pancake (delicious!) and water I filtered with Michelle's pump, at this point I was down to only 50 baht to cover dinner and breakfast the next day. After dinner was class, part of which I spent playing with a ground beetle, Denny “ended” class, then got sidetracked for a period about the epic journey (which was interesting, just funny that he had officially said we were done before that). I showered, sort of – there's a bucket and you pour it over yourself.

Gotta finish later, class.

Friday, January 29th, roughly 12:30-1 PM local time

So, finishing up. I dealt with that semi-shower, went to bed in the tent, used my coat for a pillow and there was some sort of small towel or something that I put under my back (wasn't long enough for my whole body, but oh well). That's what I get for lacking a sleeping bag? It wasn't too bad. Warm, humid, but listening to the ocean while you fall asleep – the real ocean, not a recording, not a white noise machine – is nice. I woke up around 7:20, plugged in my netbook to charge (there was an outlet in the light over by where we had class in the log circle), and sat down to write some notes on the ground beetle. I found another one, even tried drawing it... that went poorly, when a bat landed at my feet. Literally. He seemed injured, didn't fly, just crawled around. I think he was eating ants. There were small red-orange insects on him, parasites I'd guess. I watched him for a while, finally went to get some other people, and he was gone. I thought he'd recovered and flown off, so I went over to breakfast, had fried eggs (better than expected), I thought they were 20 but was only charged 10 and I do feel bad if I ripped them off but I think there was a miscommunication about 1 fried egg versus 1 order of 2 fried eggs. I hope I didn't rip them off. When I came back people said they'd found the bat again. He crawled over the logs, apparently, and was now climbing up a tree. Not long after I got over there he hung upside down, we got some pictures, I finished packing, tried to hand sweep the tent less successfully than hoped, found a small lizard, class again...

Friday, January 29th, roughly 1:55-2 PM local time

Okay, that whole time wasn't class. I got distracted. So we finished up the tents, got back on some boats, went around the mountain quickly, and from there onto two minibuses. I looked outside, watched, interesting enough, slept a fair bit of the way. It was supposed to be like 4 hours, but it ended up being only 2 or so. We got here, fairly nice place. It's all one big room with 20 mattresses spaced along two walls, three bathrooms (Thai style, which means you dump buckets of water to flush and put toilet paper in a waste bin, but! Real showerheads, which is exciting). Lunch was absolutely frakking fantastic, they kept bringing more and more food. Green curry, some sort of meat raddish soup, delicious delicious chicken, watermelon, rice (so much rice, I heard “more rice?” in a Thai accent more times than I can count), and we can even trust the water here. We also have wireless, which none of us expected. Matt had to do some voodoo IP magic to make it work, but we're in. So we had class, took a short break, had some more class, and then I've spent the rest of the afternoon in here, relaxing, chilling. Dinner was fish (as in, a whole fish), some meat we argued the identity of but which was probably chicken, another soupy thing, and of course more rice. Then they brought out watermelon and pineapple, too. I like this place. Now I need to work on my prompt for Biomes and get some sleep, 4:30 wake up for hiking.

Friday, January 29th, roughly 6:35-6:45 PM local time

Hopefully this won't take long, because I don't have much time. Low battery. So we carried our baggage down and got set loose on the town. I went to AC 2 for the internet and had rod knaa chicken, the stuff Mikey had the other day. It was pretty tasty. Also lime juice, I ordered a shake, they mixed it up but I didn't really notice, it was tasty tasty juice. So I hung out there pretty much until it was time to head out, went over to the pier, we sat around the pier for a long time, people there trying to get us to buy food, looking at amusing pictures from the other night (so, so bad...) and so on. Eventually the boat showed up, I slept most of the ride, also talked to Zypy some about the morality of alcohol which was interesting. Got off the boat, borrowed 5 baht from Mikey to use the bathroom, and met this crazy Welshman. I mean, seriously crazy. John had made a friend on the boat it seems. But I'll add to this with info about him later, I have some written down on him, don't want to forget other things. Eventually the bus arrived, we got on, Nate sat next to me... and the crazy Welshman and his girlfriend sat behind me. Dammit. So that was uh, an interesting bus ride. That got us to the train station, where we had about 4-5 hours to do nothing. I sat around the station guarding for the first hour while others ate, my headache increasingly annoying, talking mostly to Mikey and Matt. So many dogs, unsurprisingly. Around 8:30 I headed out to dinner, pad se-ew with chicken, water, and most importantly, free wireless. They also had free showers, which I should have taken advantage of in retrospect, but didn't. So I got some stuff done, Nate talked to his parents a little, Mike got some stuff done, Matt got some stuff done, and then I farted around talking to people and such for a while. I had to come back to the train station to find Anh about a eh-hem certain picture, but she was out getting gatorad for Becky. By the time she returned I found out she had already taken care of it, and not to lecture her – which I wasn't going to anyway, but yeah. So I headed back up to the diner place, the people there were SO nice, they offered to let us keep our baggage there and just relax and sit there until our train came, so nice. We didn't, too much effort to move the baggage, but I did stay there on my netbook until about 11, hence the battery now. It was sort of a nice counter to the “BUY MY STUFF BUY MY STUFF BUY MY STUFF” of a lot of Koh Tao, and I suppose Bangkok too. Then we got on the train, I slept (poorly), we woke up a station early, I lay down in someone else's cot for a bit because we had all shifted, and we got off the train. Onto rocks/large gravel, and just above a disgusting trash pit. It was kind of like when my mom and dad got dropped off literally on the side of the highway by a bus, there wasn't really anything where we were. But we walked over to where the actual train station started, slept on some benches (I only found out this morning my bench was actually 2 benches put together, which combined with the fact that it's a ceramic tile bench too narrow for my body and that I used my shirt as a pillow instead of my coat for some reason explains why I slept so poorly), woke up, sat around a bit, went over and got 6 little fried dough balls for 5 baht, and saw a cool little playground at the train station. They have a swing shaped like a barge with a dragon head at the front, it's nifty.

Thursday, January 28th, roughly 7:30 AM local time

I woke up before 7:30 today, despite not going to bed until 2. Craziness. I feel pretty good, though, most of my congestion and headache from yesterday are gone. I packed some, went to breakfast, had french toast with honey and orange juice (eating with Michael and Caitlin), I went back down the hill, helped Denny get internet at AC Two, and came back up, showered (so, so good after doing the hill twice up and down), finished packing, edited my writing essay (very little, only changed a couple of words. Turns out it was pretty good after all). And here I am now. We leave here around 11 or so, then I have time off (read: lunch and internet) until 2, when we go to the pier. If I'm lucky, I'll see Frasier and Rachel to get a picture of them down there (I did not, sadly). Then it's a bus to the train station, 4 hours waiting at the train station (class), train, not even sure what, and we get to our beach that we're camping at. I think. I've sort of lost track of the order of the next few days.

Wednesday, January 27th, roughly 9:45-9:50 AM local time

Last Night on Koh Tao

So we're going to go out for dinner, but we can't find the key to our room. Mike and Denny head down to see who has it while I hold down the fort. Mike comes back up and we find out it was in a holder next to the door the whole time, Denny was exchanging money for us down below. On the way, down Mike and I meet a Canadian from BC, Eric. Nice enough guy. We ate at the AC resort, Eric joining the other table of us in fact. I had fried rice chicken and a lemon shake. Tasty shake, too, though they almost forgot to make it for me. Matt criticized me, “you can't expect them to make you everything you order at a restaurant. How dare you ask for what you ordered.” Very amusing.

From there... well.

A very, VERY special thank you to Rachel and Frasier. A thank you as well to the divemaster who gave me a ride on his motorcycle at one point.

Hellos to Loraine, Chris, Eric, Wade, other brit talking to Wade, Dani, Swaffy's two friends, the fire dancers (and a thank you for letting us be ridiculous), Ronalto, his brother (Cedro? I'm sorry, I don't quite remember), random woman with short brown hair (I hope you found your friend eventually, or someone better if that's what worked out), Julian, and anyone I forgot. To those I forgot, or those whose names I forgot or misspelled, I truly, deeply apologize. I did have a great time talking to and hanging out with all of you, even those I only talked to for a minute or two (short-brown-hair woman comes to mind).

Post-Shower Musing

You know how they say it's the little things in life? I will never again call a hot shower a little thing.

Tuesday, January 26th, roughly 7 PM local time

Diving!

Gonna be slow to type, Denny, Nate and I are talking to our dive leader, Connor.

Woke up this morning naturally, about 8:30 or so. Came down to breakfast about 8:50, sat with Mike, Matt and Caitlin (Becky was skyping her boy, or attempting to anyway), had a banana pancake (really a crepe) and a water. Tasty, though service took forever as usual. Koh Tao's so beautiful, no one does their job very quickly, we figure. I spent almost two hours wrestling with various wireless networks, dropped off some laundry for 80 baht, and after my 3rd or so attempt I finally got in, once Mike told me the password for the one place was all caps. That helped a lot. I also had a headache and my nose was stuffed up, so kind of a frustrating morning. Got some food around 11:30, pad thai with chicken, barely finished it in time to make it to our meeting at noon (we actually got the food around 11:45). Got suited up, everything together, went out in a little boat to a bigger boat, got on that and sat up top. There we met our dive leader, Connor, Irish guy. Cool guy, very animated, little twitchy in a way – always moving some part of his body. Nice guy. We went out to the first dive site, Chumphon Pinnacle, known for sharks. My ears hate diving, especially my left ear, but Connor showed me a way to rub behind the ear that helped. We went down, saw some fish (I didn't see a whole lot, still fiddling with my ears), but I did see at least FOUR bull sharks. At a distance obviously, but still. Amazing. I did see some fish – I'd be looking down to keep track of the group, and then I'd look left and realize I was missing hundreds and hundreds of fish. It was beautiful. We had a hard time seeing coral, too high and not quite enough visibility, but obviously far better than Nelson's. A lot warmer, too. Came back up, reverse block unsurprisingly. Still, amazing to see the sharks. Brenna had to come up a little early because her fins were no good for the current, but that's life. Got up (with a little trouble getting my fins off), chilled, heard a briefing about triggerfish: aggressive, it's near mating season, apparently they like to come at people. You let them chew on your fins and then kick them, apparently. Connor said sometimes they go out themselves to the triggerfish nests and purposely kick them around just for fun. Then we dove again, the current pushed us around, I had a lot of trouble getting back to the group but got there eventually, had some issues clearing my air spaces – same old, but still, worth it. Saw AMAZING fish here, so much coral, so many fish, some clams, beautiful stuff. We went through a swimthrough – I managed to cut my hand on coral, sadly. My tank banged against the top of the tunnel, but fortunately nothing was living there. It was cool, but definitely scary at the time: I had so much trouble getting my buoyancy low enough to get through. Overall, though, my buoyancy was much better the second time around, 5.6 kilos is apparently a good number. Came up, saw some amazing walls of coral, great stuff. Came back up, got on the boat, chilled, looked at a fish card and got some things down, and came back here. We washed our stuff off, got stamped, and talked to Connor for a bit. He told us about other stuff nearby, how fishing boats were going to destroy Koh Tao's diving, some sites back in Ireland, how the Thai own places that the Bhutanese work at here on Koh Tao, and then Denny and John talked for a while about environmental work for the state, college administration, school administration, all good. Denny's heading up to change money and then tonight we are DEFINITELY partying. Apparently it's Australian Day and all the dive instructors wanted us to join them at Chopper's.

