[A clever title]

3-10-2010: I’ve added dates to these posts since I’m clearly not posting weekly. I’ve taken to European documentation of the date though (day-month-year), it honestly makes so much more sense.

More noteworthy news, however: Class work is done!

Yesterday was our final for the primate ecology class. This week was pretty tough, it was supposed to be a field course, but we only got into the field once, really. That was disappointing, but the material was fairly interesting even though our instructor tried to fit entirely too much into a week long course.

School related things aside – Madagascar is still great. We finally got rained on (in the rainforest, go figure) about 3 days ago, and it’s been raining or patchily overcast since then. I can’t complain though, up until then we’ve had nothing but sunshine since we arrived here (with the exception of the day we arrived). I’m only mildly worried that the rain will be accompanied by the presence of leeches. Yuck.

Last night the staff here threw us a party for the end of the class/a few birthdays that fall around the present date. It was a ton of fun, the cook here is in a band and they played for us during dinner. They made zebu (Madagascar cattle) steak and frites – because we’re American and people have been craving fries – but I got fried zucchini as the vegetarian option (still delicious).

Still more interesting news: Tuesday one of us tried cliff diving. Unintentionally.

So I feel like I should provide some background for this story:

1.The topography here is entirely comprised of hills. People think Pittsburgh is hilly – psshh. The roads are all windy because they curve between (what I consider) mountains, and are therefore frequently are bordered on at least one side by drop offs.

2.The roads often have 50 cm deep ditches/trenches dug for drainage about a meter from the actual road.

3.Monday was the first birthday we had to celebrate here. Though we celebrated mostly celebrated on Tuesday and last night (Saturday).

4.The Gite – a bar/restaurant that’s a bit up the street. They serve food, but we only usually get for drinks, crayfish, and fries.

5.It gets dark at 6:30 here – always. There is no day-light-savings time here, so the sunrise time varies drastically, but the sunset does not.

6.There are no street lights. Except for the headlights that appear when cars come zooming around the windy Malagasy roads.

7.Cars ZOOM. They go so fast, it’s absurd. There are no speed limits, really, and if there are they aren’t enforced.

And Distracted. . . Fun facts about driving in Madagascar:

a. There is pretty much only one road. That we’ve driven on, at least.
b.The road is wide enough for 2 cars, but not much more.
c.The driver is on the right side.
d.If someone is driving slowly, they will get passed.
e.A single-friendly beep is used to signify any intention.
f.Pedestrians are generally not reason a reason to yield.

Well anyway. On Tuesday we had all gone up to The Gite after dinner to celebrate Tim’s entrance into his 20th year of life. Because we had class the next morning, people meandered back to ValBio (maybe 250 meters) in small groups whenever they were ready to leave. Unfortunately, not enough of us had the foresight to bring headlamps/flashlights when we headed up there around 6:00. By the time the second to last group was ready to head back, all of the lights had returned to the research center with other people. It’s not a long walk, so no one was really worried about it – plus, it was dark and cars have headlights – assumedly providing ample notice of their approach and time to get out of the way.

That assumption was correct. When a bus came rushing around the corner the group of people saw it, a general alarm of “car!” was sounded, and people leapt to the side of the road. Unfortunately, the side of the road at that particular point of the walk was around a particularly sharp bend in the road. The ditch that is usually present for drainage was absent in lieu of a 6 meter drop off through some shrubs into a passing creek. However as I said, it was dark and they hadn’t a headlamp.

The student in question saw the car coming and apparently made a superman-style leap into the non-present ditch.

Luckily he caught himself on a tree about 3 meters down and wasn’t injured except for some bruises, scrapes, and scratches. Someone rushed back to ValBio for a headlamp and rope and they pulled him back up to the road. The next day he was able to laugh about it, although he was lamenting the loss of one of his sandals. And now we’re equipped with a plethora of “don’t jump off the cliff” jokes that certainly won’t get old for a while.

Otherwise things have been pretty standard. We’ve got a 2 day hiking trip a primary forest planned for beginning of this week, followed by 4 days to write our research projects proposals and perhaps perform some pilot studies. Another day off and then we’re headed out for a 10 day trip/tour of Madagascar!

Overall stress levels are down and morale is up, the rainforest is beautiful as always and hopefully the sun will rejoin us for our hiking trip tomorrow!