Scavenging around Cuenca

Well, I definitely didn’t promise frequent updates, but here’s an overview of my past few days…

This week has been a lot of fun. On Wednesday, we split up into two teams for a scavenger hunt around Cuenca. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. Jesse and Coral declared Tim and me a team against Elizabeth and Alex, but our groups weren’t very competitive and only spent the last of six hours apart. The scavenger hunt included making copies of the house and gate keys, finding a woman named Maria, and asking what type of biology classes the University of Azuay has. The University question was a bit annoying. First, we ask a couple of students, who took us to an admin secretary who sent us all the way to the registrar! We became rather proficient at describing our task and asking questions in Spanish. We also had to find a Chifa, which is a chinese restaurant. While the other team was waiting on our keys to be copied, we found two Chifas and thus won. We are such cheaters.

We also were supposed to buy pan de yuca for Coral. Unfortunately, we became too caught up with other things that we didn’t buy any. Thankfully, Coral accepted this and bought us some the next day. She was definitely telling the truth—it is delicious!

While on the scavenger hunt, we found an orchid nursery on the map and decided that we wanted to visit. Jesse and Coral surprised us by taking us there Thursday morning. There were three green houses completely filled with gorgeous orchids! I ended up taking over 100 photos of just flowers. This was my favorite of the orchids. It looks just like a monkey!

Yesterday afternoon, we had our first anthro class at the Pumapongo museum, which included Incan ruins. So far, we have syllabi for 4 of our 5 classes, and all of them are reading heavy classes, and we have one paper assignment already. In fact, we’ve spent most of our past two evenings reading and still are not ready for Monday’s class. And in case any of you were wondering, the Grinnell journal system is going to be a pain.

Today, we have been preparing for our first venture into the field. We are spending a week at Rumi Loma, the higher of our two field camps. It is up about 10,000 ft. It should be quite an adventure.

And so it begins...

I arrived in Ecuador Sunday night after two flights, and then in Cuenca yesterday afternoon. Although we´ve had a decent amount of free time, I feel like I have been quite busy and don´t have much time right now, but I´ll try to hit the highlights.

First, my group consists of four students (Elizabeth, Alex, Tim and me) and two student leaders (Coral and Jesse). So far we are getting along really well, though Alex has suffered a bit from adjusting to the altitude. We are at about 7,500 ft in Cuenca and were at 9,000 in Quito. Despite being at such high altitudes, both cities are located in valleys. The views of the mountains are gorgeous!

Elizabeth, Tim and Jesse are all really into food and cooking, so we´ve had fun discussing our favorite dishes and planning what to make. Early this afternoon, we went to the supermarket to go grocery shopping and then to the market. The actual market was amazing! There were so many fresh fruits and vegetables. Some of them I didn´t recognize, but we still decided to try them. I´m quickly learning to recognize passionfruits, of which there are two varieties. Maricolla, whose spelling I need to look up, is the one I´ve had so far. It is the more bitter of the two, but quite delicious and makes a wonderful juice. We didn´t buy any meat but did walk down the aisle. It was strange to see the whole animals hanging up, or the hooves and heads near by.

Although this trip is not focused on Spanish and does not require that we have any background, I am getting a fair amount of practice and am a bit surprised that I am doing okay with it. We are planning on having dinners where we can only speak Spanish to practice, especially when we´re in the field and won´t have the same opportunities. In the local villages, the indigineous speak Quechua, which is supposedly an incredibly difficult language to pick up.

We have a beautiful house in Cuenca, which is quite large for the six of us. The ground floor includes the kitchen, dining room, and living areas, while we have two more floors where we sleep. The house has a few balconies, huge windows, and skylights, so that we only have to use the lights at night.

Well, we are heading back to the house now, so I´ll have to describe it better later.

What's a physics major to do in Ecuador?

One of my friends spent this summer in Togo on a trip that attracted anthropology students. Of course, Rui is a chemistry major and had to explain her reasons for traveling to Africa. Eventually, she addressed this in her blog, and I have decided to follow her lead.

First, I go to a liberal arts school. When I applied to colleges, I definitely considered science schools like Caltech but ended up not even applying to them. Despite my strong preference for math and science from preschool (and no that is not an exaggeration) onward, I also love Russian history (thanks, Dr. Hendrick) and studio art. I wanted to be able to explore these while still majoring in a science. I listed a strong study abroad program as a requirement for college, too. Exploring another culture and learning to live in a foreign environment for an extended amount of time had been dreams of mine since two of my best friends and I decided that we were going to attend University of Glasgow and live in a flat. However, I realized that studying abroad would be close to impossible at many schools, since science classes must be taken in sequence and often cannot be pushed off until the next term or year. Now that I am a liberal arts student, my schedule has still been dominated by math and science classes, though I must say it is my own fault. If I have not been able to take all of the humanities and art courses that I would like, I still wanted to study abroad.

So if I want more history and art classes, why did I choose a program where I will still be doing science? Well, I realize that conservation biology is definitely science, but for me, it is still rather liberal artsy--something different than my normal classes. My college schedule has been filled with physics, chemistry, computer science, and math--but no bio. In fact, I have not taken biology since being required to take AP Bio in high school, which I put off as long as I could. This is not to say that I hate biology, just that my main focus has always been elsewhere. In elementary school, I loved math and always wanted to do science that involved math, so I've been inclined to do physics from before I knew what physics really was. Biology filled the role of being an extra science that involved some cool things like animals. In seventh grade, I only claimed to want to be a marine biologist because box jellies are relatively unknown but incredibly fascinating, and it was the "cool scientist." Even then I realized that my intense fear of sharks would not bode well for such a career path.

Although biology is not one of my passions, it is not unexpected for me to choose a program related to environmental studies. When I was six, my sister and I saved our minute allowances and donated them to the Children's Rainforest. Then, in fourth grade, when I learned how many fast food hamburgers are made from cattle raised off off of burned rainforest land, I immediately extricated pre-shaped hamburgers from my diet. Granted, that was not too difficult considering how rarely my family ate fast food. I've always loved hiking as well, and family vacations were, as often as not, trips to National Parks. On one such trip in South Dakota, I even kept a record of all of the animals that we saw, including date, time and number. My parents were wise enough to estimate the number of buffalo in a herd as a thousand before I tried to count them. Now, when I hike in the Southern Appalachians, I cannot resist rattling off the names of the plants that surround me, and while I may have never taken an environmental studies class, I have read many of the classic texts and care deeply about the welfare of the Earth.

Conservation biology in Ecuador may not fit in with my studies of physics, but it still fits my passions and desire to help actual environmentalists. And although I did not mean to write an entire essay on the fact, I believe that this should have addressed any lingering questions as to my choice to study abroad.

Various Forms of Conservation

As a physics major, I often use conservation laws--Conservation of Energy, Conservation of Momentum, Conservation of Electric Charge--to solve problems. But soon, I am embarking on a completely different set of problems involving conservation biology. However, the conservation of physics aligns more closely with preservation than ecological conservation.

Of course, Hetchy Hetchy Valley is the prime example of the difference between conservation and preservation. Gifford Pinchot, Theodore Roosevelt's chief forester, declared that "conservation means the greatest good to the greatest number for the longest time," meaning that resources are meant to be used wisely but in many cases still used. John Muir wanted to preserve the northern California valley in order to save the natural beauty for future generations. Both views are contribute to the current conservation movement, and of course, they are not always in opposition like they were over Hetchy Hetchy. Preserving a wildlife refuge may lead to the conservation of buffalo or bald eagles.

This semester, I will be learning to apply these methods in the highlands of southern Ecuador. Among the projects that I am assisting is conservation of Andean bears, hence the title of this blog. I'll attempt to update this blog so that you may follow along on my adventures. But first I have a few disclaimers:

• I will not have continuous access to internet, so I do not promise regular schedule. In fact, this blog may end up with only four or five posts, though I will attempt to post when I can.
  
• I am writing for a variety of audiences, and as always with a public blog, I may not be aware of all of my readers. Thus, you may not understand every reference I make, or I may explain something in greater detail than you as an individual need, since some of you have already traveled to Ecuador and others know more biology than I ever will.
• The picture at the top of the page is clearly inaccurate. Of course, bears do not live in the Galapagos, but I did take the picture on my previous trip to Ecuador and preferred it to those of Cotopaxi. At least it is the correct country.
  
• As my internet access will be limited, I might be rushed when typing an entry. Thus, I will suffice it to say, "Any instances of non-standard spelling, grammar or punctuation are hereby declared intentional and should be considered jokkes."