Day Two: Meeting the crew

So last night I landed in San Juan, Puerto Rico. At the airport I met with the other students who were also taking part in the internship program. Each of them are from different tropical islands in the Pacific region with one girl from the Virgin Islands. I also met two of the people from the University of Puerto Rico who would be our guides during our time here. Once everyone was together we were welcomed and given a brief description of what we were going to be doing over the next month. After that we set off on a two hour drive to our destination in Mayaguez.

We arrived in Mayaguez around 1AM and made it to the place we would be staying for the most of our trip. Each of us were given our own room. At first I was pretty surprised at how empty the place was. Before arriving I thought we would be staying in some college dorms bustling with students. While it wasnt what I expected it still was a pretty nice quiet place. Best part was I did find a wireless connection! Before our guides left that informed us that tomorrow we needed to be ready by twelve to go in to town to shop for things we would need over the month. After that I head straight to bed and crashed finally after the super long trip from Guam to here.

The next morning:

I woke up at around 8 this morning. I decided to take a walk around the place and take pictures of some of the native flora and fauna I could find. All around there were beautiful flowers and trees. Definitely a lot more in such a small area than I could ever find on Guam. At the same time I noticed a lot of the plants that I saw here are also found in Guam. Something that was pretty cool was seeing and hearing all the birds. In Guam there are hardly any birds left because the brown tree snake but here there were plenty. I wasnt able to shoot any of the birds but I did get a bunch of photos of the flowers and couple of critters. After about two hours of shooting I headed back to the housing and edited the photos. Here are just a few... (sorry about the partial crop! it seems that blogger wont let me post the full sizes :P

update: I found at that the garden where I took most of these shots is actually not part of the place were staying at :P Bummer cause I really wanted to shoot there again.


















The rest of the day was spent shopping for food and other items we needed to make it through the month. On the way back home we went by the University of PR Mayaguez campus and were able to get a glimpse of the student strike thats been going on for about a month (more about the strike here). We were told our time and schedule for the month would probably not be affected by the strike. After that we headed back to the housing. Tomorrow we will be visiting an organic farm in the morning...

The Group


Glimpse of Strike

Take off, Touch down

Facebook post Saturday May 29, 2010:

"last night on Guam!!! Gonna miss the concert and swell but Im sure Ill have something to look forward to in Puerto Rico."

Facebook post Saturday May May 30, 2009:

"Touchdown in San Juan Puerto Rico. Check out the fireworks in the distance!"

Intro

Hello everybody and welcome to my blog "28 Days in Puerto Rico"

My name is Johnathan Barber and I am an undergraduate attending the University of Guam. I major in Tropical Agriculture and Fine Arts. I really love the sciences and I really love the arts. My major interest in agriculture is organic farming and aquaculture however I am fairly new to these topics. I hope to learn much over the next few years through my studies. While agriculture is my main topic of study I am also am an artist an avid photographer (if you want to see some of my work you can check it out here). This May I started to work part time as a research assistant photographing plants and plant related things. So far this job has been a dream come true and I have learned so much through it!! Over the years I hope to take my photography to another level. But enough about my photography and my studies now lets focus on the purpose of this blog.

So it all started last month when I was asked if I would like to participate in an internship program between the University of Guam and the University of Puerto Rico. The purpose of the internship would be to share information about agriculture between these two islands that are both near the equator but on opposite ends of the globe. All expenses would be paid and I would get a chance to spend the month of June learning about the agriculture works here in Puerto Rico. While I was hesitant at first I later decided that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity that I should take advantage of. I agreed to take part and everything was set. I would spend 28 days on "The Island of Enchantment" and learn, share and enjoy all that Puerto Rico has to offer.

So now Im blogging here to share with you and document all about my trip. I will try to keep it updated on a daily basis and tell you as much as I can through photos, videos, and writing. I hope to learn a lot during my time and at the same time make this educational experience a memorable one!!!