For me, the month of March was dominated by two main events: the first, the prep and packing required for the scientific conference Bill was to head for the world's cavefish researchers down in Mexico, and the second, my own preparation as a choir member for the Easter program and my church membership class. It just turned out that all of these things came about in the same month and it took an amazing amount of work. For the first two weeks I went to class and struggled with the baptism of the Holy Spirit as a necessary part of every Christian's walk (I'm still not 100% on board, but Cornerstone took me anyways) and learning the alto part for the Easter musical. I ordered banners and T-shirts designed by Spela for the conference, did laundry, packed luggage, and did as much paperwork ahead of time as possible. Since everything was right up to the deadline, it was rather nerve-wracking though more for Spela than for me, since I was just too busy to worry much. But by March 12, we had everything together and relatively in order and apart from Ben (the lab tech from Daphne Soares' lab) losing his passport to the driver's seat of his car, we had no trouble flying in to Tampico, Mexico.
From there we picked up our rental cars and drove 3 hours inland the hacienda-turned-hotel/health spa Hotel Taninul. Our lab arrived about 2 days before the conference began to set up the conference room and confirm all our arrangements with the hotel. Spela was invaluable as our only Spanish speaker, and aside from the fact that we had to bring our own projection equipment the conference room was clean and spacious. We had some tropical rain but that just served to keep the bugs and heat in check.
On Sunday, our conference guests and fellow organizers began to arrive en masse. We set up a table at the hotel entrance with badges and welcome packets for everyone and I spent most of the day at the table welcoming people as Spela worked as a translator at the hotel desk. We had a few mix-ups on rooms and the hotel has been doing so very well that we were not the only group to visit in large quantities at the time but in the end most everyone was confortably settled. I was constantly reminded of how difficult it is to not be able to speak Spanish as many of the other guests came up to ask us what we were there for. The ones that did speak English were really interesting to talk to and full of questions. I met two high school girls who loved Friends and Seinfeld, and was told by an older retired gentleman that I wasn't getting paid enough for the number of years I've been in the lab! That felt good to hear from him, even if I know that the budget this year will not allow for pay raises.
My primary function for the three days of the conference was to run the whole technical side of things, so for 3 days I was up early and rushing through meals to set up the projector, load presentations onto my laptop, and get everything in order for the conference talks. As a result I actually attended every talk given and learned a lot, even if most of it was over my head and I was braindead at the end of the day. I also directed people to various locations, offered first aid supplies, worked with the hotel electricians to find a way to run projector and computer without tripping the fuses, and generally did whatever I could to make things go smoothly. It was a LOT more work than I thought it would be and I had no problems falling asleep at night.
Of course 3 days of non-stop scientific jargon is hard for anyone to handle, no matter how advanced you are in the field. So we didn't just spend our time talking, we also had coffee breaks where we made new acquaintances, spend the evenings by the sulfur pools talking, swimming, and (for most of the attendees) drinking. Its kind of an odd thing that community among science people is done with alcohol involved somehow. I am fortunate that I have health problems that allow me to not participate in a socially acceptable way. We also had an afternoon off from presentations to visit the small number of local sites. The British contingent unfortunately had car trouble, but I think they made it to the Choy river eventually. Since the hotel has finally installed wireless internet access, almost every member of the conference ended up online at some point or another. Scientists are worse than teenagers about being online nowadays, in my opinion.
I used my afternoon to finally go visit the ruins of the Huasteca Indians that are located about half an hour away from Hotel Taninul. I know very little about them other than I was told that they are one of the oldest Indian tribes in Mexico and to this day call themselves "people of the fields". Their ancient ruins consist of elevated platforms made of thousands of small, smooth rocks, perhaps constructed to allow their cities (when they built them) to survive plain floods. The site we visited was well cared for and even had a few slabs of stone carvings that it looks like they are working to restore. I wish them the best of luck, because it looks like that art is carved in the indigenous limestone, which is very soft compared to other kinds of rock.
Once the sessions finished on the third day, we ended the conference with a last dinner together with Mexican food traditional to the Huasteca area. Very yummy. We also showed our appreciation to the organizers of the whole show by giving them gifts, applause, and a good ribbing. Megan and Katarina bought Bill a belt made out of a snake (he hates snakes, I discovered) and signed by everyone who attended the conference. He may not like snakes, but he was a good enough sport to wear it for the rest of the night. Overall the conference was a great success and hopefully over the next few years more and more people will become interested in cavefish as a model organism in the lab.
At this point, most of the participants began to make their way back home to whichever country they were from. About half stayed for the bonus day, which was a field trip to Pachon cave where most of our fish in the Jeffery Lab come from. I did drive folks up to the town of Pachon (my first time driving in Mexico!) and we all arrived safely and un-arrested by county border police. ^_^ We then split into two groups of about 10 people. My group first went to a cave up the road that was easy to walk into and quite impressive. That ended up being a brilliant idea because so many of our conference people have never been in a cave before, and this one was quite majestic.
We returned to the town of Pachon and had lunch while we waited for the other group to return from visiting Pachon cave. Once they were back, it was time to put on some more serious caving gear and hike the short distance to the cave entrance. Pachon cave is actually rather spacious and straightforward, and the only climbing you have to do is through the rock pile at the entrance.
Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of the inside of the cave to post here because just as we reached the pool in the back, we heard a voice yelling at us to get out like NOW! It turns out that this past year, the local government has been blasting in that mountain range looking for limestone quarries during the afternoons. While not close enough to cause anything like a cave collapse, the blasts were powerful enough to regularly break the glass windows in the village and possible cause the rocks at the entrance to shift. The members of the second team found this out over their lunch and ran to warn us, so we had to leave the cave in a hurry.
The rest of the trip was mostly uneventful until we tried to get back to D.C. from Houston. The plane we were in experienced problems with the landing gear dropping out of their bay about 30 minutes after we took off, and caused us to drop a bit in the air. Since the pilots couldn't get them to retract, they decided to fly back to the airport and make an emergency landing. They did a fantastic job, and aside from being nervous because I've never been in a faulty airplane before, I felt perfectly safe. They had fire trucks on the runway just in case the landing gear collapsed as we touched down, but we were fine.
I really appreciate all the prayers many of you offered for me and for this trip to be successful. I truly believe that they were the reason that I never got sick, overly-stressed, or anxious the whole time I was in Mexico. Out of all the trips I've been on down there, this was the best I've had. I finally got a chance to feel like I truly belonged in the scientific community even as a technician, and that I was able to serve above and beyond the range of people I thought I could. I was even able to talk to older women in science, and got a chance to do a little talking about how faith and science might mix. And I also discovered that there are people older than me who still get all excited over interesting bugs or animals at the drop of a hat. I knew I would never outgrow that, so I feel much less of an oddball! ^_^ Thanks to this conference, I also feel much better about my right to be in Biology.
The bug, by the way, is a bona fide stinkbug. ~_^
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