Saturday, December 15, 2007

Jose's Virtual Corner

Since I was going to keep a daily journal of the events encountered that day, I decided to share them with you.  This is my little corner to record my daily thoughts and events.  To view my daily thoughts click on comments and there you will see them.   Feel free to comment on them or ask questions.

6 comments:

Jose Danger Rockylion said...

Dec 15
Today we started some group activities. We were split into two teams.
The Adventure Team explored the town to find and get information on recreational activities. Their findings included packages that offer mountain bike riding, canoeing, horseback riding, & four wheeling. These are just a few of the many things we will decide on doing as a group.
The Publicity/Social Team, which I was in, learned how to make blogs & podcasts. We will then teach the rest of the ROAMers and made instructions for guest to comment on them. We thought of really cool ideas to podcast and some will include videos. So we created a daily schedule to produce and publish podcast. As for the Social assignment portion, we had to find a good restaurant to try-out to eventually select for a nice dinner place for the entire group. Tough Job, but someone has to do it.

One more thing, our luggage didn't make with us yesterday. I was hoping we get it today but luck. Hopefully we get it tomorrow. So we have not had a change of clothes since we left from the trip. Mental Note: next time pack some essentials on your carry-on. Not cool but we'll survive.
-Jose

Anonymous said...

Hey Sarah, sounds like you guys are off and running. I hope everything is going well and I was happy to hear that you got there ok, dispite the whole luggage thing. I will try and get your podcast.

Jose Danger Rockylion said...

Dec 16
Sorry you all. I'm a bit behind. It is actually Dec 17th but yesterday I was having trouble linking to this site.
So what happened yesterday?
We met in the morning and broke off into groups of two. Every group was assigned a responsibility in preparation for our trip to Antarctica. I was grouped with Karina and we had to figure out how to use the sattelite phone. We will be using the phone to call back to the U.S. and talk to classrooms or media while we are down there. Karina and I figured most of it but could not get the text messaging to work, we are still working on that.
We also brought up the idea on havig a holiday gift exchange while we are down there. That would be really nice since we will be away from home for the holidays.
We got our luggage!!! Well all of us except for Sergio (the film documentary guy). So things are coming along great. The rest of the IPY-ROAM team arrived yesterday and we are all happy to be re-united. Going out exploring Ushuaia is a bit problematic in large groups especially going out to eat. Therefore we started breaking up into smaller groups to explore. Later that afternoon we did our second podcast.

Jose Danger Rockylion said...

Dec 17
We have a full day planned! The hotel has a conference room which we immediately started our research project planning. Just within two hours each project team was able to compile their thoughts into a powerpoint presentation and present a preliminary plan to everyone else after the lunch break.
Lunch break:
It was interesting because each team was given a scavenger hunt list of local points of interest in downtown Ushuaia. A picture was taken at each point to prove and record that we found it. It was fun because we encountered cool and interesting things. We ate lunch after that.
Presentation:
Each group presented their plan followed by questions and discussions on how to refine our preliminary plan.
Icebreaker:
To conclude our day, we will have a group dinner to be the first official reunion of the entire group. It is over 30 of us and a new member of our team, Dr. Bill Roberston's wife, just joined our team. The dinner will start an hour from now so I think I'll end today's blog here. As they say in Argentina, chow and tune in tomorrow!

Jose Danger Rockylion said...

Dec 18
Today was a full day once again. Day started with project planning we need to give another presentation of our projects methods by tomorrow. All the field equipment got dispensed and we hit the slopes for a small taste of what we might face at Antarctica. It was just a breathe taking site up in the mountains. Once we learned some geological and ecological facts of the region, we were dismissed into our groups to practice our methods. Being part of the Terrestrial Ecology group, we did not waste anytime. This practice run was efficient because we got to see what works and what does not. For the most part it seems we just need to smooth out a few wrinkles. We hiked our way down the mountain and cabbed back to the hotel. Well, I'm cutting it short today because I need to work on my methods and start designing data sheets. -Jose Herrera

Anonymous said...

Jan 03
Wow, it's been a while since I blogged. Truth is that things are brewing and cooking so much things to get done and great amazing things to see and learn. It is 2:30a.m. as I write this but have to go because need to work on my data. Sorry!
-Jose