Tuesday, January 26th, roughly 5:30-6 PM local time

Hoo boy. Lots to add.

Getting to our rooms was... hectic again. We didn't know who was where, we didn't know room numbers, rooms got split up, we got driven all around not sure where we were going. 2 rooms got set fine, the other 2 (me, Swaffy, Denny, Nikki and Kanako included) didn't do so great. Eventually it got worked out though. I had some trouble communicating with the guys, Anh kept telling me to cut down my English and I just wasn't sure how to phrase things. Bah. It all got settled, anyway. I went out walking in search of wireless, went entirely the wrong way for a bit, discovered various things about, finally got to the Hippo Bar & Grill, grabbed a water and tried their wireless. Something was fritzy, I think on their end, and it was only later that I found out some others on the trip were enjoying a bar not far at all from where we were staying, with free wireless, no problem. Bah.

Koh Tao is hilly. Especially up by where we're staying. It's a lot on the calves, but it'll be good for me, I suppose.

So after all that walking around stuff we headed back to the place we ate brunch at, got all our dive stuff registered for tomorrow: our PADI cards, sizes for BCDs, that sort of thing. Took a bit, but we just chilled and talked, they were playing Jack Johnson (a whole album in sequence, very strange) so that was nice. Talked with Nate about music a fair bit. After that I tried to come back up and grab my swim stuff, realized I didn't have the key, went swimming in my shorts. We stayed close to shore but had a good time, lots of wrestling and throwing each other, a few sandball fights (less pleasant, at least in the long run), and the water just felt FANTASTIC after all the sweatiness of being outside on the island. Vince awarded me MVP of the day, I'm pretty sure because I blocked Nikki while three of the guys were trying to throw Kanako and Nikki was trying to help her. I also tried to throw Becky, which ended about when she twisted my finger – didn't hurt too badly (especially after what I'm used to from Sensei), but it got her point about being worried about her two-piece across. Came in after that, went to dinner at the AC Resort, got a dish very similar to what I had for lunch in addition to a strawberry shake and a sprite. The service here is... interesting. Dishes take forever to get to the table, and they come very spread apart, so the first few people served will finish before the last few people get their food at all. The food's delicious of course, but it can be irritating. I haven't been one of the last yet, I order local Thai and I think that helps, but I do feel kind of bad. After that I went next door to the AC Bar to try to get the wireless, not realizing the restaurant was actually where the good wireless was. I had a White Russian at Johnny B's suggestion – it is, in fact, delicious. It's true. So I sipped on that, fiddled with the wireless and gave up. The bartender was a brit I think, not much older than me (21 maybe?), and next to me was a guy, 24, who lived in Oregon and Alaska, he was talking to another Brit who was in her late 20s. They all sort of had their conversation going, I was more on the fringe, but I got some bits in here and there. Politics, parenting and responsibility, 90's cartoon shows, diving, all the really important things in life. Also met a dive instructor named Neal (Neil?) who's been here 16 months now, lives on the island. We only talked briefly, but he was the only one whose name I got, so that's that. I came back up the hill, showed Denny my journal which is woefully under what it needs to be (as expected, but now I have a better idea what to do to fix it), chilled with Matt, Mike, Caitlin, Becky, and Allen for a bit. Unsurprisingly, the conversation tended towards the absolutely horrific, especially some of the worst dregs of the internet. Yes, even worse than what you're thinking of. We came over to class, talked for a bit about class, after that dealt with Scuba Club, and now here I am. Tired. Reading first, but sleep soon, I think.

Monday, January 25th, roughly 8:55-9:05 PM local time

Koh Tao

I'm here on Koh Tao, the Turtle Island, at a restaurant just next to where we're staying. The checkout time there is 11, so we can't get into our rooms yet. We woke up this morning on the train, waited quietly for a bit, got off, waited at the station for a while. I grabbed a roll with some sort of filling, and John got some tasty dough ball-type thing that he shared too. Eventually the bus came and we all got on, a double decker. Sat there quietly next to a guy in a Metallica shirt and camo pants, slept part of the ride, half-watched The Mummy 3 part of the ride, and got to the ferry. It was a looooong pier. Ridiculously long pier. We got to the high-speed catamaran, didn't see much room downstairs, headed upstairs and sat/stood on the deck (just plastic stools, not much there). The wind felt great, the ocean was beautiful, the islands around us were lush, it was a fantastic ride. There's this color that occurs when the sun shines off the right ocean, sort of a gold-on-blue, I'm not sure the English language has a good word for it. It's absolutely gorgeous, I'd never seen it before. We saw a lot of flying fish especially. At one point we got into rain... rain on the ocean is an interesting thing, especially when you're going through it so fast it comes at you sideways. I had been wondering what that dark patch on the water was.... eventually we got to Koh Tao, boat pulled into a small island, dropped a few people off, then dropped us off on the island itself. We were ASSAULTED with people offering us taxis, it was insane how many there were. It was almost hard to walk through them, quite frankly. We just shook our heads and said “no, thank you” and pushed through, eventually finding a spot to wait for our transportation. Unfortunately, this was right behind a truck with a loudspeaker blasting a recording about a Muay Thai Fight Night, which led to me explaining to Nate some of my objections to Muay Thai (as it is in the modern age, that is, not the art itself). Eventually the first truck pulled up, half the group got in and went, the rest of us waited a bit, second truck came in, we piled onto benches in the back of a pick-up (Denny mentioned a real name for this specific type of truck but I don't remember it now), and headed up. The driving was a little bit insane, very fast, very hilly (which meant we couldn't see very far), narrow roads... a bit reckless, let's say. Fun though. We got to the resort, they told us about the checkout time and suggested we grab some food, I had Pad Se-ew with chicken, which involves both absolutely delicious noodles and fantastic chicken, along with a watermelon lassi, which is a sort of fruit-milk-drink thing. It was tasty. Some people headed out for the beach and such, but I'm desperate for a shower after the night on the train, so I'm waiting a bit to get into our rooms first. That, and I'm a little tired of carrying around my massive backpack. But yeah, Koh Tao is absolutely beautiful. The water's outstandingly clear, there's amazing plants, tomorrow we dive and it's going to be fantastic.

Monday, January 25th, roughly 10:55-11 AM local time

Train Ride, and Brits

On a sleeper train right now en route. I'm supposed to wake up at 3:15, so I really should be asleep, but ah, well. The experience was worth it.

We got on the train, me sitting with Denny. I switched with Brenna at Matt's insistence that she would get tired of Denny, always being near him. She was ambivalent, but Matt literally grabbed our tickets. Talked with Denny, a Canadian woman here with a tour group, mostly British, whose name I didn't catch, and a Thai student whose name I won't type for fear of butchering it too badly. I do remember it, just don't have a clue how to spell it. She was very helpful, telling us about etiquette on Thai trains and bags and things. About to graduate high school, she's interested in science and thought high school was harder in Thailand than in the US based on her friends. I'm not going to argue with her, it's probably true. She asked Denny who his best student was, and when he said they were all good, she asked who had the highest scores. Very indicative of the different philosophies of education, I think. Denny, of course, talked about us all having different strengths, I made a joke about me leaving the conversation and her asking again. (She also said she had poor English, but I thought it was some of the best I'd heard in Thailand.) Talked with them for a bit, also to Killian, one of the British guys here with the tour group. He was playing a card game called Shithead which I haven't ever seen before. I headed towards the back and met Will, Mike and Imogen (our Thai friend thought Will and Imogen were part of our group, which was how we got started talking – I brought her back to meet other kids from the trip). Mike was drinking a screwdriver that was about 2% orange juice, the rest vodka. Not very good vodka, either. Apparently the three of them had a series of Travel Scrabble games on this whole trip, and tonight was the big night of the last game. It was very fierce competition, obviously. As they got to their game, I let them be and talked to Sophie, Amy, Maddie and Leigh (“Lee”). The first two from Hampshire, the last two from Sussex. Imogen and Will were from Buckinghamshire (I think?), Mike I never asked. I ended up talking to those four girls for probably a couple hours, covering the whole range of topics: what we saw in Thailand (Elephants Helping Haiti sounded cool, elephants with baskets in their trunks for donations), education in our respective countries, alcohol, marijuana, Amsterdam (yes, related), the lack of trains in the US, differences in our accents and words we use (things like “lift” and fries, chips and crisps. Leigh had fun with this, being an English major, and they all enjoyed me saying “bottle” and then trying to say it the English way. Apparently, Sussex is the least accented in England, kind of like the Midwest in the US), and I don't even remember all what else. At one point a bug was crawling near me and they all freaked out, I of course picked it up and started examining it, assuring them all it couldn't be poisonous because it was brown. Then I explained warning coloration and why it was important and so on. Got to show off a bit of biology. Will and Imogen had joined the conversation by that point: Mike nearly won Scrabble, but Will used all his tiles first and won on the points deducted from Mike and Imogen and added to him. It was a very tense final round. All in all, a great way to spend an evening on a train, really cool people. Hopefully they'll be reading this whenever I get around to posting it and they find wireless. In fact, I'd still be talking to them if we hadn't all gotten tired and I felt like eh, I should get a LITTLE sleep.

