Banana Pancakes

Originally posted 6/20/07.

I am alive after a week of observations at the zoo. However, I think if I ever hear the words "Apies Apies Apies! Baby apie! Baby baby baby!" ever again I will cry. I am not sure how people ever become grade school teachers. I would trip the kids on the playground and laugh.

After sitting through sun and rain...too much rain...we now have enough data to hopefully complete the last part of the course. Today we had some extra fun though, some part of the course and some that could have gotten us kicked out of the zoo, and had a nice drink provided by our professors. We got lucky the past two days with the sun, but there were some very cold and rainy days here that make us miss lounge chairs at the pool.

We finally got tired of staring at monkeys all day and decided to ride the train and play on the jungle gyms, which were huge! We also made fools of ourselves and posed with statues banking on the idea that we will never see these people again.....let's hope. On our way to a certain sealion statue we came across some pelicans that had escaped. I wish I had more than this one picture because they were trying to eat our cameras and shoes, but I will have to get one from Sam later.




For today, we had to make a prop to use while we acted like our animal. We don't have a whole lot to work with, so here is our very sad infant (it's arm and leg have fallen off at this point) that we made of cardboard and twist ties. The supervisors thought it was hilarious. Sam may have gotten a little too into it though, climbing a tree and shrieking for our video portion. I am not being sarcastic this time.

Most of our time has been spent going into this class, but on our off time I have been snapping pictures of the surrounding animals. The camel pit was right behind us. I really hate camels. Also, I wanted to include this picture of the raccoon exhibit. They are exotic here. See Mom, someone appreciates their existence.

I am going to miss that bike ride every morning. There is a giant hill we have to climb and embarassingly, I only made it up all the way once. My friend tried to comfort me by saying, "I have seen a few old people who have been riding for years not be able to make it up." Yeah, that's supposed to make me feel better. Now I know that I am beat out by everyone except really old people. Coming down the hill, we just pray that we don't hit a stick or rock, because we would just fly out of control. I ride my brake down some, but Sam just lets go. She is brave. A funny thing happened on my way home the other night though that made Sam worry that I had caught a rock on my way down and was lying in a ditch somewhere. I got stuck behind a cow crossing. To me, this was completely surreal, and I turned laughing to the person behind me, but she just glared at me like I was the crazy one. Apparently cow crossings are a normal occurance here.

Our baby lives for now, and I am glad we were able to help the zookeepers out this week with our updates. Today the other females wouldn't let the mom take her, which is how the last one died, so we are hoping this was a one day occurance. I am going to miss the little bugger. She just gets cuter and more inquisitive every day. Too bad we can't justs stop in whenever we want. We think we may start name dropping and see where that gets us. Worked for Sam at the Dolphinarium. She got a backstage tour.



We like to come home and have a nice relaxing dinner, but the other night Brazilians took over our kitchen, so we decided to investigate this Chinese place we had been eyeing since day one. Adventure and a half! The menu is in Chinese and Dutch, so we asked some questions and thought we had what we wanted. Sam's wasn't so bad, but apparently egg roll means giant, bean sprout filled wrap with eggs, bacon, and mystery meat bits. Here is what it looks like. If you can't tell, I was excited. Maybe scared is more like it.

Even if we can't get a decent meal, the evenings are worth it if only for this: