Scorpions

Wellllll, in reality it has only been a little over a month since my last entry, but I realize people out there are updating their blogs once or twice a day. I don't have much of an excuse, only that doing dissertation research is very complex and trying....so is going on vacation with your best friend, but in a good way! So I'll try to pick up where I left off, somewhere in Vietnam as I recall...

This is Dos Leches, an old female in LV and her expression sums up how I generally feel/look most of the time. Deep in thought and concentration, so much so that my tongue is hanging out. The dry season has most definitely officially begun! Woohoo! It means a limit on mosquitoes and other water-borne nasties, however it apparently means a gross increase in the scorpion population. Scorpions of all sizes and colors. One as tiny as my pinky nail perched on the zipper of my backpack to one as broad as the back of my hand scurrying across my path to the bathroom at 3am. Upon returning from an exhaustive search for LV I came home to find a total of SIX scorpions spread out from the bathroom, kitchen, all the way to the edge of my door. Some kind of sick, stinging arachnid parade. Suffice to say they have all met the same fate at the bottom or my boot heel. In all honesty one was smashed with a metal frying pan, but he was a surprise for me in the shower once I was already nude and soaped up. Bastard. Something about a scorpion is so unnerving and creepy. I don't know if it is their little pinchers or that fast-moving stinger but they could go extinct for all I care. We heard that if you light a ring of fire around a scorpion it will sting itself to death rather than be consumed by the flames. I wonder a) how this could be explained through evolutionary theory b) who the hell first discovered this was a common, predictable behavior. I mean I don't like scorpions any more than the next guy, but to go so far as to light a ring of fire around one just to see what would happen...that seems to me to have the makings of serial killer written all over it.

And then there was Leah. What a dream it was to have my absolute best friend on the whole planet come for a visit. Luckily she got a little face time with the monkeys and only had one scorpion in the shower with her. I have more adventures to illuminate, but as of now, my brain is shutting down.

The most exciting piece of news from the last 5 weeks is that I got my Leakey grant!!! Absolutely amazing, and apart from the pride and validation, the best part is I don't have to beg my friends and family for money. Though anyone who still wants to help out, every little bit still counts. Leakey covers exactly half of my overall expenses, so as we say in Spanish, vamos a ver. More to come tomorrow, I PROMISE!!