The Birds

Well, I went to my EAP orientation, and now I am even more excited to go than I was before! I think that the month between the end of winter quarter and the day I leave for South Africa will be torture, because I won't have much to do besides think anticipate going. Well that's not true, I'll have lots to do, but it all has to do with leaving, so that doesn't help! Anyway, the orientation was really helpful. There were people who had just returned from going to South Africa that told us all about what to expect. Out of about six people in the South Africa group, I was the only one there going to Pietermaritzburg. My advisor said that there was another girl who was going to be there, but she's in Ghana right now, so I'll meet her when I get there. Most people are going to Durban, while only one guy is going to Cape Town. The returnee from Pietermaritzburg had only good things to say about it. She said that while she and her friends were always on their guard there, it's a safe town, and they never felt like they were in a lot of danger. She also said it will be very hot when I get there.

Yesterday I went on a field trip to Oso Flaco Lake for my class on terrestrial vertebrates. Most of it involved identifying birds. Hours and hours of identifying birds. The only other terrestrial vertebrates we saw were a raccoon and some cows. We also saw some silver argiopes and orbweaver spiders, and a Carabidae beetle, but we didn't have to identify those, and most people weren't interested in them. It was really pretty, but I'm disappointed that we didn't see any herps(amphibians or reptiles). Birds get a little boring for me. Fortunately the weather wasn't too hot, but there was some mist at times that made it hard to identify birds.

It's a bit cold and overcast here in Isla Vista, as you can see from this picture the balcony and front yard in front of my apartment:

It's still pretty though. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

First Post

Hello all! The zoology nerd has joined blogland. This blog was created in anticipation of my time in South Africa, which will presumably be more exciting than my life now, but I created it now so that I could look back on Santa Barbara and the U.S. while I'm there missing everything. It's mostly for me, so if you'd like to skip these first few months and come back in January, that's fine with me. My arrival date is January 28-30. In the meantime enjoy sporadic posts about college life on the southwestern edge of the continent.

Today I had to get three shots in preparation to go abroad, so if they don't let me go now, I will be quite mad.

The inspiration for my URL (which I thought long and hard about, let me tell you) is the velvet worm, in the small phylum, Onychophora. It's not actually a worm, but it looks kind of like a caterpillar, and its papillae and scales give it a velvety sheen. About 100 or so species have been described, and at least one of them is endemic to a part of the province of KwaZulu-Natal, in South Africa, very close to where I'll be living. So it's possible I'll actually get to see one if I'm lucky! There's a picture on the left. They vary in color (there are pictures of orange and green ones in one of my textbooks) but that's the best picture I could find that would indicate its size.

Edit: When I first wrote this post, I had a different picture up, and I changed my mind at the last minute. Now I realize that the picture I put up makes it look pretty big. So here's the first picture I put up, which shows how small it is:
Cute, eh?