More Geocahing with Al

So, Al had a phone with a GPS and we set off looking for the cache. It was supposed to be in an ammo box, somewhere near the ruins of an old house. We found the ruins and then Al triangulated an area with his phone so we just walked around and looked. I found it! Yay me! It was hidden pretty well, in a hole and covered with leaves and sticks. It must be all my woodsy skills that enabled me to penetrate the disguise and find the thing. Since you are supposed to leave something, and we weren't really prepared, Al left an Istanpitta card and I left a picture of Sayed :)
It was totally fun to find the cache. It had a lot of weird things in it: a little kaleidoscope, a few tiny rubber animals, a small robber statue, a couple of pens, and just random small things. But it is SO COOL to find buried treasure! I might be addicted, except I don't have a GPS cell phone.

Geocaching with Al

Al came to Atlanta because his band Istanpitta was playing at a church downtown on Sunday, so I met up with him on Saturday to hang out. We went to Sweetwater State Park to hike around and that's when Al hipped me to this wonderful thing called geocaching! It's apparently very popular - so how have I not heard of it before?!?!?! Anyway, people hide random things in weatherproof boxes in the woods and in other public places and put the coordinates online so if you have a GPS phone, you can track them down. And when you find a cache, you open it and sign the list. Some of them you can take from and some of them you are supposed to add to. I found this one!

Scented mysteries and chemistry

UNPA students primarily (until they started the nursing program to make money for the school) studied sciences like chemistry and biotechnology. They have 2 labs. I have a few pictures here of the chemistry lab. It is amazing how well-equipped it is considering that it is so far out in the middle of nowhere, jungle. Completely impressive.
Another factor, though, that put the blight on life at UNPA was the stench. There was (possibly) a garbage dump or landfill nearby that I liked to call the compost initiative. We speculated on its existence because of the presence of the vultures circling over the hilltop behind the school. The circled like hornets around a hive. It was eerie sometimes.
But the smell might also have come from the processing of hule/ule from the groves all around. Ule is rubber. Men walk around tapping it from the trees and they sell it to people who process it into latex that is then sold to companies to manufacture whatever they want. The process, and the ule itself, has a pretty rank smell.
So we never knew if that dogfood smell was coming from the compost initiative or the ule processing. And maybe we'll never know.

UNPA flowers

I took a lot of pictures of the flowers and the campus on my next-to-last-day at work. I hope I remember how beautiful this place is. It's easy to forget under the burden of the unbearable heat and hideous insects and slacker students that this is actually quite a beautiful place.

La Presa 2

Here are a couple of views of the actual river where it's been dammed. The water level is very low right now. I've been here before when it was so high it was all underwater. It's just beautiful no matter what, though. Very little to complain about. Except.
It was very hot. And in the plastic seats at the restaurant I did have swamp-ass so bad it looked like I'd been sitting in a puddle. Ugh.

La Presa

Homero invited us to go to the presa (the dam) that is the water source for Tuxtepec. He has a car so we went. We drove there, took fab pickies, ate a great meal, and came home stuffed and happy. The scenery around Tuxtepec is always breathtaking.

Iguana

We got to work yesterday to find this giant iguana dying on the steps of the Centro de Idiotas. We all had to poke at it and take pictures, but then some Mexican professors who knew NOT what they were doing came out and decided they needed to pour peroxide on it's ass because it looked wounded. Something was protruding, anyway, like hemmorhoids or something. We thought it was awful that they kept fucking with the poor thing. And it did die eventually that day. Who knows? But at least I got some good pictures of the local fauna :)
But now I come to the moral dilemma part. Well, not really moral dilemma so much as a complaint about myself. After I looked at these pictures I started to feel like one of those assholes at Abu Ghraib that took pictures of themselves posing with the humiliated prisoners. Should I feel that way? I don't know. But I kinda do. I need a drink. :)

Morning Sun

I took this out the window of the Tux Van on the way to school one day last week. The sun was looking really good, but I never was able to get a clear shot at it. The driver was driving like a maniac as usual. But I figure I'd post this picture because I see this landscape every day here and I'd like to remember it. It makes me realize I'm in a strange and foreign place.

Walking at the Bay

So this is where I walk when I'm at Mommy's in Fairhope. There's a nice park to walk along the bay. And I came upon these people doing Tai Chi and that always makes me laugh out loud (on the inside). It's just so funny to watch! And I took a picture here of a big sailboat that I would probably like to have when I win the lottery.

Still at the park

So I met this Egyptian named Ragab who has been showing me around Cairo. It's fun. He's nice. Whatever. An Australian guy had this guitar that he made at the park so I had to play it :) He was taking pictures of people all around the world playing his guitar. On the entry ticket to the park it said, twice, not to bring musical instruments. In English, even. Nobody arrested him that I saw, though.

Al Azhir Park

Or maybe it's Al-Azhar park. Or maybe it's not either. It's a park that's on the edge of Cairo and overlooks a lot of the town. I think it's privately owned and so it's kept really clean. The view is nice and there is a breeze. On a clear day, like this day, you can see two of the pyramids at Giza.

More Bellingrath Gardens

Here we are again at Bellingrath Gardens. Mommy walked most of the way through but she ditched out on the Japanese garden part (as usual) but I should cut her some slack since she had that massive back surgery - over a year ago, mind you- and buys senior coffee at McDonalds.

More Gardens

The weather was great but just a tiny bit cool. And there were a lot of other people there. Maybe we should have waited for a weekday. Overall, though, I can't say how much I love this place. It inspires me to build me castle and make fantastic flower beds. But then I want to quit school and get a job so I can do that. Then I remember the social isolation of Walker County. Then I remember that people are crappy everywhere and I always feel socially isolated. Then I want to move back there. Again. It's a vicious cycle of longing.

Bellingrath Gardens 2009

Mommy and I went to Bellingrath Gardens to see the azaleas in bloom. They weren't all blooming like they should have been- they said it would be a couple more weeks. But the gardens are always pretty. I forgot my camera so I'm using Mommy's camera and I think mine is better, but you get the gist of it.