Data Collection

Ahh all day today our group collected data. We first started early in the morning at the Bird Watching Trail. Whooo!! We walked over 800 steps!! Corinne took soil samples, Heng-An recorded all the data, Anbo worked the GPS and I took the pictures. Carolyn and June also accompanied us. This trail was very steep and most of the steps were very unreliable. If you stepped on one sometimes it shifted and there was alot of moss too so that didn't help. Anbo and Heng-An had a few moments that were very scary! Thank god nothing happened :) I found it quite weird though because this trail is called the Bird Watching Trail and we didn't really see any birds at all. It was also quite difficult to classify the ferns into healthy and unhealthy because we really weren't sure if the dead material was natural or caused by environmental factors.

After lunch (a very nice needed break) we headed to the Fern Park. There was a little over 200 tree ferns in this area!! It took quite a while to collect all the data but once we were done we were all very glad and excited. About half way through we took a break because we had already been standing for quite a while. I honestly was tired even though I was just taking pictures and helping to make sure Heng-An and Anbo didn't count more than one tree twice. As a treat we all headed down to mini market called High Lite. It's like a little convenient store. I bought what was supposedly chocolate Mexican bread but I didn't like it very much. There is a Mexican restaurant in Taipei very close to the dorms I'm staying in and I wonder just how good it is. I really do, but it might not be what I'm expecting.

Common Tree Fern

Dead Tree Fern

Does traditional Mexican Bread even use the word Souffle??

Oh our cottage. There are three rooms. One for the guys and two for the girls. Two bedrooms are upstairs and one downstairs (the one I'm in). The place is nice but there are alot of dead bugs and live bugs around. Corinne keeps finding spiders and she even killed one before we went to bed. The internet wasn't working and a man came over for a while but could not get it to work. So he headed over to Tom and Robin's cabin to see if theirs was. Unfortunately it wasn't but little Jack and Heng-An came back with snacks, gifts from Tom and Robin. I didn't like any of them. Almost all of them had fish in them including the peanuts. What?? However Anbo really loved this one snack, he literally scarfed it down.

Although today was all collecting data, I enjoyed it very much because I spend time with Anbo and Heng-An. The days are winding down and I'm starting to get sad but I'm trying not to think about it too much. I have really enjoyed Taiwan so much and the whole BACT program.