Integration

With the new Dutch political situation in sight, not only Barry is thinking of staying here, but all of us are thinking about emigrating to Portugal. Live in our catchments is fun! We underwent a crash course in integration with local, toothless little (mainly old) people and we are actually able to have a hand/feet/French-Spanish-Portuguese-English mix conversation. Especially now the World Championships have started conversations go something like this: “esta ano Portugal Campione!” “No, Olanda”, “No,Portugal!”, No, esta ano revanche de 2006!’, You want Sardines?” And that’s how you end up in a bar with local drunk old men eating sardines and drinking beer. We found a suitable solution for both sides by wearing orange shirts one day and Portuguese soccer shirts the next day, so everybody is happy.

Although, not all of the local people can appreciate our presence yet.. see the picture to the left...

As Portugal is kind of religious (reed: every house is decorated with saints) we figured we could not pass the opportunity to decorate our car: we bought Saint Cristopher, the saint of the travelers. After the rainy days last week, we needed someone to give the car a little push out of the muddy roads. The rental cars are being well used. Now it is dry for a longer period, we should by Saint Pedro, saint of the rain, so we can practice more for Paris-Dakar and make even better discharge rating curves.

Although communication with locals is an important part of our work, it is not the main reason we’re here. The main goal is to do independent fieldwork. So why are the teachers here? ;) They have already helped a lot of groups with their measurements and giving the students big big icecreams. Too big for the picture. Now you can understand how students get fat during college.

This week the main goal was to collect all chemical samples. Every group has achieved this (no matter what time before the deadline). Also, discharge measurements were done during the rainy days. Many students had the nice company of crabs nibbling their toes while throwing a bucket of salt in the water and measuring the EC. Next to river discharge, through fall (the amount of water that reaches the ground in a certain forest type area) was measured during the rainy season of one week. Further more we had to measure many many many many wells and springs so we can estimate the quantity and quality of the water that is available in our catchments.

Next time we will give you an update of week 3: the main topics will be: Landuse-VES measurements-landuse-coffee-sardines-soccer-EM measurements-landuse-landuse-meteodata-forest fires excursion and Barry. And before we forget: you now have the opportunity to become the proud owner of this beautiful well.

xoxo