Ok, the NEXT blog will be about ghosts

Last weekend I went diving in Gorontalo with my friends. Gorontalo (as a province) calls itself a "hidden paradise", and the diving at least is really underappreciated. There's only one dive operator, and he's not there all the year, which is kind of a shame! It's not quite as easy to get to Gorontalo, and there's no convenient island like Bunaken to keep tourists nicely secluded in beach bungalows and stuff, but the coral is well worth the visit. It's very big, for one thing. There's a big expanse of coral, and plenty of variety in organisms.

My friends have seen whale sharks, but they were a no-show both times I dived there. We did, however, see two species of dolphins from the boat. For someone who as a pre-teen adored dolphins and who had never actually seen on in the ocean before, it was totally cool.


Julianne snapped some photos of the whale shark. Still haven't seen one myself!

All coral in Indonesia suffers from environmental damage. Trash is a problem, and bad fishing techniques can cause a lot of damage. During one of my dives in Gorontalo, we heard an underwater bomb go off somewhere in the distance. Although officially discouraged, dynamite fishing is still practiced and is, of course, a horrible environmental practice. When we surfaced, there weren't any boats within sight, which is a pretty impressive example of how well sound travels underwater. It must have happened pretty far away, but I knew right away what it was when I heard it. (It's funny how I can just know; it was the same way with the earthquakes. Things start moving and instantly my mind says "earthquake".) Since Bunaken was named as a national marine park, there has been a great effort to protect the coral, and dynamite fishing is nonexistent there now (there are enough people diving that everyone would know immediately!). It's a shame that Gorontalo's coral is not protected in this way; in a place where new species are still being discovered, destructive practices need to be stopped.

Anyway, to get off my high horse, ten or eleven hours south of Gorontalo by ferry lie the Togean Islands, which are also a cool place to dive. Four of us took the overnight ferry one Friday, crossing the Equator in our sleep (way cool!). There was some cool stuff, like an octopus!! It was kind of disappointing to look in the book afterwards and discover that it's a "common reef octopus". Well, I feel special anyway.


Pretty nice, isn't it?

Sunday night meant another overnight ferry back. This is actually a pretty decent way to travel. We just rented a (crew) cabin and slept pretty peacefully. It's certainly more pleasant than an overnight bus ride.

The Togeans were a nice place to stay, with beaches and palm trees and all that nice scenery. My one regret is that we didn't get to dive the sunken World War II bomber (!!), but for that reason I'm going to do my best to get back there next month! A sunken plane is really too good an opportunity to pass up.

A Naturalist's Guide to My Home

Did you know that Indonesia is the number three country for terrestrial (land) biodiversity? Well, I'm certainly seeing that, because it seems like every week some new kind of organism moves into my home. So here's a little list of what's living with me.

1. Geckos. Of course there are geckos. There are geckos everywhere in this country, including my kitchen and above my air conditioner (though a small one fell from there and met its untimely demise). No problem. They eat...

2. Moths. Most of the moths I get are really tiny, but I dutifully got air-freshening moth-repellent for my closet. They're not really a problem. I wish the geckos would instead eat...

3. Mosquitoes. If I spot one in my bedroom, it's worth however long it takes to track it down and kill it, or else it'll be annoying me all night. Much like...

4. Bedbugs. First I discovered I had them because of all the bites I had, and then people from my school came and fumigated my bed. But, they came back. This time I've seen them. I'd do something about them myself, but really my mattress needs to be pulled outside into the sun on a day it doesn't rain. And my mattress is really very big. I certainly couldn't manage it myself. So I'm waiting for a Pak to be a little less busy and come help me out. It's a little gross but not a big problem. Bedbug bites fade quickly and don't itch nearly as much as jellyfish stings.

5. Spiders. They eat the mosquitoes, right? I sure hope so. Mainly there are some big ones in an upper corner of my bathroom and on the staircase, either too high to reach or their webs are complicated to destroy. There was a veritable apartment complex going on on the staircase, and I was afraid to go for any of the spiders, because the others would surely run away before I could kill them all.

7. Cockroaches. These can be pretty awful because they're gross, fast, and they sometimes make noises. I had one miserable night when one cockroach ran under my bed, and then called out to its friend, who also ran under my bed. I stayed on the bed (off the floor) until morning. However, the next day I put down some cockroach-killing chalk, and since then three dead ones have turned up. This chalk is pretty amazing. It also gets rid of...

8. Ants. Wow, seems like my list should be tapering off here, right? NOPE. As Sarah Mac says, there are loads of different species of ants, and we sure see a nice range. Mainly I get tiny ones in my room and on/in my computer, but in my kitchen I get some big ones, too.

9. Giant geckos. These things are actually kind of freaky. I've seen two of them in my kitchen, and I would have suspected they were rats but from the fact that they were on the ceiling. When I turned on the kitchen light, one fell from the ceiling, ran up the wall to hide behind the table, and then ran out in front of my to hide behind the fridge. These guys are fast.

10. Something with teeth? I'll admit I don't know what's been chewing small holes in my instant noodle packets. I can't imagine a giant gecko climbing my freestanding little shelf without toppling it, so I suspect it's a mouse? Don't know for sure.

11. The bugs that infiltrated my rice. Sorry that I'm getting kind of vague on the details, but I'm just going for a list of the minimum number of species. There may in fact be more than one kind of bug in my bag of rice. This is why, when I bought new rice, I also bought a tupperware container.

12. Birds. Now, this is a little unusual. The windows in my house are mostly covered with panes of glass, but at the top it's just wooden slats, with a sizeable gap (so if you're thinking shutters, you're wrong). Every once in a while, a bird slips through and can't find its way back out, which is pathetic and dumb. But recently the birds started a new project: building a nest in my window. I didn't realize this until I opened my curtain and a large heap of twigs and plant debris fell out. The birds weren't exactly happy when they came back and found out that everything had crashed. Well, sorry birds, but you can't live here.

(13. The cat. I no longer see the cat; in fact, it's been a good long time. But at one point, there was a cat that would come in and poop in the corner in my kitchen. It never ate any of my food or anything, just came in to poop, apparently. After we blocked the entrance to the kitchen, the cat pooped on my couch. But it's been gone for a while.)


Impressive, right? I know these were things you probably didn't really want to know about, but considering that a big part of my life is spent speculating on, cleaning up after, and assassinating these life forms, I thought you should know. I have some pictures, particularly of the bird's nest materials in my window, but the internet is being unreasonably slow and can't upload anything. When things pick up, I'll add some pictures. I'll even add a picture of my new haircut!

My next blog is going to be about something exciting: ghosts. Namely, the possession by ghosts of students at my school. I shall present my eyewitness account!