Sunday, January 24th, roughly 11-11:10 PM local time

Went for dinner just across the street with Mike, Matt and Nate, though others joined soon, got pad thai and a sprite, 40 baht all told. Delicious. A cat peed on Mikey's leg, Liz one-upped by pointing out that yesterday, a little boy peed on her. (Apparently he was peeing on the street and she walked across it. I pointed out that it was her fault for walking into it. She said “I was not in the wrong here.”) Came back to the train station, grabbed some delicious ice cream. Matt and Mike bought meat on a stick, Matt made me eat one – very bony. I went to the bathroom... I guess the best bathroom I ever paid 2 baht for, anyway. When I come out, everyone's standing still and the national anthem was playing on the speakers. I take a few steps, confused before I figure out that EVERYONE is standing (employees notwithstanding), and I stand still and look at the portrait of the king, which seems to be appropriate protocol. That stops, I come back and sit. Michelle points out that it's no different than standing for our national anthem, I point out that our national anthem doesn't play at a prescribed time every day in public places, and MORE relevantly, the national anthem wasn't weird, it was the national anthem immediately after coming out of the bathroom that was weird. Or not so much weird as surprising.

Anyway, got a 22 baht 7up and waiting for the train now. We board at 6:30, train leaves 7:30, we get to Koh Tao at 4 AM. Then it's cushy resort time, and hopefully wireless.

Sunday, January 24th, roughly 6:05 PM local time

Golden Buddha

Bags taken care of, we headed to the Golden Buddha. Another gorgeous huge temple. I'm just astounded by the temples here, every aspect of their building is beautiful. The 2nd and 3rd floors had exhibitions on the Chinese in Thailand, specifically this area, and the history of the Golden Buddha respectively. I was tempted to spend a little more time looking at the different periods and styles of Buddha art, but decided I could look it up online and research it myself later (and more effectively, since I could save results.) Interesting stuff, the exhibition on Thai of Chinese descent was built very immersively. You walked through the “hold” of a ship, then into an early Chinese-in-Thai village, and so on. I liked it, good way to set up an exhibit. At the beginning was a video of a Thai of Chinese descent family, grandson and grandfather, talking about their family history and such. Sort of interesting, I think they were supposed to be sort of the “everyman” generic descendents of Chinese immigrants. Creepy commentary on the king though, so much “that's why everyone loves him” and “His Majesty has done great things for our country” and so on. Hooray for propaganda? The 4th floor had the Golden Buddha itself, another enormous, beautiful Buddha statue. Apparently it was plastered and lacquered over so they didn't know it was gold for centuries, potentially. I took lots of pictures, and on the way out saw the guy from the train station again. Walked over to the other temple there, more beauty, more pictures, left, took a wrong turn on the way back to the train station, reoriented myself and here I am in the train station again.

Another general note – pop bottles here are very tall and skinny. It's different and makes it hard for me to tell how much is actually in them. It's the little things.

Sunday, January 24th, roughly 5:05 PM local time

Train Station, and goofy wireless network names

At the train station writing this. We had free wireless briefly on Luv Luv Jubu Jubu, but they secured it. Luv Luv Luv ^o^ isn't working for some reason, sadly.

Allen, Anh, Michelle and I went out for lunch. Wandered a fair bit, I had eggrolls in a spicy sauce, a juice (delicious!) and a 7up afterwards for 20 baht each, 60 total. Either Thai food isn't as spicy as I had heard, my tolerance is higher than it used to be, or I didn't get authentic Thai. It was spicy, sure, cleared my sinuses, but not as bad as I expected by any means. A thunderstorm started on our way back to the hotel, so we got moving. Allen and I got in at 12:49, finished packing quickly (we did most of it beforehand), and headed downstairs. We were the second last pair to get there, Nate and John took even longer. In fact, we ended up giving up on waiting on John and headed out through the thunderstorm. It was pretty heavy, and I was in my coat I haven't worn since Alaska, so I was sweating too. Happy fun time. We're at the train station now, waiting to check our bags, after that we'll have time open. There's a crazy bakery here with all kinds of bacon danishes and chicken and cheese croissants and other strange pastries. I grabbed a donut, it was tasty. We talked to a New Yorker for a bit who was down here exploring, then going on a meditation retreat and then volunteering near the Burma border, along with some time in Hanoi and maybe Angkor Wat. 10 weeks all told. Pretty cool.

Sunday, January 24th, roughly 2:15 PM local time

Thai TV

Thai TV is... interesting. I've already mentioned Scooby-Doo and the pro wrestling. I think there's an entire Thai Pro Wrestling channel, because it's always on. We've been watching a fair bit of Boomerang (on the rare occasions that we're actually in the room, anyway). Besides that though, it's a fair bit of trying to find the English language channels. Last night I bumped into something called Channel Z, which just said Channel Z and had psychedelic patterns over the screen. I watched that for a bit to see if it changed... I'm sure it did, but not until after I gave up on it. This morning I saw some Chinese Swing on Channel V, which was cool, and then we've been watching the MTV-ish channel. It's an interesting mix of American stuff (“Falling For You,” “When the Wheels Come Down,” “My Bloody Valentine,” which is a song now, not just a band, different artist) and local stuff. My favorite so far was definitely the Thai Chick Pop Rock Duo. I think that tune would be stuck in my head forever if it was in English. We also caught some Thai political TV in English briefly, whatever was going on, it was one three different channels. Other than that it's about what you would expect, the occasional kung fu movie (badly dubbed even in Thai), other sorts of movies, incomprehensible childrens' programs, some sort of Animal Planet-style show with a vet, except the hosts all have huge gauges in their ears and goofy hats, what appears to be a soap opera, Bleach (on “Channel Gang Cartoon”), Evan Almighty, local music channel, news, an exercise program with a very intimidating looking host (think Thai Rasputin), Winter Olympics coverage is big here, an Indian channel (I think?), something called “Strawberry Cheesecake” which has a bunch of attractive young women and... a military official? Okay, maybe I lied about it being what you'd expect. In other news, Thai opera, more American movies in Thai, medical show, “Strawberry Cheesecake” again (a lot of shows repeat, but only “Strawberry Cheesecake” is odd enough to mention), The breakfast place usually has ESPN on, I even saw an LA Lakers game the other morning. One channel has a sign language translator in the corner, which is cool. This show appears to be Tom and Jerry with a CGI alien and polar bear. At least I think that's a polar bear. Maybe it's a dog. The alien has lightning powers though. Not like Tom and Jerry, I lied, the alien is telling the... mammal to turn the TV on and punishing him for failure. With tentacle smacks and lightning powers. Yeah, that's kid friendly. Hunh, that channel said “sustainability.” Back to Channel V, I can't understand a word but its bumps for itself have the COOLEST visuals ever. I could watch these bumps for hours. And I come back to the music channel, showing American (okay, Irish) music I don't recognize right now.

I'm calling it a cultural experience, sitting in bed in my hotel watching TV.

Sunday, January 24th, roughly 9:30-9”45 AM local time

Watching Thai Pro Wrestling is absolutely hilarious. For one thing, the guys tend to be horribly out of shape, for another thing, they're a whole lot worse at faking it than American pro wrestlers are. Though the two I'm watching right now are head and shoulders above the guys last night. They were horrible.

I realized I didn't do a travel or hotel report from before today, so, here's that. Nothing too interesting on travel. I watched Sideways, slept a lot, read a bit, laptop died, watched the second half or so of Finding Nemo, had to go through security again in Narita airport, everyone freaked out (excitedly) over the bidets in Narita, slept a lot on the second plane (which had far worse radio, sadly), whatever. We didn't have to get visas, which was nice, but going through immigration involved a very long line. When we got to the hotel at some ridiculous hour, 1:30 I think, we had to give them our passports to get the room keys. We got to our room, Allen sat on the bed and... I don't even remember his exact reaction, but it was funny. See, this bed is FIRM. I mean, ridiculously firm. I actually think it's probably good for my back, and it's not a problem to sleep on it, it's just kind of funny. We flipped channels for a bit, I was amused by Thai Pro Wrestling, and then we watched Scooby-Doo and went to bed.

So, today, after my last entry. Anh, Swaffy, Allen, Nate, John and I went out for dinner. Swaffy had noticed some place earlier in the day he wanted to try out and we went there. It was this restaurant that was open to the street, not too big. They pulled together two tables, we sat down, ordered food. The place was kind of chaotic, we got the wrong food first. Then when the right food came, we mixed it up ourselves. I ended up with someone else's duck, which was absolutely delicious, then we got it all sorted out and I ate the pork spare rib that I had actually ordered. I think I could eat Thai pork and Hawaiian pineapple every day for the rest of my life and be happy. Or maybe Thai duck. I had a beer with a dinner, local (Singha), it was pretty good. John, Allen, Nate and I were all amused when we ordered a 70 baht (just over $2) beer and got a 40 oz. We toasted “to Thailand.” After we ate we paid and headed out to explore a bit, walked past a bunch of scenes similar to what I've reported already. Crowded streets, edging around trucks, dodging motorcycles, ignoring street vendors. Eventually we went past two guys, one playing some sort of instrument that looked like a harmonica with reeds coming out of it and the other dancing. The dancing guy grabbed Swaffy and they danced together, Nate and Allen joined, we got some pictures, then tried to pay. They were a little more insistent than American street performers, Allen didn't have any small bills, I was going for my coins and a 20 baht bill fell out of my pocket, which they took. What I was going to pay anyway, so it worked out. I have to give them props, actually: Allen offered a 50 and they turned it down. I also managed to burn my forearm watching the performance, not noticing the cart behind me. Minor burn, but irritating. After that we walked some more, stopped in a 7-11 (not kidding), and came back to the hotel. Allen gave some money to a beggar en route, which is good in its way, but at the same time I'm a little worried about him. Based on what I heard from Carver about India, it's just not an option in a lot of places. We had class, the literature course, wrapped up Measuring the World (very, very sparsely) and talked about the plans for tomorrow, and due dates for the rest of the trip. It's so hard to work on homework during this trip, there's so much going on and so much amazing stuff we do every day that we get back to the hotel room and it feels like we've already done a full day of work (or more). Enjoyable, awesome stuff, to be sure, but there's a lot less sitting-in-my-room time than there was at Hiram. As it should be, obviously, but the essays and blogs and prompts are starting to catch up to me.

