Half way today! Times two!

No, I'm not having twins :) - but today marks the day for two half-way points: I've been in Chile for 3 weeks, and have 3 weeks to go! And, I'm 20 weeks pregnant today! Wohoo!! I might have to find someone to take my belly picture :) I think its fun how people are starting to say - hey, I can see your belly! Of course that's only the people that know. So far, I think little over half of the ~75 people at work here know that I'm pregnant - those that don't know probably still think I'm eating too much :)

(note: I combined posts today, as I found someone to take my picture -)
Here's my 20 week belly pic:

(*note that I really don't like this picture, but I still put it up for you guys :) As you know, I do not have a patient husband around here, who will take the time to take a picture that I am OK with posting :) This shirt also doesn't do my little gut much justice haha - maybe I should have taken the picture after lunch time :)

From babycenter.com:

"Your baby weighs about 10 1/2 ounces now. He's also around 6 1/2 inches long from head to bottom and about 10 inches from head to heel — the length of a banana. (For the first 20 weeks, when a baby's legs are curled up against his torso and hard to measure, measurements are taken from the top of his head to his bottom — the "crown to rump" measurement. After 20 weeks, he's measured from head to toe.) He's swallowing more these days, which is good practice for his digestive system. He's also producing meconium, a black, sticky by-product of digestion."

I like this part:

"Congratulations! You've hit the halfway mark in your pregnancy. The top of your uterus is about level with your belly button, and you've likely gained around 10 pounds. Expect to gain another pound or so each week from now on."

and especially this part:

"This Week's Activity: Treat yourself to something nice. You've made it to the halfway mark in your pregnancy, so celebrate with a little indulgence."

Last night was fun - a group of French scientists from the University of Toulouse (who's primary investigator (PI) has worked with our Wyoming group for years) invited us over for dinner! They are renting some rooms in a hostel, and therefore have a little kitchen available for use. That PI is a renowned cook, that loves to cook true rural French (or Spanish in this case) meals. In the morning, he had gone to the fish market in town to find the craziest looking sea creatures, and then he spent most of the afternoon cooking our group a huge pot of Paella. It had mussels, clams, squid, calamari, and some others I did not recognise :) - and some chicken. Though it was excellent, and finally a home-cooked meal, I am for sure looking forward to be eating some 'normal' food again one of these days. Sometimes, the thought pops in my head to go to the local McDonalds (yes, there is one, even here) just to get a hamburger, some fries and a coke - and ok, maybe even a milkshake :). I would feel like such a traitor though! Maybe if I look around first, to see that no one can see me go in? hihi

Happy Halloween everyone!

Excursion to the Altiplano - the high valleys

As I mentioned in my previous post, monday was a mandatory, yet unexpected day off. Me and two coworkers (Sam and Jeff F.) took full advantage of this, and decided to go on a road trip, leaving early in the morning for a day trip out to the Altiplano - the high valleys. There is a national park there called "Lauca", and is located in the Andes mountains. (It feels so exotic to finally be in the Andes! - I've always wanted to see this!)

One problem - it is at an altitude of 15,000 ft. (i.e. 4500 m.)! This might not sound like all that much higher for us Wyoming-ites, but trust me, coming directly from sea level (where the hotel is), it is quite a change! We all suffered from altitude sickness for most of the day. Luckily, I never got nauseous, but my head sure felt awful loopy and slow! Needless to say we didn't do very much walking around, because we were all gasping for air with the smallest hill :).



(note: before I went, I did do some online research to see if it is ok for pregnant ladies to experience such rapid changes of altitude, and couldn't find anything that said it is bad, unless you are in an oxygen deprived area for several days/weeks, or are in bad shape to begin with)








Early part of our road trip - a dessert valley with clouds - yet not a green thing to be found




It's me!

Going up a little higher in altitude, all of a sudden, in the middle of nowhere, we started seeing these cactus! Quite a sight!

You can see how spread apart they are, and are growing in the middle of the dessert.

And, going up a little more in altitude, the first shrubs and bushes were growing, and we started to see our first animals - this guy is a guanaco, a member of the camel family, and living wild and freely in these areas! So cool! We saw quite a bunch of them!

An old house, with in the back ground the volcano!

And me :)

Another house

The border with Bolivia! It felt so exotic to take this picture! ....

And then to turn around to take this picture!!

And - BOOM! The sights of the altiplano - the pictures don't even do it justice - it was absolutely stunning!

Pink flamingoes at the lake! Who would have thought these guys live at 15,000 ft (4500 m) ?

Snow capped volcano - some of the volcanoes actually had plumes coming out of them.

We also saw hurds and hurds of alpaca's!

Alpaca's grazing. Since there are so many alpaca's here, things made from their wool is very common here. I've already bought some nice soft scarves, a hat, a banket, and the cutest little baby sweater ever :) (again - I love shopping for baby things!! - cannot wait to meet this little person!)

