Nature

We've been on lots of hikes, local drives, and 3 beaches (city, rural, and remote).  Some of you outdoorsy folks might wonder what's the same and different from the mid-west.

Mimosa tree blossoms look like pink dandelion puffs - but turn a nasty brown when dried.

Trees - mostly the same as back home, actually - lots of pines, some oak, lots of locust (nasty thorny things), and spirea bushes are planted all over campus; there are also a few mimosa trees, whose flowers reminds me of the trees in The Lorax.



Plants: hiking through the woods, we see TONS of wild creeping rose, peperomia (Natalie - you had one of these in your office, but here they grow huge and wild and viny), and lots of weeds like at home.  Spirea, azaleas, and lilacs all over campus; bamboo (a lot like thinner corn - very densely planted - and very invasive).  Lots of red roses planted, which are in lovely bloom right now as the azaleas finish up.

Crops:  Rice fields are behind the campus, across the road, all over the outskirts of the city.  Like Iowa corn fields, only shorter and wetter.  New friends of ours went to a potato farm last week; we've never seen anything but rice.  Many of the ajeemas in the city and in the tiny local villages plant gardens in vacant lots and other apparently abandoned areas.

Rice field next to the highway, 1/2 mile from campus

Community gardens - I think this is where the market ajeemas grow the food they sell.

Birds: Lots of herons (blue/purple and green) and egrets hang out in the rice paddies.  Cuckoos in the woods (we can never see the darn things - they're shy, apparently, but very vocal in the evenings).  House sparrows. Swallows & swifts. Magpies. Pheasants.  Larger-than-usual chickadees.  And a few kinds we haven't identified yet. They are mostly too shy for pictures (sorry, mom).

Other critters:  Sam has seen tiny deer here - he estimates they'd come up to his knee; we've seen a few frogs and toads (one had a bright red belly with silverly black blotches).  Crabs at one beach (so funny how they scoot away sideways); a living starfish - so lovely!  I saw a squirrel once in the woods - but it looked like a homeless guy, all grey and skinny, with serious ear hair.  And bugs, of course - japanese beetles (reminds me of Stephanie's crabapple tree), monstrous earwigs (eeww!), and beach cockroaches (they apparently love all the damp wood

Beach cockroach, about 2" long.  Which reminds me:  Elisabeth's music teacher taught the class the song "La Cucaracha" (the cockroach) last week and insisted that it was pronounced cuca -LACHA.  Cracks me up.

). 

Japanese beetles.  So pretty, but such destructive beasties.

We watched a fisherman rake these up at low tide, and he brought them to us, gesturing for us to eat.   We declined and gave them back. 

Big earwig, next to Elisabeth's index finger.  We've only seen these at the beach.  In an abandoned umbrella that Elisabeth opened up. 

A tiny crab - much less scary than the king crabs we've seen at the market.  Thanks to our river walking with dad last summer, grabbing the crab was just like picking up crayfish, and we all had fun chasing these little things.

Nick introduces us to his crab friend.

The picture can't do justice to the deep purple and bright orange colors on this lovely starfish that Elisabeth found.

Not my picture, but this is what our frog/toad looked like - it's called an oriental fire belly.  Gotta love descriptive names for critters.  : )