Santa Cruz

A post from Samantha Juda

We spent the last week in Santa Cruz. It was a mixture of field trips for class, and vacation. On Tuesday we went to the Charles Darwin Research Station, where we listened to a view lectures and then “saw” Lonesome George. He is the last tortoise of his species, and there is no one for him to mate with. I say that we “saw” him, because it was pretty far away from the viewing station, and hidden behind a lot of plants, as you can see in the picture. But it was still great to meet him. We had Tuesday afternoon free so I went to Tortuga Bay with Mary, Brice, and Sarah. The book we are reading for class talked about the bay, and how beautiful it is. It is definitely worth the 45 minute walk! It is a long sandy beach with some of the finest sand I have ever felt. The waves are a beautiful blue, and you can see cacti in the distance. There are also many Marine Iguanas (my favorites) walking around in the sand, leaving their unique trails of footprints and tail lines. We relaxed by a little cove where the water is basically still, because we were told that the water by the waves has a lot of rip tides and can be very dangerous.

On Wednesday we went to Floreana Island. It is about a two-hour boat trip from Santa Cruz. Annie and I sat on the top of the boat with two other girls. I saw some birds along the way, but nothing can compare to the sights we saw as we arrived to the island - hundreds of dolphins jumping out and around the boat, greeting us as we pulled into the port. There must have been over 150. We watched in awe - and I couldn’t even stop to take out my camera, I was too amazed. After we pulled onto shore I took a few pictures of the jumping dolphins from a distance, but didn’t get any good enough to capture the amazing view we just had.

Floreana is a small island with only 100 residents. We took a bus up to the highlands where we saw the caves that the German settlers lived in with the arrived on the island. The island has a crazy history - with a Baroness moving there with her two lovers, and people mysteriously dying. In the afternoon we went snorkeling at a black sand beach before we headed back to Santa Cruz. That night we were walking around and hanging out with Annie’s “Primo” (who is from Santa Cruz but we met him on San Cristobal while he was studying English at the university). He was walking at his parents shop in the artisan market and introduced us to some of the other workers. They were sitting around playing music, and we joined in. One man was playing the guitar and singing, another was playing a donkey jaw, and the third was shaking Goat nails. Primo was drumming on a box. It was awesome! I went and got my ukulele and joined them, too. The guitarist borrowed my ukulele and started playing on it too - he didn’t even know what it was, and kept asking why it only had four strings. He played a beautiful song, that I couldn’t completely enjoy because I was worried that he would break the instrument from strumming too hard - luckily my uke survived, and we have a video of the song to enjoy!

Thursday - Thanksgiving - we went on a field trip to the highlands. We hiked on a trail to see the endemic Miconia plants. Our professor is so funny, and put moss on his face, pretending to be Darwin. After the hike we went to a hacienda to eat lunch and see some giant tortoises - at least with these we could stand really close, unlike Lonesome George. We took a ton of pictures with them, and then left to go into a lava tunnel. After we walked through the lava tunnel (nothing like the cave we climbed down on Isabela) we went to the Scalesia forest to see the trees we have been learning about in class. On our way back into town we stopped at the Recycling center for a quick tour. It was crazy how similar it was there to the place I went in Santa Clara to take pictures for my Photo Final last quarter. I took pictures at the center, that are so similar to the ones I took in the Spring! After we got back to the hotel GAIAS gave us cake and ice cream for Thanksgiving! They also had the local students make us Thanksgiving cards, which were really cute. A bunch of us decided to go to this restaurant where we could buy pie’s (we wanted to go there early to make sure they didn’t run out). I ate some Key Lime Pie, and THEN we went to get dinner - a delicious meal of Pizza! There is no way we could have found a typical thanksgiving meal while on Santa Cruz, so we decided that it would be best to eat what we have all been missing most. It was so perfect. We walked into the restaurant and it was busy with people who were watching the big soccer game - and what would be a thanksgiving in South America without a soccer game?! It was great!

Friday we went to Tortuga Bay as a group and played soccer in the sand and then played in the waves. After we spent hours on the beach it was time for us to take the two hour (bumpy) boat ride back to San Cristobal.

What a great week! Monday we will start our final class… and our last three weeks on the island. I don’t want to leave!

Field Trip #2

A post from Corinne Dorais

Sorry I haven’t updated–internet has been out on the island!

