First day in the field

Quick note about last night: I saw the coolest bug I've ever seen... it's a beetle that's shaped kind of like a football, but on its back it has two bright green spots that glow at night! I saw it out of the corner of my eye as I walked back from the bathroom, and it looked like 2 small round green lights (like the kind you might see on a TV or computer). Then I shined my flashlight on it and saw that it was a bug that was moving! Wow!

Today was our first day of actually going out and working for a whole day. We started out by eating a good breakfast, packing our lunch for the day, and getting all our gear together. Even though it was hot, we had to wear long sleeves and long pants to protect ourselves from bugs, sharp branches, razor grass, etc. We hiked for about half an hour until we reached the area we would be studying. Finding the area was a challenge! It's an acre of land that has been marked off by brightly colored surveying tape tied onto trees along the north, south, east and west borders. Once we found it, we broke into teams and were assigned different tasks.

I worked with a college student named Rachel for the day. We had to walk the entire acre in a grid pattern. We started at the northwestern corner of the plot and had to count 11 paces south and 13 paces east. Our tools were pretty simple: a pole and a prism. We put the pole in the ground and the prism on top, and then used the prism to determine how many trees were in our immediate area. We rotated around the pole 360 degrees until we had seen the entire area. Then we walked another 13 paces east and took another measurement. Once we reached the eastern border, we took 11 more paces south and then started walking to the western border again. In all, we took 20 different measurements, all in different spots. The purpose of our job is to find out how many trees are located in that particular acre of land.

This task doesn't sound very difficult, but when you're trying to stand on a very steep, muddy slope and look at trees through a little prism, it can be quite challenging! There were many times when we just sat down and slid down a slope, rather than try to walk down it. The best part of our task was that we got to see a lot of different areas. There were so many interesting trees, flowers, frogs, insects, etc... we kept stopping to take pictures, which probably slowed us down, but we didn't really care. When we were about halfway through our task, we stopped for lunch. It was amazing to be sitting in the middle of a rainforest, eating lunch! The coolest thing I saw today was this tree. It looked like it had teeth growing out of it! It's called Martinique prickly-ash. I also found a leaf that was as tall as I am!

I'm very tired after a long, hard (but fun!) day of work. I'm looking forward to a hot meal and a comfy bed. Tonight the people we're staying with have arranged for salsa dancing instructors to come up and give us some lessons! So I guess I'll be learning to salsa! My feet hurt, but it sounds like fun anyway, so I'll give it a try. Wish me luck! :)