One interesting thing about currency. There's nothing below a full baht, no cents. In addition, similar to the Euro, smaller denominations are coins, not bills. But while the Euro is just 1 and 2, if I remember correctly (5 euro is a bill, right?), the baht in coins goes up to 10 baht. I just found that interesting.

Anyway, I'm pretty conked out. Some people are heading out to the bar but I'm in my room, writing this, going to read a bit and then crash. Tomorrow morning will be breakfast, essay and journal work with exploring if I have time, lunch on the street, and then we have the afternoon out with Denny before we take a train to Koh Tao.

Saturday, January 23rd, roughly 9:55-10:05 PM local time

Bangkok

If I had written a blog entry every ten minutes today, I still wouldn't remember everything I wanted to put down. If I wrote a hundred entries on today alone, I still wouldn't be able to convey everything I wanted to convey.

I thought early in the day that I wish I had a video camera, because no text and no photographs can get across what it's like to be in Bangkok. But even a video camera wouldn't be good enough, there's not only the sights and sounds, but the smells and the feel of the place. And the tastes, but I'll get to that. We got here last night and the first that struck me once I got out of the airport was the sheer amount of exhaust. Cars, vans, trucks, motorcycles, mopeds, buses, tuktuks, every vehicle imaginable is on these streets, and you can SMELL it. This morning was similar, but then you start to notice other smells. The food cooking all around you, most of it unidentifiable, the occasional cigarette, the antiseptic smell of a clean store you walk past. Did I mention how much food was on the street? This place makes NYC look like a podunk hillbilly town with its street vendors alone. It's absolutely amazing, not just food and drink, but art, chotschkes, shoes, sunglasses, wallets and purses, and a million other things I've already forgotten were out there. Sure, those items can be found on the street in the US too, but not to this amazing level of abundance. We walked for a bit this morning, being overwhelmed by the busy-ness of the city. It's not just all those vehicles I mentioned earlier, it's the pedestrians, it's the tuktuks and motorcycles squeezing their way through the pedestrians, it's the pedestrians walking around the cars and vans to cross the street, it's the trucks dropping off goods for vendors while motorcycles and pedestrians both try to get around them. Eventually, after asking directions a couple of times, we got to the river. It's a pretty wide river, fairly choppy at times but mostly calm, and extremely busy with boat traffic, both commercial and private. Then we got on our first of many boats of the day, and it's interesting, because the pier is floating too. You have to watch your step. Took that boat to Wat Pho, an absolutely enormous temple complex and one of Bangkok's three big Wats. It may be the most beautiful place I've been in my entire life. The Reclining Buddha in the main building is on a scale that I can't describe, and unfortunately my camera was being finicky, too. That reminds me, I should mention, Johnny B. taught me a little bit of more advanced camera stuff today. Nothing fancy, just the basics of shutter speed and aperture control, but in the day of auto settings on digital cameras fewer and fewer people are using that kind of thing. I didn't play with the aperture at all, but moving the shutter speed around really helped some of my pictures. So I wandered this absolutely gorgeous temple complex taking pictures, looking at the cats (one or two had lost parts of their tails, poor things), noting the amazing amount of detail in the art, the literally dozens (hundreds?) of golden Buddhas... there's no way to describe it. The pictures aren't NEARLY enough, and the text obviously isn't going to match up. Suffice to say it was absolutely amazing. In the main building, with the Reclining Buddha, I paid 20 baht (60some cents) for a donation and dropped coins into the pots as I walked along. I wasn't really sure what the proper procedure was, so I just tried to mimic the people around me and prayed (as much as I ever do) in my head to myself. All over the complex there were people praying and prostrating, but not being sure of the etiquette I just stayed out of the way. I regret that I can't explain better what it was like, but wow. I also stopped at the gift store to see if I could get a foo lion to match Alex's back home, but no such luck. (Yeah, they had foo lions and dogs on the temples in Thailand. It was interesting throughout the day, seeing the Japanese influence, Chinese influence, Western influence, and the native Thai stuff mixed in. The Prang – you'll see later on – was even influenced by Cambodia). From there we headed back towards the boats and just near the pier Denny let us loose to get lunch. John, Vicente and I got pork, rice and veggies from one of the vendors there, John even got a picture with him. 30 baht, so about a dollar, plus another 30 for a sprite (John had a beer, I had a sip, it was alright, nothing special). VERY good pork and rice, though. Absolutely delicious. We walked around a bit more, I had a fish ball from Anh (weird texture, but tasty once I got used to it), picked up a small leather pouch for 169 (in retrospect I should have haggled, but then again it was still cheap), Allen got a... well, let's call it a “fertility totem.” Yeah, we'll go with that. Then it was time to get on another boat and head to Wat Arun, another one of Bangkok's big Wats, and one that Denny hadn't been to yet. It was smaller, but also gorgeous. A lot more white in the buildings. Also, here we learned a lesson. There were some of those stick-your-head-in-the-hole-take-a-picture things. Allen did so, and only found out afterwards it was 40 baht. “So, Allen, what did we learn today?” “Don't do ANYTHING in Thailand, it costs money.” Worth it for the humor though. Wat Arun used a lot of broken pottery in the designs, gorgeous effects and really interesting. We climbed a Prang, this massive tower with probably the steepest steps I've ever been on. Easy after Haleakala, but still impressive steps. Again I was struck by the sheer level of detail, taking pictures of the surrounding towers every square inch had some intricate design or small statue or something. Went down (carefully) and explored the ground level some more, saw some interesting ants, beautiful stuff with plants, rocks, and water, again, just gorgeous all around. Nikki bought a display case with some beetles, a true bug and a scorpion, which was amusing. From there it was back to the boats, this time to a longer, narrower boat (which was not nearly as easy to get into or sit in) which took us on a tour. Bangkok's very interesting, there will be a string of poor-looking houses with a rich one stuck in the middle. I'm sure there's neighborhoods and lower-class areas and upper-class areas, but there also seem to be some outliers. We could really tell on this boat trip how much the locals rely on the river, too, the houses have their mailbox on the river, every house seemed to have its own boat (and many had a “driveway” of sorts), kids played in the river and jumped down from bridges into it, plants grew floating on the top of the water, people fed the staggering amount of fish. We stopped at the Royal Barge Museum, I was the only one who paid the 100 Baht fee to be allowed to take pictures. These barges were absolutely huge, amazingly ornate, with beautiful figureheads (including a multi-headed dragon with heads growing out of its heads. I'm not kidding.). The lighting was poor and the subjects ENORMOUS, but I took the best pictures I could. That took maybe 20-30 minutes, it wasn't very large, maybe just over half a dozen boats. Then we got back into our longboat and headed into more “back alley” canals, seeing lots of local dwellings, some restaurants and bars, some sort of dance studio/martial arts school that tried to show us an exhibition, but we declined. At some point along the river, our engine stalled. The next boat passing us stopped and gave us a jump. In the middle of the river. I'm not kidding. Allen got some pictures, too, it was awesome. So after that we went along, though the boat stuttered a bit. Around that time my camera batteries finally died too, so sadly no more pictures for the rest of the ride. It was truly striking how lush the riverside was, even in the middle of the city there was practically a jungle growing. It must be a beautiful place to live. We got off that boat, thanked our pilot, and were set free. A group of us explored for a bit, constantly considering dinner but never getting around to it. If anyone bought anything, I didn't notice. Again, the traffic, the weaving, the smells... oh, I forgot to talk about the feels of the city. See, Bangkok's crowded. Not only crowded, but humid. I mean, humid. Very humid. It's just one more layer of the experience that I can't explain to someone who hasn't been here. It's so muggy, the sky is incredibly smoggy: in fact, I just saw the sun for the first time today. (Oh yeah, it rained briefly when were at Wat Pho. Forgot to mention). I almost bought some juice, and the fruit looks OH SO DELICIOUS – but we're not supposed to buy anything we can't peel, so I had to pass on some fantastic looking strawberries, grapes and cherries, which was very depressing. Eventually we made our way back to the hotel, I raced Nate up the stairs and started this blog entry because I have so much to say and am afraid I've forgotten half of today anyway.

This is what David would say the journey is all about: experiencing the other. Encounter with a capital E. Something truly different. I think after this, Western Europe's going to feel like Cleveland Heights.

Saturday, January 23rd, roughly 5:15-5:40 PM local time

PS, roughly 5:45 PM local time

I forgot to mention the dogs. Bangkok's fully of dogs: shaggy dogs, skinny dogs, puppies, old dogs. Mostly adorable. Our hotel has two small guys, I'm not sure of the breed, in fact. At Wot Aran, there were two puppies playing, biting each others faces lightly, digging for food, it was ADORABLE. Kaoz, you would have loved it. On our walk back we saw a woman selling puppies too, they were playing at first but then sleeping all in a pile in a dolly basket. Also adorable.

Whales, Iao Needle, Shave Ice, and the end of Maiu (and the US)

I never got around to journaling last night, which is a little unfortunate, but I'll do the best I can. In the morning we went to a NOAA marine sanctuary facility and learned about humpback whales, some general information and then a fair bit about the threat of entanglement and how they deal with it. Very interesting stuff, it would have been worth it for either part of the presentation alone. Even after the whale-watch the other day I learned a lot more about the whales, the different subpopulations and their migration patterns are especially interesting. What really grabbed me about the whale rescue work was how many of their techniques had been borrowed or adapted from the whaling industry. It was really interesting to see methods used to kill whales in the past being used to save them today.