I took a field trip with my class last week. We were all a little nervous given that our last field trip was to the dump. The dump was interesting, but this trip was a lot more fun. We left campus around 8:30 in the morning and drove all of 45 seconds before reaching our first stop. We went to a café in town called Mockingbird. They serve organic coffee grown here on San Cristobal. We each sipped a cup of hot coffee while watching a short video about the harvesting and processing of the coffee.
From Mockingbird, we drove up into the highlands to visit Hacienda Tranquila. Hacienda Tranquila is a really cool organization. They work a lot with the community to promote sustainable farming practices and education about endemic plants. I also volunteer at the hacienda sometimes, so I’ll write more about that later.

From the hacienda, we drove to the coffee plantation where we ate raw coffee beans and saw all the equipment used to process the coffee. We weren’t there during a harvest time, so there wasn’t anything being processed but we spoke with one of the managers and he walked us through all the steps.
From the plantation we drove to El Junco. El Junco is a lake (one of the only freshwater lakes in the Galapagos.) It formed when rain collected in the caldera of the volcano (no longer active) that formed the island. As it used to be the top of the volcano, it is the highest place on the island. We hiked up to the top and had a beautiful panoramic view of the island.

Following El Junco we went to the Galapaguera (after a quick stop for lunch.) The Galapaguera is a breeding station for the giant tortoises that are endemic to San Cristobal. One of the guides from the National Park explained there are 11 species of giant tortoises in the world, 10 of which are from the Galapagos. Of those 10 species, 9 can be found in the wild. The only species that cannot be found in the wild is _______(can’t remember). That’s because there is only one individual left of that species (Lonesome George.) When he dies, the species will be extinct. He is currently in captivity on Santa Cruz island.

After the Galapaguera, we visited Porto Chino, a beautiful beach. The water there was even warmer than here in Puerto Baquerizo Moreno and there was a nice wave break. There were so many sea turtles there that we bumped into a few while we were swimming. Porto Chino is one of the most beautiful places I’ve seen here.

By the time we finished swimming at Porto Chino, it was past 5:00 and we needed to return to town. As we were driving down from the highlands we saw a gorgeous sunset over Puerto Baquerizo Moreno. It was a pretty amazing day.

I leave in a few hours for a trip to several of the other islands. I won’t have access to my computer or the internet while I’m gone, but hopefully the internet will be fixed when we return! If so, I’ll update the blog and pictures next weekend. Talk to you in a week!

Salsa y Los Chicos

A post from Corinne Dorais 

Every single day I have to remind myself that I’m really here. It’s so incredible.

This past week flew by. I had a decent amount of homework (for here) and having deadlines to meet always seems to make time pass more quickly.

On Monday I started salsa lessons! It cost me $25 for 6 hours of class and it’s been more than worth it. I’ve had three classes so far and finish the other three next week. Unsurprisingly, my utter lack of rhythm does not make me the best dancer but it’s so much fun that I don’t care! There’s live salsa music tonight at a bar called Iguana Rock (seemingly the most popular bar in town and where we have our salsa classes.) There’s also a Happy Hour at one of the hotels on the boardwalk. One of the guys from GAIAS is playing guitar so we’re all going to go support him (and happy hour) and then go practice our new salsa skills!

Salsa wasn’t the only new activity I started this week. Yesterday was my first day volunteering at an after school program in the highlands. El Progreso, the only other town on the island, is about a 15 minute taxi ride inland. It’s an even smaller community than Puerto Baquerizo Moreno and doesn’t benefit nearly as much from tourism. Families tend to be poorer farmers and the kids in the community don’t have access to the after school programs offered here in town. There’s also far less to do in El Progreso. So when I heard they needed help at a small after school program at the library, I immediately signed up.

The library is a one room building on the edge of town. There are five shelves of books, but it doesn’t much resemble any libraries I’ve seen before. The kids are absolutely adorable. As soon as I met them, I knew I was hooked. They range in age from 2-12 and know very little English, though they all learn a few words in school. They were a little shy upon meeting me, but it took all of 10 minutes before they were grabbing my hand, hugging me, and sharing their stories. There’s a tiny bit of a language barrier, but my Spanish is getting much better. And kids are so forgiving that I don’t worry as much about making mistakes, which also helps.

I went back today and they were so excited; I don’t think they entirely believed me when I told them I’d be back. We were playing charades (you had to guess the word in both Spanish and English!) and I noticed one of the 5 year olds, Kayla sitting off in the corner quietly flipping through a picture book. When I sat down next to her she shut her book and pushed it away. At first I thought she needed a bit more time to get used to strangers, but then she shyly slid a new book towards me. I asked if she wanted to read it together; she nodded, gave a small smile, and slid the tiniest bit closer.
By the time we finished Little Red Riding Hood she was curled into my side, fighting to keep her job as page turner as more of the kids joined us. When we finished Sleeping Beauty, she was in my lap. I’ve only been there two days, but already I know I’ll be sad to leave those kids in December.
I just got back from dinner. So far I’ve had seven dinners with my host family; we’ve eaten out for four of them. Can you tell my host mom is out of town? My host dad is great. I’m pretty sure he’s worried I don’t have any friends because I do homework during the week, don’t go to the bar on Tuesday nights, and have returned home before 3:00am. He continues to tell me I don’t have a curfew; come back whenever I want as long as I have fun! Two friends and I made lunch at the house one day this week and he was so excited to see I actually do have friends. He’s promised to come dance with me tonight at Iguana Rock and he’s already forced his nephew into coming to dance with me too. Poor guy has no idea what he just got signed up for!

