Five Days in Five Pictures

Just got in this morning and feeling a little drained from our travels and baking in the sun through all sorts of activities. Instead of a proper post, I'll share a few pics and hope you get a little taste of what the past couple days involved. 

Transportation to our remote island hideaway on Guimaras Island. We had a treacherous journey there that included a taxi, plane, jeepney, broken down banca, and finally a rescue dingy, but it was worth it once we arrived. 

Along with some fabulous sunset viewing, we swam, kayaked (ish), saw sea turtles, hiked, swam under a waterfall, and relaxed with good books and conversation while swaying in hammocks by the water. 
Don't we look completely relaxed? It was just what we needed because our class trip to Sorsogon was sort of heinous. I'll start with the non-heinous parts--we saw two active volcanoes, Bulosan and Mayon, which is seen here and known for it's perfect cone shape. 

This was the view from the airport runway in Legaspi. We did some courtesy call visits with the health officer and mayor of the town of Irosin, where we did our field work. And we also encountered some adorable, precious kiddos who are making me rethink my comment that African kiddos are the cutest in the world. Unfortunately, they followed us at a bad time and we traumatized them with the task at hand. Behold, the most daunting challenge of my life thus far- picking poop out of a water buffalo's anus. I wish I had the words to describe my feelings in that moment but I'll just let the picture speak for itself. It was disgusting, it was traumatizing, it was tight and moist. But, I will say, I feel like there's nothing I CAN'T do, if I was able to reach into an animal butt with a short latex glove and extract fecal matter. I'm sorry, water buffalo friend, for disrespecting you so. 

I never thought I'd say this, but I'm glad to be back in Manila, clean and mostly bug-free in our home. We've got a meeting at school tomorrow followed by laboratory work where we get to process some of our samples, so our time of rest was short. If this post has left you on the edge of your seat wanting more, I give you two options. First, you can check out Nora's more detailed account of our adventures here. Or, for you visual learners, Diana created this video for your viewing pleasure. We haven't even been here 3 weeks so I can't imagine what's yet to come!