Last week's entry (that never got posted...)

I just got back from a weekend at Monterrico, a beachside town along the Pacific coast. The sand is black and very gritty, but the ocean is beautiful. Two other students and I visited a nature reserve featuring sea turtles, termites, some kind of fish-alligator hybrid they call pre-historic, iguanas, and caimans (much like pygmy alligators). They also had a museum with dead critters on display. Unfortunately, they weren’t taxidermied; in other words, they were either dried and shriveled (the sting ray dries so it looks like a bat, fyi) or floating in a jar of liquid. I wish y’all had been here to behold, first-hand, the 4-legged chicken on display in a jar. Seriously, the photo doesn’t do it justice… It was really cool to see the live animals. At the nature reserve they breed iguanas, caimans, and sea turtles for repopulation, since they are endangered species, so we got to see some of the nests where the eggs are kept.

This week we have a conference in Xela where we will present our findings so far to a few professors from Texas State and a local university. It will be good to get their feedback. After the conference, we only have 3 more weeks to collect data before heading home (yikes!) and doing our heavy analysis. They say there are 3 stages to field work in anthropology – the first is culture shock and learning your way around, and the third is franticly gathering data. I’m about in the third stage. (Don’t ask me what the second one is…) I have a translator as of the end of this week, so it’ll be good to be able to interview some of the parents who don’t speak any Spanish.