Small Mammals, Big World: Field work, and other activities...

I feel like most people I know ask me about my trips to Chile as if they are a vacation, when really it is the busiest and most important part of my year. Which doesn't mean that I don't get to have fun here, because I really do! We've been working really hard trapping. We hike up a mountain to get to our traps and then sit in the cold for 3+ hours watching with binos for a degu to enter a trap and if one does we yell "DEGU!!!". Then a team of 2 goes running down to the degu to collect blood and it has to be within 3 minutes of the degu being trapped. Lots of time the degu enters, eats a lot of oats without setting off the trap, and leaves. Sometimes they dig around the outside of the trap and manage to get oats that way. But we've been doing pretty well, getting 2-4 degus a day. We come back to the lab around 3pm and have to process our samples and sometimes we have a group meeting to discuss projects. The field is fun because you never know what you may encounter. Sheep frequent the area by our traps, there are lots of beautiful birds flying around, and today we saw two foxes being chased away by the herd of sheep.

The Copa America is going on right now so it gets really exciting when Chile is playing. And Chile is hosting so all the games are being played somewhere in the country (there are two stadiums in Santiago). It was amazing to watch Chile beat Ecuador. We were watching in a bar and it is so impressive to see everyone singing, chanting and celebrating together. After the game that night there was karaoke!! So fun! Chile tied their game with Mexico and the next game is this Friday against Bolivia.

This past Sunday we took a much needed day off and I drove some of us to Valpo. That city is so cool with all of its street art and of course there are dogs everywhere. We sat along the coast and watched sea lions for awhile. I took so many videos of them flopping off their basking structure and then hopelessly trying to launch themselves back up. We visited a very touristy part of the city called Cerro Alegre and ate at a place called Fauna. Like the name suggests, there was somewhat of an animal theme with each table having an animal figurine on it. Ours was a tiger. The menu was in Spanish and English and the staff all spoke English, which made it a lot easier as we were all trying to pay for our food separately and figure out the tip with the cashier, etc. etc.

In a little over a week I will be going to Fray Jorge. I am excited for the peace and quiet and the clean air (Santiago smog is really getting to me). Of course it is a challenge not having internet. But we will be very busy with projects there so I do not think I will miss it that much. Megan and I watched the whole new season of Orange is the New Black on Netflix so we don't have to miss out on that once we are in the park :)

A few other random things I've seen in Santiago: a really cool outdoor Zumba class that appeared to be free! and a giant parade that lasted all day supporting the legalization of marijuana!

Here are some art shots from Valpo: