Time flies in Paradise.

The weeks are certainly beginning to fly by.
Monday I went out to Temae beach with a bunch of the marine people, had a picnic on the beach, and snorkeled around, trying to get a better picture of the variety of corals out here. The underwater landscape here is so beautiful: the corals, all different colors and forms, sparkle in the sun (assuming there is sun) and teem with life - brighly colored and patterned fish, algae, purple sea urchins known as Echinometra and huge, black, scary looking Diadema, giant sea cucumbers, little snails, etc. My favorite are the Damselfish: they are little brown fish (about half the size of your palm), kind of plain looking, but they are so feisty. They defend the coral heads that are covered in algae (their food source) very aggressively, staring you down and darting at you to keep you away...I've been butted many times by an angry damselfish (but of course it doesn't hurt that much).
After Temae, we headed over to Champion, the "Costco" of the island. Normally we go to Are's, a tiny supermarket with about four aisles and only half a wall of produce (thankfully the local Lycee d'Agriculture ships us baskets of papaya, lettuce, pineapple, and bananas). Champion, on the other hand, must have at least ten or twelve aisles -- what luxury. The food selection is better, but they also have a lot of random things there, including clothing, bags, snorkel gear, and guitars! I bought myself a lovely little guitar for F 2500 (about $30) so that several of us can practice guitar at the same time (it's fun, in the evening there's three or four of us sitting around in the living room playing). After the Champion adventure, we headed back just in time for Tahitian dance lessons. This time some Tahitian girls were there as well, and they taught some of us Tahitian words (most of which I've forgotten). Everyone is soooo friendly here, even the little kids!
Tuesday was another busy but interesting day. One thing that's nice about the Gump Station is how involved it is in the community. Berkeley has a partnership with a new group that works on providing environmentally friendly housing for low income people. The houses are designed in a traditional manner (on stilts, which provides good aeration, etc.), which allows cultural preservation as well as makes the houses more green by cutting back on energy required for cooling. The students from Berkeley were invited to attend this very important ribbon cutting ceremony (held on Gump Station property), which was also attended by the mayor of Moorea, a representative of the president, and other prominent people from French Polynesia. There were speeches in Tahitian and in French, and they then had everyone present, even us menial students, sign some blueprints of the houses, which were then ceremoniously put underground in a block of cement. So we are now part of Tahitian history :)
Tuesday evening, after our dance lessons, we were invited up to Professor George Roderick's hut for pizza. After dinner we had a discussion about life after college...it was pretty informative, and the basic things I retained from it are:
1. After college is the best time to take time off and do all those crazy things you've always wanted to do...such as travel the world. I think I have part of that covered already.
2. It's all about connections! Apparently we have a great advantage with this class, since we got to know on a more personal basis quite a few professors and graduate students who probably know a lot of the people involved in similar research, etc. all over the country.
It was an interesting discussion...I still don't know what I want to do with my life, but definitely gave food for thought! Apparently scientific journalism is a pretty cool career though...hmmm...
Wednesday was spent working on some stuff around here and making eggplant parmesan for 22 people (actually turned out all right!). Thursday I headed out with a buddy to Afareitu, a site I'll be sampling on, and swam around for an hour trying to identify corals...it was actually not as bad as I thought, but I just need to practice some more and figure out how to hold my underwater key, pencil, camera, and waterproof-paper-and-clipboard all at the same time while battling waves.
We then had a 2.5 hour dance lesson...it's funny, the dance teacher speaks English but still prefers having me translate everything for the group. Same for Sam the drummer, who keeps screaming AAAAAALLLLEEEEX every few minutes to have me translate lyrics, instructions, etc...it's kind of fun. We're also learning a song in Tahitian that goes along with our dance. Apparently we are the only class that's ever gotten so involved with the community! After dinner David Hembry, one of our GSIs (graduate student instructor) gave a beginner's French lesson. I got to be his assistant, which was a lot of fun!
This morning I met up with George to discuss my project, and then a bunch of us headed over to the CRIOBE station, a French research station, to check out their library. Now the plan is to come up with a schedule for the rest of the five weeks here...nooooo so little time left!