Classes have begun!

I have now completed two days of classes here at IVIC. I’m actually being able to understand nearly all of it! It helps a lot that they have a written outline on the projector and that he talks kinda slow because he’s lecturing. Also, I’ve heard most of this stuff before in one class or another! So far we have covered a lot about using indicator species to determine biodiversity. For those of you who are not bio-nerds, that means sampling the number of species of one type of animal, for instance butterflies, and then extrapolating that data, based on information of relative abundancies of various species, to an over all spicies diversity number. It’s pretty interesting, but I’m not sure how much I trust it. Or at least I think there may be more important things to study than a guesstimation of how many species exist. It’s good stuff to know, though, and that’s basically the premiss behind this whole course!

Besides classes, it pretty fun because we have no access to normal forms of amusement… ie computer games, TV, even a deck of cards… so the first night we amused our selves with the only game item we could find – the spanish engligh dictionary. So we played bilingual Dictionary (kinda like Boulderdash I’ve been told) like a bunch of geeks all night. Last night I had way too much energy so I asked the kid who lives a couple rooms down from me, who just happens to be a Salsa dance intructure!!!!, if he would enjoy teaching me to dance. And he actually was exctited to do so cause I guess he’s been missing dancing a lot. So by the time I get done with this class I will be CRAZY good at the salsa I hope!

I am still enjoying lot of new and interesting plants, although I wish that I had a book or person who could tell me what they are and cool things about them… supposedly later we may have a guest plant lecture!

For now, I’m off to do some homework!