Wonderful weather we're having, huh?

One thing that has been hard to get used to here is the weather. It will be predicted as beautiful and sunny for the whole week, and then it will pour. The reverse happens as well. A good example is this weekend. We were planning on visiting Culebra, an island off of the east side of PR (usually paired with Vieques), but the predicted weather was thunderstorms the whole time we were there. So, we decided to postpone our trip, as we wanted a beautifully clear trip for snorkeling and sleeping on the beach. Of course, because we decided not to go, the next three days were practically rain free, with a tiny bit of rain on Friday morning and some sprinkles here and there throughout. Typical. But, we made use of ourselves by patching Barbie's flat tire and heading to the beach here at Luquillo, which is the same beach we went to for Noche del San Juan (running into the ocean backwards). It truly is a beautiful beach, and we couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day. We've gotten a good feel for each other's idiosyncracies ("No, Rachel, I still don't want to go swimming" is in all of our arsenals now :P), but you can guarantee that there will always be at least one person willing to go to the beach if you ask. I mean, who wouldn't want to go?

The weather makes work a little more difficult as well. While we are all hardy people, we have our breaking point with rain and cold. Inside the forest, it is always a nice temperature, and in the sun we never have to worry about overheating or frying. However, once it starts raining, work becomes just a little more testing. Wet clothes are one thing, but looking up to ID trees becomes more treacherous when you are dodging raindrops every .5 seconds. Also, as data recorder, I have the short end of the stick when it begins raining. We use write-in-rain paper, which is waterproof--the water just beads up and can be wiped off in light rain. When it starts to thunderstorm, however, it doesn't matter how waterproof your paper is; it's still paper. I have lots of tricks, but in the end we always come back with a lot of soggy paper balls at the bottom of our clipboard. We make the best of it in the rain-lots of jokes, lots of laughing, and the idea in the back of our heads that if it really does get bad, we can always go in. So, in the end, I'm just trying to paint a picture of the soggy mess that we were today upon coming back from the field after 3 hours of thunderstorms :)

Next blog will 1) be from my new computer, 2) have lots of pictures, and 3) be all about chris' and my adventures in San Juan! He's coming here for the weekend, and I am extremely excited :) Everyone should be as well!!