After that we went to the Iao Needle, a geological formation in the rainforest of Maui. Unlike the last “rainforest” we were promised, this one actually was a rainforest. Far too many plants to keep track of, though we didn't see much fauna. The most interesting find was when Nikki saw a small brown lizard, which I managed to get a couple pictures of before we scared it off. She and I were both checking the water for invertebrates, but no luck. The needle itself was enormous, a pillar of earth just slightly separated from the rest of the mountains. The entire area was intensely green. Down below, they had made a “cultural area” of sorts to show some rough layout of an indigenous village. There wasn't much there, only a few signs, but I think I actually preferred seeing it laid out with little explanation. The system carrying water from man-made pool to man-made pool was surprisingly complex, but I'm not sure if it was based on ancient techniques or a modern innovation (it used PVC piping).

We came back to the condos, had lunch, sent some things home (I had some... creative packing. Enjoy, mom and dad!). We had the afternoon off, so Clay, Liz, Becky, Caitlin and I walked out to get some shave ice. It was absolutely delicious, an excellent choice. I spent the rest of the afternoon just lounging, dinner was mostly just an attempt to wipe out our left-overs. We had a ridiculous amount of brown sugar left, so John caramelized a bunch of fruit, but that didn't get finished and there was still a full bag of brown sugar sitting around, unfortunately. After dinner we went down to the professors' condos for 45 minutes of preparation for leaving and class. We discussed Haleakala in the Biomes course. Most of my notes related to elevation, but we learned that what really mattered was winds bringing moisture. I haven't been very good with winds, historically, so I'll obviously need to work on that for the future biomes. (My altitude notes weren't wrong, they just weren't the driving factor behind the plant growth, or lack thereof). Apparently there really was a rainforest there two years ago, so we discussed what could have changed that as well, Denny and David are wondering if Maui might be in a drought. But the big lesson was definitely winds bringing moisture, and how land formations blocking the wind affects the life there.

After that it was back to the condo for cleaning, sitting around and trying to eat whatever we could to get rid of it before we had to throw it out. Woke up at 4:45 this morning, finished up the last few things, cleaned the condo and here I am at the Kahului airport. Our flight for Honolulu leaves in less than an hour, then we have a three hour layover, and from there to Tokyo, from there to Bangkok. We're supposed to have wireless in Bangkok, but I'm not holding my breath.

Leaving the country for 2.5 months today... it's an intense thought.

Thursday, January 21st, roughly 7:10-7:20 AM local time

Free Day

Today was a free day. Set my alarm for 8:30 to get some errands done, earlier than I might have liked. Funny thing is, I woke up on my own around 7:30. Spent the morning setting things up and sitting around, half-watching movies on the TV, lots of time on the balcony enjoying the air. (The movie we saw the most of was Unfaithful.) Left around noon, the library was closed so I had to go to an internet cafe to print, then got the rest of the errands done. I asked a guy for directions after the library was closed, just some guy who ran a small stand. Very friendly, before I talked to him he was offering two other guys some recipe – cool guy. Worthy of mention. So I got my errands done, walked back, sat around. Very relaxed day, pretty beat from Haleakala still. For dinner each condo did one section. The mixed condo made fruit salad, the girls made quesadillas, some potatoes and also some salad, and we made an apricot ham. I only partook of the fruit salad, quesadillas, and apricot ham, but it was all quite good. Ed Lyman, who we're going to hear talk tomorrow about whale entanglement and other topics on whales, also came up to talk to us briefly. And that's about it for today, really. Mostly just a quiet, relaxed, in-the-condo-sitting-and-recovering sort of Tuesday.

Tuesday, January 19th, roughly 11:30-11:40 PM local time

Haleakala

Today was bloody intense. We woke up at 5:30, got ready, and headed out at 6:30. Couple hours drive I slept most of it, to Haleakala. Went to the visitor center, heard a bit about the area (it's an erosional valley from a combination of wind and vulcanism, not a crater), got some suggestions we had already heard from Denny, the ranger was impressed with how prepared we were. “Slow” group went first, about 5 after 9, and “fast” group went second, about 20, 25 after. The hike overall was 11-12 miles, starting downhill, then uphill, then downhill, then finishing out uphill. The hike down was pretty intense, saw some interesting plant patterns. There were some small ones near the top, then nothing for a while, then it got a lot more dense, more abundant, more diverse... I've got more detailed notes I might put up later. It was really interesting to see the change over altitude, though, especially in really short distances. We finally got down to a flat area, walked that a bit, then up the cinder cones – that was hard again – and then down the cinder cone... and then up another cinder cone... Then we saw a hole, kept going. There's some fantastic stuff to see, the colors are absolutely amazing. Not just normal sand, but yellows, reds, browns, some really weird rock formations... lava cools weird. Very tiring, took a few breaks here and there, especially when we found shade.

By the way, forgot to mention. The reason I put “slow” and “fast” in quotes is that the groups rapidly broke down. We mixed and remixed, I was walking with every person of the 20 (David and Sigrid didn't join) at one point or another, as one group sped up or another slowed down. Sometimes I made an effort to stay with a specific person or group, other times I just went at my pace and stuck with people or not, whatever happened. There are some amazing photos of all this, by the by, they'll be up... eventually. Like all the photos, haha. So we took a break at this cabin, ate, drank some more water, got a bathroom break. No potable water there, though, so we couldn't refill our water. Denny told us to take two water bottles. That was distinctly not enough.

So a bit of a break at the cabin, and off we go again, in groups as we please. It's easy going for a bit, my feet felt better, more or less level ground. The path was never really easy, as mixed in with the dirt and sand was always rocks of one size or another, sometimes the path was all rocks, sometimes just a few thrown in as surprises, right when you felt safe. A few stumbles, but I never fell. And then the switchbacks started.

Oh god, the switchbacks.

See, we had to go back UP again. The hike started at about 10K feet, then went down to a minimum of about 6K, and then back up to 8K where the vans picked us up. By the by, this WHOLE time, we're above the clouds. Yeah, we're looking DOWN at clouds, not in a plane, just hiking. It's a really intense image.

So to get back up those two thousand feet, there's a LOT of switchbacks going up the mountain. Heavily vegetated, which was a nice change, but Denny said something about a forest. There was no forest, no plant bigger than a fern or large bush. No trees, which means no canopy cover, which means little shade, except when the switchback happened to block the sun for you – more rare than we might have hoped. Not to mention, going up again, I think the altitude messed with me more here than it did at the start. Sure, I had some headaches, a bit of throbbing, but on this trip back up I almost hyperventilated a few times. Not really happy. Hiked the switchbacks, rested, hiked, rested, tried to figure out where I was on the map, had no idea, waited for Denny, had him show me – not nearly as far as I might have hoped – hiked, rested, you get the idea. The higher I went, the more I pushed myself. Not the best idea, but I wanted to get to the end. At the map break I had used up the last of my water and just wanted to get to the vans where I hoped there'd be water waiting. The switchbacks seemed to be endless, they just kept going and going, and I had to really work on controlling my breathing, but breathing through my nose only helped a lot. I was sitting with Matt, Becky and Caitlin when some hikers passed the other direction and told us we probably had half a mile to go to the parking lot. Well, actually, we saw a sign not too much later that said .7 miles, but still! Less than a mile left to go! Exciting! I jogged a few parts, I was in such a rush to get to the top. I finally, finally reach the cars (we could see them a ways off) and...

No, Sigrid had already given away her water. I got some from someone else, I don't even remember who, when they finally got up there. We started clapping for each person that showed up, most of us were so beat. (A few people didn't consider it difficult, which just made it worse). Finally, FINALLY Denny made it to the top, obviously he had been bringing up the rear to keep track of us all. We get a group picture and drive off.

I sleep most of the ride, wake up to find out we're completely lost and driving IN the airport. We pull into a gas station, fill up, some people grab drinks, we try to follow Denny and lose him, loop, get back to the gas station, call Denny, and find out he's standing in the driveway waving and dancing to signal it to us. Somehow it was straight ahead, he definitely turned, no idea how that happened. Him dancing was pretty hilarious though. So we get in and we're eating at a place called Da Kitchen, local Hawaiian food – real Hawaiian, not touristy stuff. We wait outside for a bit while they get tables together for 22 people, then we get in, get water and island tropical iced tea (the only drink with free refills). I ended up ordering chicken teriyaki, which was DELICIOUS. The tea was a little bitter, but the sugar packets all had “uplifting” (read: saccharine) statements on them, so I started collecting them. Ate my chicken teriyaki, spent a little time trying to practice with Anh's chopsticks, picking up sugar packets. Asked for a set of chopsticks, ate my rice and what was left of my salad (papaya seed dressing is delicious, by the way) with the chopsticks. So, hopefully, I'll be semi-competent in Thailand. Anh assured me it wouldn't make a big difference, but Kai's been nagging me about it for months so I figured it was worth it to impress Kai, even if I don't impress any Thai. Stopped at the store for the last shopping of the trip and came back, were I enjoyed a shower and have spent the rest of the night chilling with people and playing DJ on youtube on my netbook in our condo.

Monday, January 18th roughly 10:45-11:10 PM local time

Black Rock and Whale Watching

Today was busy busy busy. And utterly amazing.

Woke up early, 7:30, got ready, headed out to Black Rock to snorkel. It's the richest part of the island, lots of shopping, but also great snorkeling. Last trip they cliff-jumped here, but this trip there were signs against it. Some did anyway, but I didn't after seeing the snorkeling... but I'm getting ahead of myself. So I headed out, waited for a bit, it ended up being me, Swaffy, Anh and Liz snorkeling together. We headed out and near where the rock jutted into the water, at the edge of the sandy beach, there was a LOT of coral. So many fish, too... some people saw an eel and a stingray, I missed those, but I saw lots of huge unicornfish, urchins (including one I hadn't seen before, a blue one), what I think were probably Sergeant Majors, some surgeonfishes, maybe some triggerfishes, and most exciting of all, six cuttlefish all together. They were brown and white splotchy at first, but after watching them for a bit I dove at them and they turned stark white and jetted away. Very cool. (By the by, I've decided “to Humboldt” is a new verb meaning to do something you probably shouldn't, just to experience it yourself, most often applied to scientific endeavors. Like scaring cuttlefish on purpose to see the color change.) Swam around a bit, and even more excitingly, heard whalesong. Yesterday I'm not so sure about, but this was DEFINITELY it. So, so cool. Truly amazing.

Came in a little earlier than I might have otherwise to write things down, trying to make sure I remembered as much as possible. Didn't manage to figure out all the fish I saw, but I did confirm a few, which was great. After that we played in the surf some more, letting it crash us around for a bit. Mike's extremely good at predicting the good waves, and riding them well. I personally prefer to go low, riding them high is fun, but intimidating. As confirmed later that day when we noticed a woman, clearly injured, not too far from our group. A few of us offered aid to her people taking care of her, Caitlin ran to get someone, Nate offered water, and Nate, Liz, Anh, Brenna and I (if anyone else helped too, I apologize) helped break the surf. See, she was still in the zone where the tide sometimes hits, so we used our backs, along with one guy from her group (who said they were from Cincinnati) who first thought of the idea. Eventually the medical folks got there and took her off on a stretcher. She was clearly in immense pain, it was uncomfortable beyond belief to watch, but she could still move her arms and legs so I don't think she'll have any permanent damage. I hope not, anyway. Good luck to her and her (family/friends/whoever she was with). I wish we could have done more to help, but at least we were able to do something.

Amusingly, in a way, it was less than an hour later when we were in the surf again. I pointed out that we were engaging in the EXACT SAME BEHAVIOR we had just seen the potential negative results from, and in fact I did ride one wave high and end up landing on my face (no damage beyond scratches, fortunately). After that I went back to riding them low. So fun, stupid or not. Ate our packed lunches on the beach and headed back up to the vans. Zypy forgot her shirt and hat so she had to run back and grab it, I guarded the bags that she left behind to get the stuff she left behind... heh. Examined the local plants while I was sitting. Then it was off to whalewatching.

So we hung out for a bit, I had a delicious delicious Maui Breeze (mango and strawberry) smoothie and resisted the urge to buy a cheap carved turtle, talked to David a bit, he gave me a good idea for the group writing thing, and then got on the whale-watch boat. Not much on first, but then we got to a whale and her calf. At first she had two male escorts, then only the one. The calf was really active, lots of breaches, it was amazing. He got CLOSE too. Amazingly close. The mother stuck around, a few fin slaps and such, but no big big displays. Still, amazing, wonderful experience. Crazy. Later we saw some other whales, a competition pod of males, another female and calf, but that was about it. Nothing as amazing as that first bit that we lucked on out. I've got some okay photos, but others have better, naturally. Talked to a professional photographer for a bit, talked longer to Josh, the guy on the boat's microphone. Oh! I almost forgot. They also put the hydrophone in the water and we got to hear whalesong that way. It was wonderful. So I talked to Josh for a while, apparently he's from New York. I think he was trying to recruit me a little bit, I said I was a bio major and he said “this is right up your alley then,” and when I said I'd miss snow he said “that's what I thought too, but...” He's from New York, apparently went to music school at a small college up there and then did this. Cool stuff. The most interesting part to me personally, though, was finding out about Koho'olawe. Known as the “Target Isle,” it was used for a while as a bombing range by the US military. Now they're doing work to restore the island, which is of course difficult between the immense damage done and the unexploded ordnance still on the island. I think I might like to volunteer them, maybe after I graduate from Hiram. It just seems like a really good, worthwhile project. http://kahoolawe.hawaii.gov/ by the way. And www.pacificwhale.org for the non-profit research and education group that ran the whale-watch.

So we got our free posters for going on the boat and now we're back in the condos, the girls are cooking some sort of chicken dish tonight. Tomorrow we have to leave at 6:30 for what sounds like the hike of a lifetime: we start at 10K feet up, cold, move into a blazing hot rainshadow desert, down to 7K, and then go back up to 8K through a rainforest. It's apparently at least 7 hours long and beats you up, but what a fantastic experience. 12 miles. Gonna sleep well tonight... or at least, I certainly hope so.

Sunday, January 17th, roughly 6-6:35 PM local time

EDIT: January 18th, roughly 11:15 PM local time

I forgot to mention Josh's humor. The best one being as follows. He talked about how, even once a male humpback had earned "primary escort" position with a female, he still only had a 10-15% chance of mating with her. The second or third time this fact came up (it was relevant every time, I promise), he said "I'm sure a lot of you guys can relate." Naturally, I had been thinking of that joke the whole time, so it was nice to hear him say it. So, so true.

Interesting night after dinner. Dinner was fantastic, by the way, kebobs (Johnny B, with help from all) and palenta (Clay), and brownies (Swaffy) for dessert. So so good. Pineapple, onion, peppers, beef, chicken, mushrooms om nom nom. The pineapple here is amazing, it's so true. I could eat it for weeks. After dinner Mike, Michelle, Matt and I went with Denny to grab a couple things. Got them, and the credit card was denied. The cashier tried to explain to Denny about traveling and calling the bank and all, and Denny explained as calmly as he could how he had taken care of that, multiple times, already. On the ride home we got a tirade about it, it was kind of epic. Followed immediately by Denny apologizing, of course. After that I just chilled in the room mostly, chatted with Anh, Nate, John, Anh and Swaffy, and then just Anh and Swaffy, which was cool. Looking forward to the busy-ness of the next couple of days, snorkeling tomorrow and the big hike Monday.

Saturday, January 16th, roughly 10:55-11 PM local time

Hiking, Waves (and whales) and Cooking

Today was utterly fantastic. Class in the morning, got a little heated but that's life. Lunch in our condos, sammiches, and then we went hiking. Denny told us we were snorkeling, but it was actually hiking. Woops.

We drove out past where the map said we were allowed to drive in a rental, but we went anyway. Denny is how he is. So we drive, the road's good, the road's good but narrow, lots of pulling over for others and having others pull over for us, some with gratitude, others not. That's life. Then the road was narrow and bad, and then we were driving on lava flows. The area we were driving through was really interesting, about 200 years' old lava flows. Still extremely rocky, extremely uneven, very little vegetation. I've got lots of photos which I'll post sooner or later. We saw some birds. So finally we get to the place, it looks about as inhospitable as anywhere I've ever been. Denny says we're going to hike for about a mile until we find a place to snorkel. We saw a lot of interesting things, some nice little coves. Lots of urchins, some limpets, some other things too. I managed to get pictures and even video of some ants dragging a caterpillar, which like the crows in Alaska was a behavior I'd heard about but hadn't had a chance to see before. Fantastic. All the coves were too rocky, had too harsh of waves, or had too many urchins (I almost stepped on several before I realized they were there, woops), so we never snorkeled. Still, though. Also saw a few goats in the distance, thanks to David, which was unexpected. Met a couple from Columbus, David and I talked to them for a bit, which was cool. They should be following this blog, in fact. Hi, Doug and Mary in Maui! (If I messed up your names I sincerely, sincerely apologize.)

So finally we got back in the vans and headed to a sandy beach. Not much by way of life. Anh saw a few fish, but I just had a great time in the water. The waves were enough to tumble in, let them push me around and up to shore, lots of that. It was utterly fantastic. Found a piece of horn coral and a cool shell, too, which I kept. Swam around a bit, and most exciting of all... David heard some whales and told us. So I tried, and tried, and tried, and it was probably over half a dozen times but I finally heard it. Very faint, very high, kind of a clicking way in the background, but I just managed to. I think it was almost out of my range altogether, actually. (Yes, David is many decades older than me and probably can hear a higher range. Shhh.) It was awesome. Saw one blow earlier, too. Might have been porpoises, we're not sure. So I played around a lot more in the surf, took several pictures of Becky and Caitlin on their request, saw a couple egrets and a cat on the way out. Drove back and John asked me to go guard a grill. I got talking to people, mostly Canadians, golfers (apparently Canadians coming to Hawaii is a big thing, who knew). So that was cool, one woman had been to Tanzania, the Phillipines and Australia before and she was interesting to talk to. Then a family from LA here for a wedding came down and was cooking, one of the women had been to Giza and she was a lot of fun to talk to. The guy, John, was really entertaining. He asked if I was doing all this for vacation, I said no, I'm taking classes, and they're actually a bit more academically demanding than I expected, and he said “oh, woe is you.” Johnny B. was taking forever to come down, I didn't realize they were assembling all the kabobs, so I gave up on guarding and just chatted. When he finally came down we went over to a different set of grills which was completely abandoned, which worked. I played runner for a bit, going up and down and carrying messages, met a guy named Dan (also Canadian, here surfing) at the grill John was at, and then got a much-needed shower. All in all, a fantastic day, looking forward to dinner.

Saturday, January 16th, roughly 6:50 PM-7:30 PM local time, with long interruption in between

First Report from Maui (Snorkeling!)

Snorkeled today. We went to a shop to pick up some necessary gear, and the beach near us had pretty choppy waves. So Denny asked someone there (the poor women, there were so many of us all at once, such a small store) for a suggestion and we got one. Drove there, a little bit of shenanigans getting there, but we did nonetheless. It was utterly fantastic. Lots of fish, coral (mostly dead or dying, sadly), a few different kinds of sea urchins, and the best part was seeing two turtles. Wow. So much wow. We went out pretty far, Jake and Becky both had waterproof cameras so there's some great pictures, it was wonderful.

Felt so good to swim. I wish I spent more time in the water. It never fails to make me feel great during and after I get out.

Mixed condo is making spaghetti and stuff tonight, my condo is making kabobs tomorrow. Class and more snorkeling tomorrow as well.

Friday, January 15th, roughly 5:40 PM local time

Airport Thoughts

A guy in the check-in line here at the Honolulu airport said a good thing. This is a paraphrase, not a direct quote.

Herb's a young man's thing. You gotta go through that phase, puff puff puff. Then you wake up one day and go 'okay, that was fun, time to move on now.'

I don't think I've ever heard it better put. He was black, apparently sings a mix of Gospel and Rastafari, lives in Hawaii and is never going back to the mainland (because of what he has to deal with there, as a black man, that he doesn't have to deal with here). Interesting guy. Talked about smoking ganja in a pastor's office and realizing he was definitely going to hell, and how gospel music is incredibly cutthroat. He said he can't do straight gospel because of some of the things his fellow Christians do. Very entertaining. Then he sort of went off on a tangent about subliminal messages, and then we were done checking in and parted ways.

You meet interesting people in airports.

