Ok Friends, Here are 2 photos. The first is the view out my lab window, right above the computer I often use. The other is the view I get if I walk out my back door and tromp through some bushes. Yeah, it's rough here.

To make matters worse (for anyone who is not me) I get paid to hike around the island counting trees. The trees are a kind of cycad. Cycads are the trees that were most common during the age of the dinosaurs (plant nerds actually refer to it as the Age of Cycads.) There weren't any flowering trees back then, just these guys and giant ferns and such. Identifying them here isn't hard. Just look for a tree that looks like a short palm tree and is dying. That's my plant.

I work for a very nice and laid back kind of guy named (Dr.) Tommy Marler. He's not actually an ecologist by training but a horticulturist. He studies tropical fruit, which means that I've already eating quite a variety of mangos, star fruit, guava, mountain "apples," atemoya (rather like it's more popular cousin, chermoya), chicle fruit, and several other small sour things and one that wasn't sour. I don't remember all the names. Also, you know how in the tropics people are always trying to convince gringos that it's cool to drink that nappy juice out of the coconut? That sort of bland/sweet/insipid junk that always has bits of coconut husk in it? Well, I have learned here, as part of my training, that the juice from coconuts is really really good if you just pick it earlier, while the fruit is still really green. Nice and Tangy. You should try it.

Here is the Guam word of the blog: off-island / on-island Fairly self explanatory. Example: Except for a few days, everyone else in the lab will be off island for the next month. (This is true. They've pretty much turned the lab over to me. This would be a great opportunity to turn evil scientist- if University of Guam could afford any equipment.)

I'm still trying to figure out this whole blog thing. I just told blogspot that my birthday could be included in my profile and it automatically included my astrological sign and what chinese year I was born in. I can't figure out how to get rid of that "Gemini" lable. It's not really the kind of thing I want people to immediately see- oh, she's listed her sign. Dumb. However, I do like being reminded that I belong to the year of the monkey.

This photo is from the last time I spent 3 months in the tropics and did some fieldwork- but that time I didn't get paid and Forrest was there (slightly longer, in fact, than I was). Also, Guatemala; Guam, eh? Don't you think that means something?

Shell&Forrest

Well, I named this blog Shell&Forrest, but, come Monday, it should probably be called Shell without Forrest. Here's why: I'm moving to Guam. Yes, without my one true love. For 3 months. I'll be doing field work there (Do I get to call myself a Biologist now? I'm getting paid for it this time). I don't actually have many details on the whole thing yet, but it looks like I'll be living in a building at a fish hatchery. Hopefully it doesn't smell too wierd. I'll let you know how it all turns out.