Tuesday, March 27, 2007

more lava, more rainbows






here are a few pix from yesterday's excursion to kaimu beach at high tide. hooray for rainbows! i couldn't get it all in the frame so here are the Segments Of A Rainbow for y'all.

what else is new. i went to the volcano national park for my first day volunteering, and my supervisor shares an office with the lady who is responsible for co-ordinating all the research done at the park with the Hawaiian kapuna, or elders. since it is sacred land, all research has to be okayed by the hawaiians, and if they don't think it's important enough, it doesn't get done. so kaola is a pretty important lady up there.

i also got to visit their library (checked out about ten books for myself), see the botany collection (i've never seen one of those. it was v. educational) and the zoology collection, which includes everything but lizards (?). i saw pig skulls and stuffed hawaiian owls and nene, and all kinds of things. i didn't open the cabinet labeled "rat jaws", though. i'll be working on 4 projects they have going on to catalog and inventory all these items in all these collections. yay, database. yay, Access. Oh and -- the library is being converted from dewey decimal! they have a card catalog and everything. been a long time since i've seen ol' Dewey. bless his heart.

what else, let's see... well obviously i put off the durian for another week but listen! no it's not what you think! i'm leaving the jungle this weekend, right, so i figured why not have the Ceremonial Durian-Tasting Thingy just before i leave the jungle? that way the stinky corpse stays behind, and maybe it's symbolic or something but i'm not really good at Deep Hidden Meanings, so maybe one of y'all could help with that? my aunt (or maybe i should start saying "Auntie"?) in Thailand tells me durian is delicious. so we're focusing on that.

um, i think that's it today. i could go on about the usual sunshine, pretty things, yummy eats, but really i'm getting tired of writing about all that. i'll think of some meatier things to keep you entertained. i found this tiki guy in kalapana by a bunch of NO TRESPASSING signs and thought you might like to meet him.

'a hui ho! (til next time!)

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