Wake up in the morning feeling like P-DEETy

Yesterday we hit up the town of San Vito, a couple miles down the mountain (and my recent running destination.  Much easier on the hamstrings to take a bus). 

                                   Downtown San Vito.  Check out the mountains!
 
We went to a supermarket, a bakery, and then walked around for a bit.  I was excited to see these signs that said "Veterinaria," but instead of a clinic it was more of a pet shop with collars, leashes, and only chicks (pollitos), and occasionally bunnies (conejitos).  Pets may not have been the final destination of the pollitos, but I can pretend.....then three introductory lectures in the afternoon, and watching a really cool and thought-provoking documentary, The Shaman's Apprentice.

This morning we woke up in a cloud.  It apparently rained lots last night, the first time so far, but it was perfect sunny weather by the time we took a tour around the botanical garden (yes Mom, I was looking super fly in my field pants).  We saw some orchids, pineapples, bananas with leaves bigger than me (of particular interest to me because I'm writing a plant paper on that family) and funky bugs.  The agoutis remain elusive of my camera.

                Pineapple!  The juice of this kind is much more abrasive than the commercial variety

                                                       Bananas! (Musa family)

We had fresh mangoes for breakfast today!  Only five days into the program and already my dreams have been fulfilled.

Also, although I mentioned our horario tipico, we definitely do not have a semblence of a predictable schedule.  The one predictable thing is meal times -- again, my dreams are fulfilled.  But we are traveling to different sites constantly, and as our professors remind us, field trips are subject to weather and the schedules of the clinics and communities we visit, so things can be shifted around on short notice.

Classes started on Thursday, and we've had a lot of PDFs to read since then (urrg...no highlighting...).  It's a lot of anthropology studies in ethnobiology, and although they're scientific papers this is going to be the more difficult part of the program for me, since I'm not used to analyzing these kinds of social problems as opposed to problems with physiology and biological processes.   The tropical medicine and global health class functions as the public health course I never took, so that's great -- definitely valuable for a veterinary career.

This afternoon we have a lecture on tropical medicine and a group bonding activity (please, anything but human knot).

Hasta luego!

Anya