We're nearing the end.

It's only been a week since our performance, yet it feels like it's been ages. Time has a weird feel to it -- we do so much here that our days feel very long, yet at the same time, we're somehow finding ourselves with only a week left. Only one more week of daily baguettes and fresh tropical fruit, bananas hanging on our stairwell, swims and snorkels, hanging out with the locals...and only one more week to finish our projects, clean up the labs, and go! We have all decided that this is a topic not to be mentioned...
Pablo, who taught the guys Marquesian dancing, informed us yesterday that the mayor of Moorea was so impressed by our dancing that he wanted us to perform for this big event at the Hilton, with nice meal and open bar as a reward. Unfortunately this is happening November 28th, so we won't be around (one more reason to stay!)...but it's nice that we were appreciated!
The last week has been extremely busy. Saturday evening, we had a Halloween party at the Atitia center. A Tahitian was the DJ, so we had to listen to a lot of weird Tahitian techno music as well as more traditional pop songs, so it was actually pretty interesting. There were a lot of locals there, as Frank had invited all the station workers and their families, as well as our class...although the Americans were pretty much the only ones who dressed up. I attempted to be a Swiss Army Knife, with a red t-shirt and Swiss flag scotch-taped onto it, and cardboard scissors, knife, and nailfile taped onto my leg and arm. Stosh dressed up as a giant Hinano beer bottle, and at one point Ryan picked me and turned me upside down for a picture of the Swiss Army Knife being used to open the beer bottle. Our GSI David dressed as the plant he's studying, and Prof Vince Resh was "invasive plants" -- both were basically covered head to toe in plants. Maya had the best costume: she dressed up as all the maladies we had in the class: band-aids for nono bites, a bandaged foot and crutches for the stone fish, a hot water bottle on her head for the malaria fever, some more bandages for sea urchin spinings, etc. So the party was fun, I learned how to dance Tahitian-style to modern music, and we taught the locals how to dance to hiphop music American style. One funny thing about Tahitian culture is that it always seems as if they're trying to match you up with someone. Etienne, one of the rowers, waved me over and introduced me to his friend who wanted English lessons...and made sure to emphasize that he had lots of money and was an excellent dancer. I politely refused. The rest of the night was uneventful, besides one of our girls twisting her ankle, adding to Maya's list of maladies.
Sunday was the day to catch up on work -- we had to turn in the "Materials and Methods" section of our paper by that afternoon. Once that was done, Amanda and I biked over to the public beach, where we snorkeled for a bit and then just hung out and relaxed on the beach. Upon arrival we ran into "orange haired dude" (Tahitian names all sound the same, so we've kind of all given up), who danced the haka with the guys, and then some other girls who danced with us -- the public beach is where everyone hangs out on Sunday, playing volleyball, having barbecues, swimming, etc., and it's gotten to the point where we are now really part of the community and will hear a "ALEX!" wherever we go. As an aside, it has now become the running joke for a few people in the class to yell "Alex! Alex!" (in a French accent) whenever they want my attention. When we were learning the dances, Sam the drummer and two dance teachers would constantly be yelling this for me to translate this, so now it's yelled while playing volleyball or any other random moment. Also, this is the reason why everyone on this island knows my name...they've all heard it a billion times.
