20 June 2010

Today we saw degus!!!! All of us new kids got to go out to the field site today and check it out. It was super awesome! The field site is at Rinconada, just outside of Santiago in the hills. The views of the Andes are pretty awesome from further up. We hiked around the study site for a while and got the idea of how the degus live, and we practiced tracking with radiotelemetry for a while. We saw a bunch of degus running around, lots of birds, a fox, and a burrowing owl! Yeah! Tomorrow Chile plays again in the World Cup, so we will be starting real field work on Tuesday.

Yesterday after getting some of the equipment ready we all went up San Cristobal, the large park in the center of the city that is a large hill overlooking downtown. We rode the funicular up the hill and the views of the city were awesome! At the top there is a large statue and sanctuary for the Virgin Mary and a gift shop and restaurant. And we wanted to ride the teleferico down (basically like a sky ride) but it was closed for maintenance, so we are already planning on going back! And I just have to include a picture of the cutest puppy I have ever seen that was laying on the sidewalk yesterday. Pretty much the hardest thing ever to not adopt it right there.

Look how cute!!!!