Blowin' in the wind.

The last few days have been fairly uneventful (at least compared to the last few weeks). We had another draft of our project proposal due Saturday, so everyone was busy working on that. We had another dance lesson on Friday, which was great: we learned a rapid dance and another slower one that looks more like Hawaiian hula. We're all starting to get better at it, but my legs and hips were definitely sore afterwards! Sam, covered in traditional Polynesian tattoos (little tidbit: the word "tattoo" is actually a Tahitian word, "tatu"), and his band keep the beat with singing, drums, and ukelele. We're going to have two hour long dance lessons four days a week until October 31st, which is the day of our big performance. The dance teacher and the rowers actually had a tense argument debating who gets us in the afternoons, since the rowers can't row without us, but at the same time, we are performing for a bunch of Tahitians in three weeks, and no one wants us to look bad. So we'll see what happens with that...
Friday night was another volleyball game, which Maria's team unfortunately lost (but they were playing against the number 1 team in Moorea). Saturday, after turning in our proposals, I went for a bike ride to Maharepa (a mid-sized "town") with Ryan and Annie to check out some shops and get some money out of the ATM. This is probably one of the nicest places to go for a bike ride: you ride along the edge of the island, with gorgeous turquoise water on one side and green peaks on the other. We then played some volleyball, and some French researchers from the CRIOBE station came by for dinner (we made a good old American meal: chili and potatoes). It's so strange, in a few weeks I went from feeling like a student to feeling like an actual scientist, hanging out with other scientists and talking about research, etc. (and lots of other random stuff).
This morning seven of us got up at 7:00 to go to the local church service, which Prof Vince Resh told us was amazing. We arrived right at 8:00, worried we'd be late, only to discover that the service actually starts at 10:00. So we wandered home and went back a couple hours later. The service ended up being ok: there was some Tahitian singing, which was cool, but besides that it was just a normal church service. Lucky for me, I could actually understand what was going on (the service was in French), so I got to hear all about the importance of marriage and the commitment of adultery...oh joy. The rest of the day (our only day off) was spent swimming, running, and playing volleyball...it's always nice to be outdoors on Sundays.
That's about all that's been going on here. The weather has been pretty crazy: it's been raining a whole lot more than normal, and the wind has been insane: there are enormous gusts that whistle and during the night, cause the curtains to billow up and hit my bed (and me in it). We basically always have a little hurricane in our room, since there's no glass on most of our windows and thus no way of preventing it. I definitely need to get used to sleeping through the storm, as the wind doesn't seem to be dying anytime soon. I actually got hit by a flying chair yesterday as I was eating my lunch (and have a cut on my finger as proof).
I made another discovery: in Tahitian French, there is no "vous"! Everyone just uses "tu," which is really nice...but it's definitely weird going up to well respected, elderly people and saying "tu" to them. That'll definitely take some getting used to.
Pete Oboyoski, a friendly entomologist at the Gump Station, got us a fifteen dollar guitar at Champion (the local Walmart/supermarket). Elliot, Ryan, and I made it our mission to learn how to play guitar by the end of this trip. It's interesting how being in the middle of nowhere (or just a rural island) leaves you with so much more time to sit around and learn such things.
In other news, one of our students has malaria! There's no malaria-carrying mosquitos here in Moorea, so he actually got it when he was in Indonesia this summer doing research. He's fine, although he's been shuttling back and forth to the emergency room. Definitely an interesting disease though: he gets really severe fevers on a 48 hour cycle, so he'll be fine one day, really sick the next, then fine, etc. He's on medication and will back in shape in no time (hopefully).
So our class is apparently one of many firsts: first stonefish injury, first tsunami warning, and first case of malaria (and first case on the island at all in 10 years)...it's definitely been interesting!