In the Honolulu airport right now, our flight for Maui leaves at 9:40. Then we shop for food and go to bed. Tomorrow, snorkeling apparently. The flights today were productive, in a fashion, I got a lot of reading, a little bit of sleep. Last night I only got a few hours (on the couch), so it was nice to crash a bit more. We had so much time (4 hours or so) in Anchorage, which fortunately had free wireless, so I got a lot of catching up done there too. Here in Honolulu it would be $7 for 2 hours, so, bleh.

It's so warm here! And so nice. The airport even has an open air section. It's amazing.

Little worried about no getting enough sleep tonight: we got to Maui at 10:17, then we shop, then we sleep, then class and snorkeling tomorrow. But we'll see.

Yeah, that was disjointed. Hopefully the condos will have wireless and I'll be around more, otherwise I'll be finding a coffee shop or bookstore to take advantage of.

Thursday, January 14th, roughly 8:10-8:20 PM local time

More whales!

More whales!

Different this time though. We just heard the blow, it being dark and all. For some reason, though, I actually was more impressed by/enjoyed more/felt this one deeper than the sighting. I don't know if it's something about the metaphysical nature of darkness, my expectations being different, or just that they were clearly SO CLOSE. I mean, so, so close. It was absurd. Chris Siddon, the speaker on king crabs and other invertebrate fisheries and a colleague of Denny's at Shoals, joined us for dinner tonight, and just as he went out the door he popped his head back in to tell us we could hear whales. I went out and listened to them for a bit, Denny and Liz as well, then I came back and managed to round up Brenna, Ahn, and Kanako. Vince was out there on the phone, too, so he heard them as well. David and Sigrid came out a bit later, Sigrid just heard the last one. I heard quite a few, and... wow. It was just utterly amazing. I'm not even sure why, but wow. Just standing there, in the dark, listening, was fantastic.

On a lighter note, we had two huge bowls of salad along with our dinner of quiche tonight (followed up by ice cream: chocolate moose tracks, chocolate chip cookie dough, and mango, I partook of the first and last myself). At one point everyone was pounding on the table urging Jacob to eat a last bit of salad, it was almost like they were trying to get him to chug a beer. They all clapped when he was eating it, it was hilarious. (I think someone else put the little bit on his plate). I had two helpings of salad and called it “doing a public service.” So now we're just finishing cleaning up the shrine, Ahn is gleefully vacuuming, the dishes are all done excepting what we'll eat out of in the morning, people are packing up everything. In less than 12 hours, I'll be en route to Maui. Talk about a fast pace.

Wednesday, January 13th, 9:40 PM

Broad Thoughts...

Just finished up the morning's dishes. (Thanks, mom, for making me handwash dishes as a kid.) The stopper fell off the catcher, and I had to fish it out with a knife. That was super fun.

Less of a daily report, more of some general thoughts...

I don't miss some things as much as I expected to. Other than the occasional song off of someone else's computer (mostly Lady Gaga from Kanako and Nikki and Final Countdown from Matt, but even those are uncommon), I haven't listened to any music this whole time. And that's been... fine. Which is weird, considering how twitchy I get without music for long periods of time at home. Especially without MY music. As it is, though, I'm glad I didn't transfer any over to the netbook. It's weird how comfortable I am without the music. Course, there's always some sort of white noise, especially from our heater in the corner, but still. New and different and interesting.

When we were in the library I thought about checking my webcomics briefly, but decided against it. Another thing that I don't miss as much as I expected. Oh, when I get back, I'll definitely spend a few nights digging through 3 months of archives and catching up, and I'll enjoy it, but I'm not too worried about it while I'm here.

One thing I definitely don't miss is waking up to an alarm. I set an alarm once this entire time, and woke up before it anyway. I wake up more naturally here, the noise level outside the room hits a certain point and that's when I get up. Of course it probably helps that 11 PM-8 AM here is 3 AM-noon home time, so I'm not really switching my rhythm that much. It feels great to just wake up when my body wants to, though. I wish I could pull it off at home. I actually feel up and alert right when I get up, and I don't doze nearly as much (though there have been a couple times, don't get me wrong).

The rest of the crowd just got back and EVERYONE immediately commented on the smell of bacon. I am amused.

That's all for now. Hope everyone is doing well. I know you Hiram kids are back at school, so someone toss me an e-mail, eh? Take care, everyone.

Wednesday, January 13th, roughly 5:25-5:30 PM local time

NOAA

Today we went to NOAA. Pretty heavy snow, we had a brownout this morning, but we made it anyway. Met a Hiram alum who was a student of Denny's, no surprise there, and then heard a series of talks from scientists there. Very interesting stuff, some cool work especially on salmon and seals, at least those pertained most directly to my interests. We had lunch and a brief lab tour followed up by more talks, including a woman who had done diving in the arctic, a man with Alaska Fish & Game who talked mostly about king crab, and other invertebrate fisheries, and a guy who had worked on arctic offshore fish. All very interesting. During the second of those three, however, the power went out, so he had to do the rest of his presentation in the dark. The third managed to get the screen working again on generator power, but unfortunately we didn't get to see any of the Science on a Sphere stuff. I mean, you can see it online, but it's not nearly as cool as it would be on the sphere itself. At least we got to see some at the state museum. So we're back at the shrine now, at least a few of us are, the big van is out at the post office and store. Power's restored, so we've got the stove going and all. What grabbed me about the stuff at NOAA today was what one speaker said, that the fun thing about working up here was that a lot of basic questions haven't been answered yet. Basic questions in biology, eh? You mean, exactly the kind of work I want to do? Not that I'm desperate to move to Alaska and do research. I'm just reassured every time I find a place, any place, where this kind of work is still going on and we don't already know all the answers on the macro scale.

Wednesday, January 13th, Roughly 4:30 PM local time

Hide & Seek (not the Imogen Heap song)

Class this afternoon. We discussed the literature class, focusing on Measuring the World. Very interesting, we got off topic quite a bit but in a good way. After that we had a short break and did the Biomes class, learning about Boreal Forest and Continental Shelf, the two biomes we're examining here. Lots of comparisons. Dinner was delicious pasta prima vera and biscuits. After dinner we chilled for a bit, I talked to David for a bit, we all heard some hilarious stories from Denny. Reading, talking, relaxing, the usual. A game of Hide and Seek suggested and, while I didn't plan on going out again, that was just too good to resist. Matt was seeking first game, I hid behind a metal vat behind the cabin. Allen, Mike, Swaffy and I were all unfound, the latter three somewhere behind the cabin, Allen on the island behind some trees. Second game Johnny B searched and behind the cabin was off-limits. I hunkered down under some brush far to the right of the path going to the island, after doubling back on my footprints multiple times. That time John got me eventually, I found Nikki, Kanako and Michelle (they were all together). Jacob and Allen both successfully hid on the island because we're idiots and didn't find them, Swaffy dug a snow cave not far from the cabin, near Denny the snowman's former home (the plow destroyed him, sadly), and Mike stood about three yards to the right of the door and made it the whole game, stupid us again. Great times, though I wish we hadn't given up so quickly second round, I'm proud of winning the first. NOAA tomorrow, Maui Thursday.

Tuesday, January 12th, 9:45-9:50 PM

Whales!

Whales!

Lunch was good, soup, sandwiches and clementines (“cuties”). I started the dishes, but Mikey took over to let me see some whale blow way out in the distance. I watched that for a bit not too successfully, went back to the dishes, Ahn took over because she actually likes cleaning (very convenient for the rest of us I suppose?), I tried again, and then some of us headed out to the point. Here it was a lot easier to see them, though they were still pretty far off in the distance. We saw a lot of blows (har har), and at least one tail. Denny said they were definitely humpbacks, probably young ones. Apparently they stick around here because of a group of herring that lives right there. I came back in feeling a bit guilty about the dishes, but Ahn and Mike have still got it I guess. Vince said there was a breach, but they only saw the back half, after I left. A bit disappointing, but still, it was awesome to see anything at all. The tails really are very distinctive. Based on the number of blows we saw and whatnot, we're estimating 3-4 whales. Hopefully we'll see more in Hawaii.

Tuesday, January 12th, roughly 1:30 PM local time

Last night had more ridiculous cards. The funniest story (that I can safely retell) would be the time we were playing Hold 'Em and so long as everyone kept checking, Matt kept putting down cards. More, and more cards. Eventually he even took the face down pile and put them up too, we must have had a dozen or more cards on the table. It was all kinds of silly.

Stayed up until about 12:30 reading, woke up a little after 10. I guess a few people saw a whale way way out, but the most interesting thing I've seen yet today would be the crows. I've heard of this behavior, but never seen it personally. They're picking up clams and dropping them on rocks to open them up. According to Sam, the groundskeeper here, they don't do it in the summer, only in the winter. Denny hypothesized it probably has to do with the lack of food in the winter. So several of us went out and looked and took pictures, Matt even took his tripod out to get some good shots. Pretty cool to watch. I was hoping to get one in flight with a clam in the mouth, but no such luck, unsurprisingly. Today's weather is relatively calm, still windy, but not as bad as it's been, and no precipitation so far. Wouldn't be bad for a hike, but my face was mad enough at me for how long I took pictures (granted, many of them are near identical).

Tuesday, January 12th, roughly 11:40 -11:45 AM local time

Today was mostly relaxed. We went to the university and dealt with a lot of e-mail and such things. On the one hand, it was good to catch up on everything, on the other hand, it wasn't all good news. (No one worry yet, just saying. Could have had more uplifting news.) But overall it was good, not a whole lot of work. After that we went to the grocery store, picked up a few more things for our last few days, and stopped at the post office as well. Came back to the cabin, sat, read, so on and so forth. Dinner was a fantastic vegetarian lasagna, carrots, and salad, though I passed on the salad this time. Dessert was a chocolate lava cake, also amazing and delicious. Not long after dinner Clay suggested a night hike, more of us went out than not. We headed towards the road at first and then to a place they called the Grotto, though not a huge grotto by any means. Chilled there, John called Bozz which amused me, talked for a bit, then headed back. It was good to finally hike the trails around the cabin, which I've more or less missed out on so far.

That's about it for today. Nothing terribly exciting to report. Tomorrow is a free morning and class in the afternoon, Wednesday we go to NOAA and see the muskeg, and Thursday we leave for Maui (though I suspect no one will see this posted until after we arrive there.)