This one is for Ben - the entrance sign to the national park Lauca. It is our tradition, we take one for every national park we visit in the US as well :)

On the way back, we stopped in this little mountain town called "Putre". We walked around town, and ate some lunch there:

The church

We found this one little restaurant that was open, and it was filled with local people, eating something that smelled pretty tasty, so we thought we'd give the place a try. I really was craving french fries, and was looking forward to scoping out the menu for them, but, instead when we walked in, we were asked if we wanted to eat: "yes" was our answer. But, no menu ever came - I guess they only had one option, the menu of the day - what all the locals were eating. About 5 minutes later, the guy came out with our first course: some pickled beets and lettuce. After that, we got the soup from a bone that you see in the picture - it was made with the most interesting spices, and tasted unlike anything i've ever had before. In it was a potato, and some weird kind of corn, and a chunk of bone with meat on it. Turns out this meat was actually Alpaca!! First time I've ever eaten alpaca before! It was pretty tasty, but it had lots and lots of fat on it :(

After that soup came yet another plate, this one filled with sort of a poor mans' paella (rice dish)- with the weirdest looking sweet water clams and other creatures in it. Again - good thing I am not a picky eater, because this was probably the farthest thing away from my trusty french fries, and I ate it all :) So much fun to eat true local food!

"Our specialty is Alpaca"


Me in the town square

aPOCalypse now

On the night of sunday to monday, I was supposed to go on another midnight-to-noon flight, but on sunday morning the 'bosses' here get a message from the airport here saying that they don't have enough fuel to fuel our research airplane on top of the regularly scheduled commercial aircraft. What airport runs out of fuel?? Especially when they have known for months that they are going to have an extra flight load? Only in South America.

People here were pretty upset (especially because the satellite images showed a very promising cloud deck), but needless to say we had to take a mandatory day off between flights, and wait for a shipment of fuel to come in. More about this day off in a later post, because me and two co-workers definately took advantage of this, and went on the most beautiful day excursion!!!

Either way, the night of monday to tuesday it was then my turn to report to work again, to fly our midnight-to-noon mission. At 3 am we were done fuelling, and sitting on the tarmac ready for take-off: the pilots were trying to talk with the tower for take-off. However, no answer came from the tower. After 15 minutes of calling: still no answer. Finally, the pilot re-opened the airplane door, got out, and ran over to the tower to see what was going on - they were sleeping!! What on earth? At what airport do the people working in the tower fall asleep? Especially since we've been flying these 3 am take-off flights for 2 weeks now? Again - only in South America.

Either way though - after take-off, the flight turned into an awesome science mission! We found some great clouds, especially the kind that we came down here to study - pockets of open cell clouds, or POC's:

This is a satellite image of a region with POCs - see how with the POCs, the cells are open, whereas the more 'normal' stratus deck has closed cells. These regions with open cell structure are hypothesized to be associated with lots of drizzle and depleted aerosol concentrations. What causes this? Also, you can imagine that that kind of a cloud deck has a very different effect on the earth's solar radiation budget than a closed cloud deck, therefore very much of interest to climate scientists. Just look at this image, where a hole in the cloud deck allows the sun's rays to peep through:

(image courtesy of Tony Clarke)

Here are some figures of the types of flights we did through these regions, to get good samples of the aerosol, and the cloud dynamics and structures of these POCs. Looks sort of like a ride on a roller coaster - don't get nauseated :)

(figures courtesy of Rob Wood)

The flight scientists were extatic (almost annoyingly so :) ) that we found a bunch of these types of clouds to fly through and collect data from. Every day, at 10:30 am, we have our daily science meetings with every one here. We go over all the flights, and any interesting science found during that flight, and of all the other flights (there are 4 research aircraft based here in Arica now, and one other in a town little further south - Iquique).

At todays' debriefing, the main research scientist on yesterday nights' flight, in all his excitement, offically called and archived that mission as "aPOCalypse now" ...

I work with a bunch of nerds.

Unwanted visitor

Dear Mr. Giant Cockroach,

I would appreciate it if you refrain from crawling up and out of my shower drail hole. The thought of you snooping around in the bathroom so close to where I sleep at night creeps me out.

Thanks,

The guest in room 507.

My "heirloom tomato"

I love how every week, babycenter.com compares your little sprout to some sort of vegetable, fruit or legume :). By now, we've graduated from rice kernel to heirloom tomato haha.
I'm 19 weeks +1 day along today! - From babycenter.com:

"Your baby's sensory development is exploding! Her brain is designating specialized areas for smell, taste, hearing, vision, and touch. Some research suggests that she may be able to hear your voice now, so don't be shy about reading aloud, talking to her, or singing a happy tune if the mood strikes you.
Your baby weighs about 8 1/2 ounces and measures 6 inches (= 15 cm), head to bottom — about the size of a large heirloom tomato. Her arms and legs are in the right proportions to each other and the rest of her body now. Her kidneys continue to make urine and the hair on her scalp is sprouting. A waxy protective coating called the vernix caseosa is forming on her skin to prevent it from pickling in the amniotic fluid."

