Living Life

The past couple days have been pretty cool. On Monday, we went on a field trip to a little village down a dirt road named "El Socorro" to visit a group of women who make lotions and shampoos out of natural plants that they grow. They only spoke Spanish, so they would talk and the teacher would translate, but it was cool to see how much I could actually understand and have it validated. Like usual, I could get the gist when focusing. We had coffee and snacks with them as well. 

For my final project for the class, I will be making a mini documentary on the women, so I was filming too. I need to return once more and then film them at the farmers market, and I think I will be good. I am so happy that I took the Visual Anthro class at Chico and am super excited to see how this turns out. Here are some screenshots from what I have so far.

El Socorro is about 15 minutes on paved road, then 30 minutes of dirt road away from San Ramon

This is their space...for now..

All of the women who were here are housewives too, so some of their children accompany them at work

Today, after class I met up with my Entomology/Ecology professor to check out how my termite project was going. I set the wood up in the forest about a week ago, and so far no bites but we will see. When we were leaving, he spotted some army ants, which are really cool gnarly ants that are capable of eating humans. We caught a few and I got to experience first hand how strong they are. They have mandibles that are half the length of their bodies and are hooked and sharp. When I picked one up she clamped down on my thumb and easily pierced my skin, although it was just the top layer. When I was pulling my finger away, the skin ripped before the mandible broke off. Got that sucker. I would have taken a picture of her, but when you kill them they shrivel up so you cannot see the full effect. We will have to wait until my insect collection when I pin them up. This isnt my picture, but you have to check out how crazy these gals are.

I returned home and felt like going on a hike. I hit up a few friends and headed out to this waterfall that I have been meaning to go to for a while. The trail to it was good ol' Costa Rican style...steep as f**k and no switchbacks. We actually had to slide down a 15 foot section to get down, and then climb back up upon returning.  The waterfall was really cool and the water was nice and refreshing. 

My mom here has been talking about my abundance of hair for a while now, and today she cut her brothers hair. Whenever she bugs me about it, I go why don't you cut it? Well I think she finally had it with the hair, so now I have a new do! Not bad..