When in England...soften the consonants and elongate the vowels!

So, a lot of things have happened since I last posted, and rather than putting a million posts up for each of the main events, I'll just give a condensed version in this one post. Who wants to hear me blabbing about all the little details anyways? So, starting now...

1. St. Patrick's Day--like for Chinese New Year, there was a big festival in Trafalgar Square and a parade, where I think every Irish blooded Londoner turned out to walk it. From river dancing to bagpipers to militia, a lot of people walked by.

Gothic pirates!

The funniest part was when gothic pirates came by followed by high school cheerleaders.

Oddly, Obama on the St. Patrick's Day parade float...

Another odd part was Obama’s face on one of the floats, considering this was a celebration of Irish culture? The music was good, though there was a scare in the middle, when some really drunk guy got extremely antagonistic and security had to pin him to the ground and then bring him away. It was really surreal, because the singer kept singing, and the crowd on the other half was still listening to Irish folk songs, and this guy was being restrained not two meters from me. To end on a lighter note, they tried to do a ceileidh, and while the steps failed miserably, it was a lot of fun, and made me wish I were doing some folk dancing.

2. After that, the next big thing was Easter break for the entire month of April! I went to Prague to visit a friend and see what was in the Czech Republic, and I was quite impressed! The entire city of Prague is just so old, and it was fascinating, seeing how little of the city’s architecture is modern, while still seeing the flashes of modernity in various places. It’s also very hilly, and if you go to there’s some amazing views of the city from up top there.

View from Prague Castle of Prague

They were gearing for Easter there, which is a huge celebration, so Old Town Square was covered in little stalls (selling decorated eggs, witches, and wooden toys) and tons of people. Prague castle was more of another town on top of a hill, rather than a castle. I got to see some of Moravia as well, when we headed to Telc, a little town with a beautiful main square, built in the Renaissance style and surrounded on three sides by lakes. The main square of Telc

We ended up stuck there overnight, due to an inability to read bus schedules, and we proceeded to discover how wonderful and kind Czech people can be, getting an amazing discount at a fancier hotel because no hostels were open. I stayed for five days in the Czech Republic, and it was wonderful—I highly advise visiting!

3. About a week after I returned to London, I went off to Spain, for one of my courses: Field Course in Ecological Genetics. We lived in Zahara de los Atunes, a small town on the Atlantic coast, and for the week, we did field experiments on the beach, mountains, and forests with beetles, snails, water striders, and wasps.

Across the sea is Africa--Morocco in particular. This is the first real site I saw.

Windmills dotted the landscape in s. Spain, and the multitude and massiveness of them were impressive.

We lived in a hotel right on the beach, and it was wonderful, seeing the ocean every day, taking walks along the shore after dinner, watching a beautiful sunset. The experiments we did were fun, too, using nets to capture water striders that went hiding in shadows, forcing you to edge into frigid water, gasping in cold but determined to catch as many striders as possible, tediously digging in sand to set traps for beetles but returning and finding that you succeeded, and searching through tall grass, like on a treasure hunt, looking for endless amounts of snails to do a population genetics study. We went all along the southern coast, from Malaga where we flew in, to Cadiz, near where we counted number of cells in wasp nests hidden in the midst of prickly cacti.

The pond where I went fishing for water striders--it's in a valley in the middle of mountains that took 1.5 hours on an extremely bumpy road to reach.

The water striders we were catching in the pond. Most we found we couples, with the male on top of the female, guarding her from single males.

We had a break in the middle, where we almost went Morocco, since there was a half hour boat ride in Tarifa, an hour’s drive away, but it turned out to be expensive, so I went with people to Bolonia, where we had delicious seafood (over the week, I discovered that whole squid is delicious!), had more gorgeous views of the sea,

The beach in Bolonia--isn't it gorgeous?

and peeked in at some roman ruins. We explored a sculpture garden not far away, with exhibits hidden within a wooded area, and a few shelters with intriguing art exhibits—a bath house, a dark room that was supposed to play a video, but it was broken, but it still felt like art because you went in, with one dingy flashlight, and it was pitch black as you tried to see what was around you, and it felt like coming across a shipwreck in the middle of the night, with the dark pressing around and no certainty about what was even a foot away from you.

Our final project was coming up with independent experiments, and my friends and I decided to study ants, so we spent three days setting baits for ants in a beautiful national park on the cliffs, testing how they found their way back to the nest.

The ant shelter we made, used to block out the sun and control where the light was coming from, to see if the ant species we studied told direction by the sun.

We left Zahara, all darker, quite cheery, ready to eat some vegetables again, and cringing at the thought of exams, which occupied my life these last two weeks.

Now, my exams are over, and in about a week, I will be returning home for two weeks to celebrate my brother’s graduation, before returning to work in London.