Sunday, January 13, 2013

13/01/2013 - Listing My Life Away


A month without volunteers at Curieuse has been very productive – if a little quiet. The down time has allowed staff to regroup and organize the many components of our terrestrial projects as well as give our base a little TLC. When we haven’t been cracking on with surveys or sweating through some fix-it projects, we’ve been spending a lot(probably an embarrassing amount) of time creating lists – To Do, favorite bird species, favorite cheese joke, and a re-organized to do list: urgent vs not completely urgent.

 
Now, with new volunteers arriving and the recent appearance of two new scholars, camp is abuzz with excitement because whether we’ve been here for one week or two months, all of us are absolutely head over heels in love with this island and we can’t wait to show it off.

So here’s one more list: the things we’ve done in the past month and why we can’t wait for the volunteers to arrive.

 
-     Sat in awe • This wasn’t really on our to do list but we keep catching ourselves and each other staring at our surroundings and the views are always better when shared.

-     Painting • The dorms, volunteer chill out area and other exposed wood around camp have been re-stained. The place looks super spiffy (if we say so ourselves) and now we need our new vollies to use those areas to make it all worthwhile.

-     Bird watching, sea turtle hatchlings and mangrove transects • We’re starting up some really cool new field work, including bird watching and now that everything is organized, we need manpower and buddies to help us collect our data.

-     Recipe Book • Jaime, one of our scholars, recently revamped the recipe book and we can’t wait to have some guinea pigs to try some of our food ideas out on – for carrot cake, we can just stick a whole carrot in the middle of the cake batter, right?

-     Read Scientific Journals • We’ve read up on some of the plants and animals that can be found on Curieuse and now we’re eager to share those facts with a brand new audience. Those annoying palms that have spikes under their leaves developed them as protection from the giant land tortoises. Cool, huh?

-     New water tank • Thanks to volunteer feedback, we were able to replace the rain water collection tank by the kitchens. It’s made a big difference and today’s stormy weather has started to fill it up. Tea anyone?

-     Drains • This one probably won’t make it on the base tour, but my co-workers have spent a lot of sweat and energy on something that I and probably most volunteers rarely think about. So here’s a shout out to them for making camp life better for all of us.

-     Screamed • Being alone in an abandoned leper colony is a little scary but when there are a bunch of people around it’s ridiculously cool. So really, volunteers can’t get here quick enough.

 

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