A glimpse

Cooling off in Arecibo.

A dangerously hallucinogenic flower! Pretty enticing huh?

Space satellite used by NASA to attempt contact with ALIENS! Featured in the movie Contact with Jodie Foster.

lindsay posing before eating edible flowers. they taste like the clovers in MN I used to eat as a kid. Sour!

graveyard in old san juan

jonny's first time at the ocean :) same place I first touched the sea in San Juan!

Eckerd College, Taino center, long jungle hikes, and teenage ducks.

Hmmm so there was a lovely college group here from Eckerd College which was fun. We did a bunch of road work type things with them. We went to the beach as well on their last day. Norman, Bridget, and I went to the Taino Center in Ponce to learn about the Taino Indians that lived in Puerto Rico. It was really cool to see the incredibly old artifacts that they created and used soo long ago. We got a tour by a woman who "really works at another museum so she didn't know much" but she did a fairly good job reading off her notecards. She showed us the grounds called "Batey" that they used for playing ball games. They were surrounded with rocks and a few of them had carvings of faces on them. This site was uncovered when the nearby Portuguese river flooded over and washed away the land. Inside the museum there was a skeleton of a Taino ... royal type person. It was really strange to stare at a human skeleton knowing that's just what I will look like one day. In addition, it's incredible to think of the person's life who lived in this place I am now touring. Maybe one day there will be a museum for my time, with my remains on display?

A couple days ago 3t, Andres, Bridget, and I went on a long hike through the untraveled"part of the Las Casas property. It was AWESOME but I often felt that I didn't have enough time to really LOOK because 3t and Andres like to hike 34 miles an hour apparently :) I wanna go back. There was a waterfall next to a rock formation where you could jump off. I was so certain I could do it and bounded up there with confidence but it actually took me like an hour to finally jump off. It was really interesting actually because my body became rigid with fear and no matter what I told myself I couldn't get rid of the physical fear. My mind and body battled for quite some time. Anyway the experience of the jump was good. After I jumped I felt uncomfortable during the first feelings of free-fall. I was relaxed when I slipped into the water. Well- sorta slipped. I did a bit of a body-slap I think. The hike was really wonderful and made me more confident that I could complete my goal of walking from Las Casas to the Caribbean shore. I'm not sure how far it is but I'd really like to do it.

My ducks are awkward and teenaged. They are harder to snuggle and hungrier than you'd imagine. I want to send baby ducks to my nephew who's 4th birthday is TODAY and I miss him. My brother Jonny comes next Saturday and we will explore the island. YAY to the beauty and excitment of living on this planet.