As Kitten As A Cat

My apologies for the recent lack of communication- my internship has kept me quite busy! Between different programs and projects, I've hardly had the time to log on! So to update you..

Last week I had the opportunity to go to the Tohono O'adham Cultural Center up in Sells, Arizona-- it was spectacular! Not only did we get to go through the museum, but a native also gave a talk on the history and traditions of his people. Only downfall? Another speaker who promised to give us "a bit" of a lowdown on border issues around that area...and about two and a half hours later, I'm pretty sure he had told us every intricate detail that was stored in his brain..and then some.

This week has been consumed with a lot of driving around to different schools and...doing tortoise tracking groups! Today I spent all morning out in one of the washes with SNP's SCA, Erin, and we did a lot of identifying and tagging of different flora- especially since all the wildflowers are starting to bloom! Tomorrow is going to be pretty dry because I have to spend four straight hours of my shift surveying visitors...a task only the government would be so particular about. =) Then, on thursday, I am supposed to drive the government van to Robles Elementary and do a program regarding Saguaros with about 70 kindergardeners! And then.. Saturday, I'm going down to El Rio with one of the current seasonal rangers, Estie, and we are going to do another education outreach program from 9 to 2-- feel free to stop by! It's right near the School of the Deaf and Blind.

So by and large, I've been having a ton of fun..and I feel quite spiffy driving a government van!

Halfway

As I reach the halfway point of my trip to Argentina I can proudly say that I am going to Villa Arcadia! My bus leaves tomorrow night for La Prida, where I will stay with my aunt for the weekend. Then she will drive me to Sierra de la Ventana (about a two hour drive). I will be staying by myself (finally) for a week in huge old house that has been turned into a hotel. I found the hotel online and when my aunt called to doubble check my reservations she discovered that the owners of the house (now hotel) are old family friends. In addition the owner of the hotel knows everyone in the Coronel Suarez historical society and will make setting up appointmets way easyer.

Now for some deep thinking.... My documentary that I am planing on filming is (as most everyone knows by now.. I hope) about an article that my grandfather wrote about why he believes that his father is the sole founder of Villa Arcadia. My goal in visiting (and filming) Villa Arcadia is not to present them with this document or to "fight" for my grandfather's cause, but rather to understand why it is so important to my grandfather to make his point known. I find myself wondering, "what if my grandfather never wrote this document and he was right." This begs the question as what is history and what does it mean to different people and the biggest question of all is history truth. I hope to adress these questions by visiting the places that my grandfather talks about in his article and understand for myself what makes this area so important to the family. In filming and capturing the various aspects of the town I hope I can share that same passion with the viewers of y documentary while discussing the my insights on the menaing of history (and especially family history) that I have had and will have durring my trip.

This weeks suprise extras are pictures of belgrano (thats the neighbrohood I am living in) and the famous BA hipodromo (horse racetrack)

A day in Clinic

So recently, things have been pretty slow. Things will pick up as soon as i turn 18 and am allowed in the UMC operating room. Until then, I just have to sit tight and live with boring days of patient analysis and such. I did, however, spend a day in clinic and that was...well it was pretty funny in some ways. Granted, people recovering from life threating heart issues isn't funny in itself (its very serious actually), but some of the things these people do is just a little ironic. For example, there was a fellow preparing for his surgery by drinking giant energy drinks. That doesn't even make sense! Energy drinks are bad for you all the time! Especially before surgery!!!!! Anyways, hopefully i will have more interesting posts for you soon.

Peace and Love,
Molly

It's Not Library Time Yet

I was planning on going to the library this weekend (now that the photocopiers there are working again, they were broken and you aren't allowed to check out books) but I got rather ill on Saturday and so spent Saturday and Sunday morning out of commission. I wanted to go to the library today instead but as it turns out, it is a national holiday so nothing is open right now. So, I'll next be heading out to do more research on Wednesday. This is unfortunate, but I've got sufficient information to write my thesis and a good amount of support for my research paper, although there are still a few little problems that I'm unsure about regarding my interview. My travel journal is coming along swimmingly and it's a lot of fun to write. I celebrated my 18th birthday on Sunday (they celebrate everyone's birthday here on the weekend nearest one's actual birthday, since there are usually no celebrations during the weekday.) I got a really cool watch from my uncle and in two weeks my aunt and I are going to go visit the south of Tunisia for three days, in which we will be riding camels, visiting desert and mountain oasises (oases?) and the saharan gate, which sounds like it will be a blast. I realized that I may have been overly generous regarding the liberality of Tunisia. Recently it has become more and more apparent, but it caught me by surprise how different the country is from the United States. Still, I guess the lack of the liberality here might be beneficial, despite its costs, to the country and society as a whole. And, in comparison to its neighbors, Tunisia has definitely made strides in progressive thought, which is something to take into consideration.

I now fully understand why field work usually goes on for years. There is too much incongruity and too many variables for ecological studies to be conducted in a short span. One needs a lot of time to tie up all those loose ends. That being said, my project is going well, as in that I am enjoying it. Is it going successfully? Well, that's to be determined.

No evidence of bears at my sites this time, but I did see several bushtits (a bird, people, it's a type of bird) primping their elaborate nests. I also found Coues White-tailed Deer tracks near one of my sites. The tracks were in a creek and lightly washed away, so I couldn't determine exactly how many were around.

A less pleasant discovery was that another of my apparatuses went missing. I don't want to jump to conclusions, but I am pretty certain of its fate, considering how a beer bottle was in its place. Certainly peeving. I have taken to cleaning up my areas a bit as well. Nothing saddens me more than litter in such a pristine place.

I will again amend my project by finding a new location.

I hope you're all doing well,

Katharine

some sketches

Doing research for this project is way fun. I have three books that just reference for fashion, furniture, mechanics and architecture of the early 1900s. I even got a book on Soviet propaganda posters that is great for manly-man poses and group shots of people working together. Reading comics analytically is really interesting, too. There are so many techniques that I never really realized were there when I was just reading them for fun.

I also have some pictures of a few pages that I've sketched (these are in no way even close to the final version). My scanner is not cooperating with my computer, so I took these with a camera. Sorry for the quality. If you need me to, I'll totally post close-ups so you can see things better.

Failure

So, with my reactions working (at least somewhat a couple milligrams is good news here) I have not had much bad news, but this week I did. My first couple of reactions were pretty much guaranteed to work, this latest reaction has caused many of the grad students to fail. Two different grad students worked on this reaction at least one month and every single time they were met with failure. To further my research I must make benz-cat, but to make benz-cat we need to use this reaction that has never worked. So, what I am making is called 1,2 benzenedithiol. It is a three day reaction (and we ordered new chemicals for it so that everything would be fresh). This week we were able to run NMR on our oil and we discovered that we made something that most certainly is not 1,2 benzendithiol but something that has way too many hydrogens.
Because of this failure, I distilled the only non-fresh chemical (TMEDA) on Wednesday. This proccess would have worked better but someone kept turning our reaction off so it took longer. Next week on Monday I will be working up the 1,2 benzendithiol that I started reacting on Wednesday.
This week, the machines we normally use (such as the NMR) were completely having problems. The normal NMR I use is booked until Saturday, so we decided to use the 250 megahertz NMR, but it was being filled with helium. So we had to wait until it was done being filled. We came back and the shims were completely horrible. They wouldn't even lock onto our compound so we had to go get the tech guys. They had to play with it for forty minutes. It was kinda funny.