My belly is slowly growing bigger and bigger :) - and, for about a week now I've been feeling the baby move! It is so fun, it puts the biggest smile on my face :) I feel it mostly in the afternoon and evenings, especially after something sweet or caffeinated. Love it!

Happy Birthday Bastian!

Gefeliciteerd met je verjaardag Broer!!

A few pictures of the proud papa:

Ahh :)

More pictures

Blogger didn't let me upload these last few pictures from yesterdays flight yesterday, so here they are:


My 'office' for the day


And zoomed in :) - note that the inside of the airplane is very loud, so we wear earplugs, and communicate via headsets. Everone makes comments about their scientific findings during the flights, so others can look for correlating interesting things in their measurements



The engine and ocean - on the "below-cloud-legs", we actually dip down to 100ft. above the sealevel, and then do 10-30 minute flight legs at 500 ft. above the sealevel, below cloud base. It always feels pretty close!



Sun peeping through holes in the cloud-deck.

Just another day at the office

The flight went great! We found some great clouds, and collected some great data by flying below them, through them and above them. It was a long night, but I had a nap as soon as I got back to the hotel, and will probably turn in early tonight :)

Here's some pictures:

The beast at 1 am.

Again - the C-130 at 1 am (longer exposure)

Fuelling the aircraft - this takes ~45 minutes, and we are stuck inside the whole time

f.l.t.r Jeff, Jorgen (Jensen - sits in seat next to mine) and Perry hanging out in the back of the plane during fuelling

Pre-take off activity inside the cabin

Right before sunrise, I sneaked into the cock-pit, and got the most gorgeous view ever! Sun rising over the cloud tops!

See the difference in cloud top level? Below that bump there, there is a drizzle shaft - one of the things we are studying - how the aerosol interacts with the cloud and interacts with the drizze (formation)

Co-pilot doing his job :)

And here it is, the copper ball!

And again a few minutes later

Flying tonight!

Decision made at today's meeting to fly tonight. Most likely a 20South survey mission.
Here is the schedule for the next two days:
10/23/08 - C-130 flight
Power & Access: 0000 local time - yes - that is midnight!!
Door Close: 0145
Fueling: 0200 - 0245
Takeoff: 0300
Duration: 9 hours
Post Flight Power: 30 minutes

10/24/08 - C-130 Maintenance Day
Power & Access: 0200 local

Extensive work on PMS probes - with single point calibration testing

I better find myself a place to take a nap :) - soon I will try to post some more info on why/where and what we are doing here :)

Amigos Hola!

One of these days, I will actually blog about the science and work I am down here for, and will give a report of my first flight and findings, but the last 1.5 days I was a little down (the time I was writing this post)- I feel a little stuck at the hotel sometimes, not feeling safe enough to really do something on my own - any walk I take, I always get comments from any men passing by, and even though I know it is part of the latin culture, it get very tiring, and sometimes is pretty intimidating, especially if no one else is around. (But - I promise I'm staying safe!) Also, I seem to be very dependent on others/coworkers to do anything besides sitting behind my computer and working, so that is also limiting.

Anywho - this made me take yesterday afternoon off :) - around lunch time I walked into town - on my own - it was so nice! It was busy enough in town that (nearly) no-one bothered me with a comment, and I shopped around for some post cards to send (though not very successful - I found one tiny store, which had 4 post cards - so I bought their entire stock :) - needles to say, don't feel left out if you don't receive a postcard from me this trip), I found a bakery where I bought some empanadas (pastries filled with meat and other goodies - they make GREAT lunches!), and just looked around town a bit.

When I got back, a coworker and his wife (and another coworker who wanted to come along) were actually just headed out of town to drive north along the coast to where the road ends - at the end of this road, there is a trail all along the coast, leading to a colony of sea lions! Of course I joined :)

The trail was nice, of course all desert like everywhere else here, but there were some caves we explored, watched some of the giant birds fly around (I'm sure I'll post something about these giant birds at some point too), again stared at the waves, and finally got to the sea lion colony:


We watched the swells splash through this hole - pretty fun!


Some parts of the rock walls were all white - after more detailed examination we determined this was years and years of bird poo!


(from left to right: Julie, Sam, Perry)




We explored some cool caves! (though they smelled awful - a buildup of years and years of birdpoo!)


My silhouet in the cave


Standing in front of the water spout :)


Pile 'O Sea Lions




All huddled together on one little Island



One scrawny little guy (right)- he looked very underfed :( - but maybe that is mom on the left?



Rodrigo de Butar - the friendly little crab



And some sea lion jerky for those interested? - look at those teeth!




Amigos Hola!