Monday, January 11th, roughly 9:50 PM local time

A few days' worth...

Correction. The place we're staying is fantastic. Thursday night Nate asked how close we were to the water and they said they'd let us see for ourselves. When we woke up and looked out the window, we are ON the water. It's amazing. Beautiful mountans too. There's a stand of trees on a little island across a causeway, apparently it's a chapel, I still need to go check that out. First we had to go out and pick up Michelle, so Matt, Denny and I went. Denny left Matt and I at the University of Alaska's library to fiddle on our computers. I got everything I needed to done, and some less important things besides. Matt was going back and forth between his grad stuff and trying to help Denny with some computer issues. Eventually Denny came back, he and Matt worked a bit more, and we came back for a tasty lunch of sammiches. After that I went out exploring, something I missed out on in the morning. Spent my time on the rocks between the cabin and the water, lots of barnacles and clams. A few nice pools as well. The water here is CLEAR. It's amazing. On the way back up I took a path with less good rocks than I took on the way down, slipped a fair bit, and finally fell to the point where I landed with my hands right on the barnacles. So that was painful. Came back in, treated that, we spent a lot of the afternoon in a big circle in the main room sitting and reading individually. At 3:30 we had the first classes. Denny had us split into smaller groups and discuss various things about what is science, what's the methodology, so on and so forth. We'd come back and talk as a whole group about it. Then he told us about some of the requirements, we all need to pick something individual to work on as we travel, something we specifically are interested in looking at. David talked about the writing class, mostly introducing us to the different types of travel writing and a rough outline of essays. Unsurprisingly, the deadlines are more guidelines than set in stone. Not sure yet which kinds of writing I'll want to do, but then, it's probably too early in the trip for anything to have struck me yet. Then we sat some more, read some more, and let people prepare a fantastic dinner. Turkey and gravy, salad with Clay's raspberry vinagerette, David's amazing stuffing, potatoes. So good. I helped Mike with dishes, and Matt provided some assistance as well. We yelled at Ahn when she came in because we had a system. I was kinda hoping dipping my hands in chlorine constantly would help keep my hands clean. Some other people took over while we had dessert, which was a German dish whose name I can't spell, but rice pudding with fruit mixed in. DELICIOUS. Blackberry, strawberry, and I'm not sure what else was in there. So, so very good. And then there was more sitting, chilling, and reading. I mentioned the thing about "yeah, we set rivers on fire, that's how hard we party in Cleveland," Matt talked about what an awesome party that would be, Denny said "that won't happen in Cleveland" and just walked off. It was fairly epic. Around 11 the conversation died and we all sort of unanimously went to bed, that is, those of us that hadn't already crashed. I forgot to put on socks before sleeping, which was a mistake (this morning Denny asked me how I sleep, I said mostly well, I should have remembered socks, he asked if my feet get cold, and I said "in Alaska they do"). Slept decently well, though. In about an hour and a half we leave for the wetlands, then we'll go to the glacier and then to the state museum. After that it's some free time in downtown Juneau, dinner out and then back here for dessert.

Saturday, January 9th, roughly 8:15-8:35 AM local time

Had some trouble sleeping due to lack of socks at night. Will have to remember them tonight. Woke up around 8ish, ate, read a bit, learned a new card game from "Swaffy." It's called 13, played in tricks, pretty simple, fun enough. Prepared lunch and headed out. We picked up Zippy first and then went to the wetlands. Most of the things there were dead plant-wise, but there were a few other things. We also saw at least three bald eagles, some crows, some geese, and two different kinds of ducks (kindly identified by Clay): Goldeneye and.... I'll have to look back at my notes to see what the other one was. I'll probably do that before I post this online. Maybe. There were supposedly land otters too, but we didn't see any, sadly. After that we went to the Mendenhall Glacier, checked out the visitor center. I learned a lot about how glaciers work, actually, which was good. Saw a short movie about it and some interesting maps. After that most of us went out to look at the Glacier outside. It was SOLID ICE walking the paths. Kind of fantastic. We slid more than we walked, got some amusing pictures, and I tried to purposely slide down a ramp and managed to fall a second or so early. Woops. I did get closer to the glacier than anyone else, though, to get a picture. Getting back up was... interesting. I probably fell down about 3 times total today. So I'm "winning" the falling contest on this trip. I guess? After that we went to the State Museum, lots of interesting stuff about native cultures. Some weird digitally altered photography upstairs, and some interesting natural history as well. Probably the coolest thing was this large NOAA globe that could have various things projected on it. We saw a lot of different models of Earth as well as some other planets, though the Earth stuff had the most information by far. Hurricanes, fires, currents, temperature, CO2, and a few others besides. Lots of information. After that we went to downtown Juneau, the of age people drank a bit and the rest of us just kind of walked around. Allen got offered pot, which was amusing. There weren't a lot of shops open, some things I might have bought if we were only in Alaska, but with the big trip, none of us was quite worth it. (I did pick up a card and a magnet at the museum). We came back and had delicious delicious delicious salmon, green beans, couscous, and salad with Clay's delicious dressing again. All very good. And now we're chilling and I'm being INTENSELY amused by the banter between Matt, Caitlin and Swaffy.

Saturday, January 9th, roughly 8:45-9 PM

Moved in with Denny last night, since Zippy and Michelle are sharing a room now. Turns out there were sheets and extra blankets I was completely unaware of. That might have helped.

Free Day today. At least, that was the original plan. (By the by, we spent most of the rest of last night playing card games, especially lots of variations on poker. I've learned Celtic Cross and Iron Cross now.) However, the weather's absolutely awful. I spent the morning reading and playing more cards (Rummy). I'm going to know so many card games by the end of this trip. Might even learn to shuffle if I'm lucky. So, since the weather is so bad, we're going to do some classes this afternoon and save our free day for a hopefully nicer day. I wanted to check out the chapel and hike a bit, and some people did hike, but bah. I was cold and wet enough yesterday. Don't need to add to it today. If we had kept the free day all day I probably would have done a short hike, as it is, I'll just go on our next free day or whatever. I managed to finish Night Thoughts of a Classical Physicist, which means two down already (finished Narwhal on the planes over). It reminded me a lot of Death of a Salesman, actually. Kind of dense and probably the hardest to get through of them all, at least that's my guess, but we'll see as I haven't even started Copenhagen or The Physicists yet. They're plays, though, so I'm guessing they'll be short and easy. We saw a few seals (sea lions? I don't remember the final decision) today, as well as a mink (weasel?) running across the path outside our cabin. I'm continuing to enjoy the vibe of our common room: nice carpet, wooden walls and ceiling, comfortable chairs, a circle of people reading interrupted by conversations, card games, and the occasional someone napping in front of the fire.

Sunday, January 10th, roughly 12:20-12:30 PM

Alright, tonight was FANTASTIC.

We all kept chilling and whatever until 1:30, when class started. Sort of. Denny, Sigrid and David told stories about taking students to East Germany before the wall for about an hour. Very entertaining stuff, though not all of it was funny, a lot of it definitely was. Then we sort of transitioned into the literature class, David told us he wanted us to read Measuring the World first and gave us some ideas on what he specifically wanted us to look at, at least in the first section. Lots of stuff about journey, but a few other ideas as well. We discussed various historical works of journey (The Odyssey, Gilgamesh, Huck Finn, The Hobbit, etc.) as well. We also did more on the Biomes class, talking about what we saw yesterday at the wetlands and the glacier, talking about what Denny actually wants us to do. This personal study plan thing has been... vexing so far. It's hard to think of something that fits the criteria, interests me personally, AND fits into the time and resources we have available. After that was another dinner, chicken soup, bread and salad with more of Clay's dressing. All very good, the bread especially so. Then more relaxing, sitting around, card games, reading. Nathan, Johnny B, Allen, Clay and I talked to Denny about specific ideas for our projects, with others adding their own thoughts as well. I think most of us are still having a hard time not thinking too big, and at the same time, figuring out what we can do without really any instruments. We'll get there... it's just going to take a few days. Becky suggested going outside, tried, it was too cold and windy, Swaffy and I decided to join her, soon we had everyone (student-wise) except Vince and Nikki suiting up. We weren't outside the door for 60 seconds before a snowball fight broke out. After all that miserable rain this morning, the afternoon and evening had been DRIVING snow. The wind was so strong it was practically going sideways, it was hard to control the front door, pure insanity. Also, PERFECT packing snow. So we slid around and chucked snowballs at each other for a while, I got Matt on the head, he hit me in the ear. I mean, honestly, this is packing snow the likes of which I've almost never seen before. So, so good. After doing that for a while we headed over to the chapel. Inside the trees the wind was almost nonexistent. We explored that a bit, a few of us ducked our heads inside. Not very big, but nice enough. After that we went over to this one spot where you could overlook the sea, the waves were crashing, the wind was whipping around us, it was amazingly dark. Fantastic. See, when we came to Alaska, this cold snow was what we were expecting. 30-40 F? Rain? Bah! Quit going easy on us, Alaska! So it was kind of exciting to see our stereotype played out, even if the more mild weather is more typical for Juneau specifically. We stood there for a while before we headed back, and then we decided to make a snowman. This resulted in clusters of people working on about 4 different snowmen before we finally got a base going, we built an... interesting form, and finally Matt brought over a ball he had been rolling which became the head. Allen carved in eyes and a mouth, and we took lots of pictures. While some people added sticks for arms, Matt rolled another, even larger ball, which became a new base. We PHYSICALLY LIFTED the snowman, I carried his head while others dealt with the body, and we eventually got it onto the new, taller base. It was almost human height at that point. There were pictures with my scarf, with Allen's hat, I think Jacob was the one who added eyes, Allen got a stick to go into the mouth. Finally, we decided to name it Denny Taylor, because it would be too hard to give it a beard to be David Anderson. More and more pictures were taken, we hung out in the snow, it was wonderful. We finally came in, had tea or hot chocolate (the latter for me), and I got my first shower and change of clothes of the entire trip.

See? Building a snowman in Alaska and my first shower? Fantastic.

Sunday, January 10th, roughly 10:10-10:25 PM local time