Susan's Field Study Journal

Tonight is my last night in Huahine and tomorrow I start the long trip (another overnight flight and most of two days) back to Olympia, arriving Sunday evening.  I’m sad to be leaving this bit of tropical paradise.  It’s evening here and kids are still playing in the lagoon, constantly laughing.  In three weeks, I’ve never heard an adult be grouchy with a child here, nor seen an unhappy child.  It’s a culture that feels very different from American culture.

Today I spent a good part of the day searching on-line sources trying to identify a few more fish.  There are still a large number that I’ve seen in the lagoon that I can’t find in any data base.  But I did realize that I was starting to be able to identify general groups by shape, for example the wrasses, the butterfly fish, the angel fish, the damselfish, boxfish, groupers and bassfish, etc.  That made it possible to find the names of one or two that I had seen that I couldn’t find earlier.

Yesterday, we had a sort of  Work Discussion, sharing our various projects.  I showed the paintings I’ve made, Marilyn Frasca showed the amazing pastel drawings she’s made, Lynn De Daanan read two poems and excerpts from the novel she’s started here (she’s already written five chapters in three weeks!), and Sally Cloninger showed a couple of short animated film sequences and still photographs she has made.  We took it seriously as a Work Discussion and it was very helpful to me to get feedback on my images.

Here we are looking at Marilyn’s drawings.

Despite being sad to leave the gorgeous, warm tropics, I’m looking forward to getting back and seeing what everyone’s done.  See you on Monday!

Susan