The Journey Begins

Well, here I am in Mexico. I could start this out like most travel blogs do, by introducing myself, but I'm going to assume that everyone reading this is a friend or family member of mine, so there's no need for that. If you are not in one of these groups, I a) doubt you will find this interesting, and b) don't think I owe you any introductions, so hah!

The flight to Merida was short and easy (though on the flight to Houston I was sitting next to a fat man with an impressively long rat tail who took up a few inches of my seat as well... gah), and I got to my hotel easily on the first night. Of course, I did manage to forget what numbers are in Spanish (I believe that's somewhere around lesson 2 of year 1) and tried repeatedly to give the taxi driver 18 pesos, followed by 80 pesos, until I finally got it that he was saying 180 pesos. Oops. Also had a good moment when, while taking the elevator down to leave the hotel, I pressed 1 for the first floor. I got out and followed a sign that looked like it might be "lobby" right into some woman's office, where I stupidly stopped and asked, "Uh, is this the way to the lobby?" She politely walked me down to the GROUND floor, which is under the FIRST floor. Sorry, but I think our way makes more sense.

The people I will be working with all seem wonderfully nice... everyone has been friendly to me, although I always feel sad having to tell them where I go to school. Unsurprisingly, I have not yet met anyone in Mexico who has heard of CMC, but I haven't given up hope yet.

They've got me working in a conference room separate from the rest of the office. To get there, you have to cross this cute little courtyard. I feel a bit isolated, but there wasn't any room in the main building, and I do get this nice view of the courtyard out my window, so it's not too bad:

I'm still not completely sure what I'm gong to be working on. So far, I've talked with a couple of Nature Conservancy (TNC for short) people who have given me TONS of information about the projects they are working on. One is the REDD+ initiative, which is a forest conservation program that is part of the UN climate change program. The idea is to pay people for preserving forest, therefore covering the opportunity cost of not using it for timber or agriculture. In non-economic-speak, it's incentivizing protection by making conservation pay more than farming or logging would. There are some problems with this though - what if the people weren't going to cut down the forest anyway? If that's the case, you're essentially wasting your money. To sort out where the payments will do the most good, they're developing a model that predicts what the main drivers of deforestation in the area are. It'll be GIS based, so they will evaluate the inputs from the maps - elevation, proximity to water, whether it's located in a poor area, etc. - to see what affects whether it's now forest, agriculture, degraded land, etc. This seems really interesting to me (because I am a nerd who thinks economics combined with maps is cool), but the work may be over my head, so I'm trying to learn econometrics quickly... we'll see how that goes.

Another project I'll probably work on is an effort to get a region, called the Sierra de Ticul, declared a state protected area. This is a dry forest that is fairly undisturbed, and one of the few hilly regions in the mostly flat Yucatan. It's apparently got five (5!) species of cats living on it, including jaguars and mountain lions (thought they're pumas here), and is an important wildlife corridor between two other protected areas. Problem is, since it's a DRY forest, it's, well, dry, and therefore not very pretty or awe-inspiring, so it's harder to get places like this protected than it is rainforests. TNC is trying to come up with some reasons to protect it - both the real ones, and the flashy publicity ones. So I might be helping with that too.

The office for the Nature Conservancy is only a few blocks from my little apartment... in fact, because I'm awesome, you can use Google street view to walk down the path from my apartment to the office! My apartment is the pink building at A - the yellow one across the street is apparently the bullfighting arena (!!!). The Nature Conservancy building is white with a tile roof and set back from the road at B... if you look closely you can see the sign on the outside.

The apartment itself is really quite nice. The bathroom was WAY cleaner than I expected; the tile in it looks almost new. The only downside is the cockroach that crawled out of the drain while I was taking a shower this morning. Not gonna lie, I screamed and jumped, then almost slipped and fell, which would not only have been painful, but would probably have landed me right on the cockroach. Luckily, I manged to hide in the corner until it drowned. I had to keep an eye on it the rest of the shower, though, just to make sure it didn't suddenly spring to life and come at me. Luckily, that did not happen, as I likely wouldn't have survived the encounter. I'm totally cool with bugs, but roaches in the shower... not cool.

The kitchen (pictured below) is simple, but has a little glass stove. I don't have a frying pan, though, so that's a bummer.I also don't have dish soap, so there are a lot of dirty dishes in the sink... it's off to Walmart tomorrow, eh?

I even have this cute little balcony. Problem is, it faces out onto the street, so it's not that pleasant (though there are some nice trees there), and my air conditioner vents out onto the balcony, so it is even hotter than the rest of outdoors - 100 with 70% humidity is tomorrow's forecast. So I'm not sure how much use the balcony will get, but it's still nice to have.

So for now, I'm just trying to settle in and get adjusted. I feel pretty lonely in a foreign country where it turns out I don't speak the language even as well as I thought. One of my main issues is the fact that I have NO idea how to find and meet people my own age. I'm thinking of trying some clubs or bars, but I'm not much of a bar/club person, especially on my own. The other option I see is to wander around on the local college campus yelling "I am Erin! Will anyone be my friend?" but I suspect that will work about as well as my other attempts to solve problems by yelling ("This is me yelling!"). I'm planning to get out this weekend and walk round the town a bit; hopefully by getting to know the area better I'll feel more at home.

I'll stop here because I know this is probably way more than anyone wants to know, but that's why I know better than to keep a blog normally. Hopefully the next update will have real adventures instead of just me blathering. Adios!