Oopsies, sorry

May 27, 2013

You know how bugs love to swarm around street lights? Headlamps are basically street lights that you wear right above your face. I haven't written in a long while. Like three days. Lotsss has happened since then, it will be hard to catch up. I will hit the highlights! Saturday was the picnic that I mentioned in the last post. We all woke up at 6 to leave by 7:30 for said picnic. We rode, all 16 of us, in that beat up truck we used to get to Boa Vista from Gilbues in (end sentence in preposition). All dirt rode for one hour. It was a tough journey. But we finally made it. We had our picnic on the shore of a brilliant river. There were rapids! It was so beautiful!! Everyone swam. I played ball with Michael the archeologist a lot. Then with the Brazilians!! It was incredibly fun playing soccer with them. We swam and ate and drank beers. Lucas played some wonderful guitar; he is so skilled. I got sunburnt, but it wasn't miserable. We were all very exhausted by the end of the day. Then somehow it turned into Sunday. Sunday was the day that two more characters arrived. These two are from UGA! And I already knew them from the monkey lab stuff. Here they are: Yonat: She is from Isreal. She is a graduate student. She is studying mother-infant relations with other members of the group. I think, lol. She is cool because you can just tell that she does not care for one second what anyone thinks of her. And she knows the monkeys and their personalities very well, so I am looking forward to learning from her. Natalie: This girl is... Awesome. She is 20 years old. We have been friends for a few months now, ever since we learned we would be here together. I really like her! She is studying the macaws! And she is gonna assist Yonat in the field. These two new characters are important ones. Today began normally. Allison and I got all geared-up and ready to chill in the woods. We followed Teimoso. Teimoso is the only adult male in the group with all of his body parts intact. But he is inferior... So he gets picked on a whole lot. Quick note: You can tell he is Teimoso from far away because we allllways walks with his tail curled up, and the other males don't ever do that. It is basically adorable. Anyways, he seems to be scared all the time... So I kinda think he was uncomfortable with us following him. And I think that because he was really giving us a run for our money. Lol we kept losing him... And eventually we lost him for good. He climbed up over one of the big cliffs!! To be fair, all of the monkeys were heading up that way. So, because we lost him to the cliff, we made a plan to walk around the cliff and to catch him on the other side. So.... We are smashing through the forest like we aren't worried about anything in the world. I'm following Allison, as usual. And we are laughing and playing and crashing through the thick brush when, all of a sudden, Allison whips her whole body around and shouts at me to go back! She was so panicked! I was like, "what!??! What is it!?" And she just kept telling me to turn around and walk!! Omg, I thought we were walking away from wasps, which is ridiculous because we would have needed to be RUNNING from the wasps... So I needed her to tell me that wasps were in the situation. Lol but she wouldn't (couldn't) answer! Once we got to a safe distance, we stopped and turned around to look. Guess what it was. A 7 foot long boa constrictor. What? Oh, you thought those only grew in zoos? Yeah, me too. Allison almost smashed right through that snake. She didn't even see it! She came incredibly close to ending up like that picture I saw on google once where that snake had eaten that... Well, nevermind. But yeah, where am I? Was it a mirage?! No, because I got a picture. Actually, several- Because when we left the dinosaur snake, we finally ran into our field guide again (we had lost him a ling while ago) and he took us back to it. I took more pictures. And then- I touched it. Petted it. On its tail. He moved it after a few seconds prolly cuz I tickled him. His head was as big as my hand when I hold it out flat with my fingers touching. Same shape too. I know what you're thinking; 'Oh, Leigh Anna is prolly exaggerating the length of that snake, she exaggerates everything.' But I didn't come up with that estimate! Our guide buddy did. He said 2 meters! (That equals 6.6 feet. So, you're right.) That happened, so we left the woods for the day, lol. I also wanna just document really quickly that I was casually and unofficially approached today by someone here about how he/she is looking for someone to help him/her next year on a project in this area... Someone who has GPS experience. I don't wanna say anything more about that AT ALL because I feel superstitious and basically that it is too good to be true. Is this real life right now? Literally, I don't know. I am coming out of my shell here. In fact... I'm becoming confident. Lemme just throw out there- for all of you who may perceive this blog as boastful- that before I left for this trip I was in a very bad place mentally. And I had been in that place for a while. But guess what. :-) I am 100% confident that I am done with that mess. Thanks to Boa Vista and Boa constrictors. and my aunt and uncle. and Shoutout to my new BFF Allison. This trip is important to me- I just wanna write down what happens and how I feel so that I can remember it. Hope y'all are well. Danielle, I love you. Kalia, I love you. Olivia and Layla and Savannah, miss y'all. And momma, love you. Lina, i love you. Kalynn and Cammie- Love yall. John and Lucy- suppppp, roomies. Daddy, Thanks for the hat. Leticia- eu aprendendo Portuguese!! Dinner table laughed at me when I said that I "might could" do something. Lol the Oxford people prolly think I'm a moron. Too bad!