Other than salsa and volunteering, I’m just settling into island life and realizing more and more that I must be one of the luckiest people in the world.

Time to head out for the night! More pictures (and videos!) soon.

Love,
Corinne

The Far Side

A post from Erick Dowell

Montones de Arena

We’re in our final class (chuta). This means these are the last 3 weeks in paradise and the last learning experience on the enchanted isles is quickly passing us by. The class is Human Ecology and Maritime Communities (eww) it’s a very social science class for a very natural science me. But I have to admit for the amount of times I check out and go to facebook world or more often do a crucigrama or a sporcle quiz, I have been enjoying a lot of it. We’ve been talking a lot of philosophies and how it effects how we relate to our environment, especially the sea. There is obviously a focus on the Galapagos, and our professor (a pretty important person in Ecuador and a genius) is getting us to do an artisanal fishing trip to see the real effects of this activity and decide whether it’s a better alternative to fishing. He also just announced he’s going to get the Governor of the Galapagos to come to speak to us (yeh, he’s legit).

As always in the Ecuador though, unexpected things always pop up (recuerda SOPRESA!?). One of our previous professors, Judith, returned to continue her research and her work on the epidemic that is affecting the Sea Lion populations here on San Cristobal. She also asked us if we wanted to assist in a entire island census over the weekend. It involved being boated to remote beaches to stay overnight and count sea lions on the “dark side of the island” as my friend, David, said. All that were going (a group of GAIAS students and a group of local students) gathered late one night to learn all the regulations and the general plan for the next day. We each got assigned to different areas and all of us hoped for the coolest locations (BTW: Cerro Brujo & Punta Pitt are the coolest for your future reference). The people who helped here in the port with the sea lions got placed (rightfully so) in the coolest spots. I was lucky enough to get assigned to Montones de Arena (yeh, I didn’t really have any idea either). We then got randomly assigned partners. They assigned me with Junior, a local student, who likes sideways-cocked, flat-billed baseball cap and New York emblazoned shirts (match made in heaven). 

The next day all of us going skipped class bought food and pondered on the adventures we were about to have. We arrived at the old pier on the side of town with all our tents and bags ready to be boated off, even Rico (the ice cream cart driver) came to say, “chao” to us. After traveling along the east side of the island we passed Puerto Chino and a waterfall that drops dramatically to the sea. We soon reached “Mounds of Sand” and Junior and I were the first to be dropped off at our remote site. You could immediately see that we were in the middle of nowhere. One direction showed the endless Pacific and the other a desert landscaped topped with dead volcanoes. Behind the rocky shores were huge dunes of sand covered with you normal beachy brush. If you ignored the volcanic rocks and the cerulean blue waters it looks like a Carolina beach back home. Junior and I fought the wind to set up camp, rested, and went on an epic search to find our sea lions. After about 2 hours of trekking on a dramatically changing shoreline (the softest, untouched sands I’ve ever felt, basalt that looked like pillows, and fields grass waving into the distance) we found no lobos. DONDE ESTAN??? Our whole reason for being (there at least) was gone. We found some lobo bones and skat at the furthest beaches. We also found bastante marine iguanas. So we returned to camp saying that we would come here in the morning just to see if any sea lions showed up from the sea. During our down time I found out that Junior was super talkative and we covered ever possible topic I think, from marriage to American culture (due to lacking in a few key vocabulary words he might now think the US is just like American Pie, whoops), but eventually ocean breezes and shooting stars plying through the Milky Way put us both to sleep.

El Amanecer

                We awoke a las 4 and hiked to our spot. Cero lobos………………UN LOBO!!!!!............no mas lobos……..DOS LOBOS!! In the twilight as dawn approached, every rock looked like a lobo sleeping or doing their morning yoga routine, but in the end we spotted 2, a measly two indicating that the colony must have moved or died out. We walked back along an already made path strewn with horse dung, dog tracks, and a row of goat skulls (to be quite honest this made me fear for nightly visitors). We paused to watch one of the most beautiful sunrises that I’ve ever seen. 