Anyway, on Monday I finally climbed Mount Rotui! I had been wanting to do this hike since about a month ago, when all the terrestrial kids did the climb and came back 10 hours later, covered in dirt and scratches and fearing for their lives. Apparently when they went, every person nearly fell off the mountain at least once...which somehow made it sound even more exciting. So Monday morning, Stosh, Becky, and I woke up at 5am - the three others who were supposed to come chickened out. The reason why we were going was because Becky, who is studying swamp herriers, needed to collect some pellets (regurgitated balls of feathers and bones), and needed a few people to go with her. David dropped us off at the bottom of Mount Rotui, which is a 900m peak right in between Cook's and Opunohu Bays, and we set out at 6am, crossing a random person's backyard to get to the trail. The first part of the hike was hard: extremely steep, sunny, and hot, and half the time we were basically rock climbing. The plus side was that we got high up very fast, and soon had a great view of turquoise waters, the Bays, and the Hilton's overwater bungalows. After the initial 300m abrupt climb, the rest of the hike wasn't too bad -- we were basically walking along the ridges of the mountain, which was only steep at some parts. More importantly, though, there were sheer cliffs on either side of the 30 cm wide path, covered only with little ferns, and thus nothing really to break a fall. These ferns were very useful throughout the hike for the parts when we were literally climbing the path, and my arms were actually very sore the next day. We got to the top at 10:15, having stopped along the way to pick up bird pellets and take little rest breaks. Apparently we were making much better time than the last group that had gone up. Unfortunately it was very foggy, and we couldn't actually see any view from the top, which was really sad, since it's supposed to be amazing. Anyway, we ate our lunch and headed back down, doing the butt slide and finally arriving at the bottom by 2pm. We arrived home smiling and laughing at 2:15, as opposed to the last group's getting home at 5pm, tired and looking as though they had stared Death in the face. No one could believe how normal we seemed after climbing Rotui -- I think we were just lucky to have a whole lot fewer people, and maybe we three had more experience hiking or something. Besides countless scratches on my arms that made me look as though I had been attacked by a pack of wild cats, everything was fine.
Right as we were relaxing and cooling down in the water, Steph came over and asked me if I wanted to go on a puppy mission. Someone had left a box with five little puppies near our property a few days beforehand. Now only two were left (we assume the others were adopted by locals), and Steph wanted to adopt one and try to find a home for the other. So we gathered our troops -- Stosh, Al and Maddox, the dog she's adopting, Christine, Steph, me, and the two puppies, quite a menagerie. We spent about an hour and a half at the vet's, where I spoke to them about all the details of adopting dogs from French Polynesia and bringing them back to the States, which is pretty complicated. Luckily, while we were all standing around, a woman decided that she wanted to adopt our second puppy, so that was taken care of. On the way home, we stopped by the mudflats for Christine to drop off some fiddler crabs (we had collected these a few days beforehand, trampling around barefoot in the mud and catching over fifty in a half hour). As Steph was turning around to pull out, she backed the big land rover into the mud...and we were stuck. This was such a hilarious situation: the car wouldn't budge, and we were all frantically trying to squeeze coconuts and palm fronds underneath the tires to give them some catch. The tires were literally sunken in half way, so there was little hope. Meanwhile, as we tried pushing the car, getting completely covered in mud in the process, little Rotui the puppy was sitting in her cardboard box howling incessantly at the top of her lungs. Of course it was 6pm, so the sun was setting and darkness was settling in (there aren't really any street lights on Moorea). We finally decided to call the station, since thankfully Steph had brough a cell phone, and David and Hinano (one of the directors of the station) came to the rescue about 20 min later. We tied up their truck to ours and tried to pull/push it out, but it still wasn't moving. Finally Hinano, knowing everyone on the island, made a few phone calls, and a friend came by with shovels to dig us out...and we were free within minutes. Finally, at 7:40 and exhausted after a long day of mountain climbing, car pushing, and puppy saving, we were on our way home.
Tuesday was spent at home, working on coral identifications. In the afternoon we went rowing, which was so much fun. This time Pablo, his cousin, and Prince (who taught the guys the haka), who are all around our age, took us out in two "va'a" (the canoes) and we had a great time racing. We then played a crazy game of volleyball with them, then had dinner and went to a lecture given by Vince on scientific writing. After a grueling amount of dishes, I eventually went to bed.
Wednesday Al and I went our to Nu'urua, where we were to collect some more data for our projects. It was a little nerve-wracking to be kayaking again, after what had happened last time, and I definitely thought we would topple over more than once. We got to the barrier reef and tied up and did our work, which went well despite a very strong current that resulted in more coral scratches on my legs (my legs are covered in gashes and bruises...everything takes much longer to heal in a tropical climate, so it looks a whole lot worse than it actually is...I hope). We collected some more data along the fringing reef, and as we were doing so, some local women were fishing with huge nets, which was really interesting to see: they would put them out in a big circle, then just start walking them together, tightening the circle until they had a bunch of fish stuck in the middle. We finished our work right on time for Maya to pick us up, and our classmates loaded up our kayak for us, and we were off for an impromptu trip around the entire island to Champion (we were picked up on the way)! Al and I walked around the supermarket in our bathing suits and towels, Al without shoes since she had left them lying around and they had gotten stolen. We eventually got home, and we began to cook dinner, which consisted of Pad Thai, coconut rice, papaya salad, shrimp, and chicken with peanut sauce.
Thursday morning I went to Temae to collect some transect data. People in this class are so nice: I needed a buddy, so Chris volunteered to sit on the beach and do work while I did mine. Even more convenient, Chris is over 23, and could thus drive the truck, so we didn't have to rely on the GSI's to drive us. I was in the water for three and a half hours and got a mild case of hypothermia (my lips were blue and hands were numb), but it went away very quickly. Thursday evening, Vince and the GSI's came over and cooked us a meal of spaghetti and salad in our kitchen. We set up the tables nicely, and decorated them with tropical fruits and flowers, as we had also invited the station staff to come over. Irma, Jacques, and their daughter came, as well as Loana, her two kids, and granddaughter. It was a great night, and we had a lot of fun hanging out with them, dancing with the kids and trying to learn some more Tahitian singing. Irma insists that we are her favorite class (and she is not one to say things like that without meaning it) :)
Friday I went out to the motu with Ryan and Julie. We were dropped off on someone's private property and took kayaks out to the motu. More proof of how nice people are here: Julie, Ryan, and Chris have been working on the motu the whole time, and met this guy who lets them borrow his kayak and use his private beach every time. It's funny because I haven't been to the motu since the first week...it was like doing a full circle, returning to it and realizing how much has happened in the last eight weeks of being here. It's still one of the most gorgeous spots on the island, little sand islands with palm trees, surrounded by turqoise waters and with very few people around (another thing that's nice around here -- on our Rotui hike, for example, we saw no one). I went snorkeling for a bit and collected data, getting freaked out by the huge sharks that kept swimming towards me, and then met the owner of a little private beach who let us do work there, a very tanned guy from Marseilles. He told me crazy stories about people who go fish hunting here: they swim down to 20-30m with their harpoon guns, and shoot huge fish. It's very important to kill the fish, though, as there have been numerous cases of injured fish pulling people down way deeper and them drowning as a result. While we were there, I saw some locals drive a boat over to the reef crest, and stand on the reef with a long spear that they throw at fish to catch them -- these Tahitians are skilled.
Friday evening was the biggest party on the island. We piled into the land rover and Maya drove us over to the Intercontinental hotel, which holds a huge party once a month. Some people jumped out of the car, so it was just Katie and I sitting in the back, and before we knew it, two Tahitian boys had jumped in to join us...they soon left. We arrived to the party, where we were welcomed by people saying "BERKELEY!" (everyone knows us here), and hit the dance floor. It was so much fun, everyone was there -- the dance teacher Hiriata, Prince and his rugby friends, the guys from CRIOBE, and even this random guy from the Miki Miki that gave us a ride home once...this is where you realize how small the island is (15000 people), and that the big party in town is likely to have a lot of familiar faces. Even better, girls got in for free (and guys had to pay 2500 francs, or $30!). We had a great time, and when David picked us up later, we all sat around on the dock outside with the dogs and cooled down.
Well that's about all for now! This afternoon I'll be using this high-tech microscope camera to take amazing pictures of the bugs we collected back at Tetiaroa, as part of the Biocode project that's going on here at the Gump Station. And then who knows...I need to find a way to cram in all the billion things I still want to do here before leaving :(