Esquiando y Trabajando

A view from CADIC toward the harbor

A lot of delicious meat food

I hope you all had a great 4th of July weekend! While I certainly missed having hot dogs, hamburgers and watching fireworks, I had an excellent, but very different and Argentinean version of the holiday weekend. Saturday afternoon I was introduced to a ton of new faces, quite literally. In Argentina, like much of the Spanish speaking world, you are expected to kiss people (and not just the ladies) on the cheek when being introduced, saying hello, goodbye. Any reason is an excuse really. So I've been slowly getting used to that even though some people realize I'm American and just shake my hand (or perhaps they see the awkwardness in my eyes.)

Despite this, or perhaps due to the natural inclusive nature of Argentinians, they invited me to delicious steak barbecue, or asado as its known here. I've learned that traditional Argentinian food is pretty much just meat. Delicious lightly seasoned meat, slow cooked for several hours. Usually you drink it with wine, and afterward Mate (pronounced mah-tay), a caffeine laden tea that people drink all day long out of ceramic cups and metal straws, or coffee. After a three hour meal of gorging yourself you must have a dessert of something like ice cream or flan, because you've earned it by that point. This lunch/dinner is generally the longest meal of the day. On work days, breakfast is often skipped entirely with people subsisting on mate/coffee and snacks until lunch comes around, which is typically pretty large. There's quite a few people with Italian heritage here so I am told, and this heritage lives on in the form of complicated and delicious meals. I had some awesome classic Italian style pizza on Thursday for CADIC's monthly special lunch.

Skiing is fun

On Sunday I went cross country skiing for the first time. Although I think downhill skiing is more fun, you definitely get a work out going on the flat. It was snowing the entire day but I had brought enough clothes to stay toasty. Later we settled in for lunch, which turned out to be serving after serving of lamb, followed by dessert. Again, a delicious three hour meal. After going out and sledding for a bit we drank hot chocolate, where you dip and stir a chocolate bar into some hot milk. I'm going to have to try that at home next winter.

Panorama of the recreational ski valley just outside of town. Skiing, dog sledding, and snowmobiling all in one place!

Today I got back to work, next thing on the list was to start processing the samples that I had sorted through last week. There's many steps in the processing of bones for stable isotope analysis, but broken down into individual tasks they are simple. First you pick one of the samples, in this case the seal maxillas, and break off a small piece. I have a dremel tool which works like a small power saw, but they can create a lot of bone dust if your not careful. I also realized that I don't have the correct electrical adapter for it so that's out. It's ok since pliers work just as well and create less of a mess. The bones themselves are rather brittle and fragile so it's very easy to snap off small pieces of the right size.

Weighing bits of bone before demineralization. Notice the seal maxilla trying to eat its way through the vial tray.

 I take an initial weight for each bone sample in order to figure out how much collagen (the bendy, cartilage like stuff in bone) each bone contains. Typically, bones are 70% mineral and 30% collagen. However in older bones that have been buried for several thousand years, collagen breaks down. For bones of the age I'm looking at there is usually only about 20% collagen or less. I'll be measuring stable isotopes from collagen since that is what will accurately tell me information about the seal diets. Not to say that bone mineral is not useful. In the future I may drill some teeth for mineral which can provide insight into aspects of the seal's physical environment. Once the bone samples are weighed into vials, I can begin demineralization. That step I'll begin tomorrow.

Until next time, buenas noches my friends. Also, feel free to leave any comments if you'd like to hear about something I haven't talked about. There's plenty more I can write about!