    It wasn’t that bright, incoming rain(?) clouds hung low so it just blazed the color of a red hot poker in between a jeweled Pacific and cotton candy sky. It seems that the boat that was supposed to pick us up was late in retuning, so our little excursion lasted till 3ish in the afternoon leaving me with a gnarly sunburn and the beach a whole lot cleaner since we passed our time listening to Junior’s Ecuajams and picking up the mucha basura. Eventually though we spotted Jorge (a park ranger/veterinarian/ I have no idea) tearing towards us on the zodiac. What a great adventure!

               

  After reviewing our times apart and sleeping a lot a group of us went diving at Punta Pitt (the northernmost part of San Cristobal Island). It is supposed to be more tropical because of the Panamic current and there are also supposed to be WHALE SHARKS!! We had an hour and a half boat ride passing the iconic Leon Dormido and Cerro Brujo. 

Yours Truly

Moorish Idol

     We were soon there jumping into some wonderfully warm water. Scott (probably one of the best dive partners ever-the other is David) was my partner this time and we kept a sharp look out for whale sharks, but not soo much that we missed the Moorish Idol that nonchalantly cruised by. Gil, from Finding Nemo, that’s who it was and that was one of my favorite diving moments, having Scott and I jointly freaking out after seeing this beautiful character. After we calmed we had fallen behind the group, but this gave us the opportunity to have a Dave Master point out the field of garden eels, an eagle ray, and various tropical trigger fish. Scott tried to show me some bite marks on coral, but I guess I missed the memo on bitten coral hand signal cause I was super confused. Scott had I think his second best experience underwater (after seeing hammerheads) we he got surrounded by his favorite fish, the bullseye puffer. 

Scott and his aquatic love

A Galapagos Puffer and some Tortugas later we were back on the surface. We passed our surface time with a quick snorkel around the rock where we could see more Idols, trigger fish, a school of mullet, and I saw a bacalao (this one is a grouper not a cod and is endangered probs cause they taste so darn good). If we got bored with that we could easily just turn upside down a watch the red-footed boobies fly above our heads. Our next dive was at the ol’ Leon Dormido. I’m not bored o it yet but it’s cool that I am now familiar with the underwater topography of a certain place. This time though the currents were crazy and just spent my time trying to stay at depth (gauge was broke). It all turned out alright and we got to warm up to some jumping mantas in the distance and a quick relaxing stop at Puerto Grande. 

Cerro Brujo

Galapagos Puffer

 We’re all both dreading and preparing for the end here, and I’m no different. Now I only have a fishing trip, a 10 page paper, and a final between me and the completion of the semester (only 10 days). It’s about 12 till I’m back in the states and with casi demasiado good memories and my only CD of Christmas music (This Warm December by Jack Johnson and friends-thanks Marissa!) I might just make it there.

Adios to Puerto Grande

Iguanas, sea lions, and boobies, OH MY!

A post from Tina Shantz

Island Hopping – Part One: Santa Cruz 

So back on October 28^th we turned in our summer papers, presented our class presentations and turned in our research papers all by 12pm. Then it was time for a much needed vacation!! At 1:30pm everyone piled onto two boats to head to Santa Cruz.

Shot of GAIAS as we headed away from San Cristobal!

Unfortunately the water was quite rough and the boat was overcrowded. They had to pull down the tarp covering meaning it was quite hot leading many of us to feel pretty queasy (and a couple to even get sick) on the 1.5hr ride over. However, we got to Santa Cruz and the sun came out! Beautiful!

Santa Cruz is the most populated island which was immediately apparent by the abundance of tourist shops and variety of restaurants (there’s even MULTIPLE pizza places!!!!). We headed to our hotel which was really nice. Amy, Jacquie, Christina, Alexis (a marine bio student), and I shared a room. Since it was my birthday we decided to go in search of some dessert and drinks before dinner (why not right?!). We found an incredible dessert place which had awesome apple pi and ice cream waffles which we enjoyed with some caipirinhas (a Brazilian drink that is sort of like a mojito, only with lime). From there we headed to dinner which was so delicious and they even did a special birthday surprise for me – a HUGE piece of cake and all the waiters singing “feliz cumpleaños”! They even smashed my face in the cake, a traditional way to celebrate birthdays J It was a great 25^th birthday!

Cake in the face!!

The next two days (Sat. and Sun.) we spent on Santa Cruz. We are going back in a couple weeks so we didn’t spent as much time there. On Sat we traveled to Seymour Island via a pretty sweet yacht. We saw some amazing wildlife including the frigate birds with their huge red chests, inflated because they were preparing to mate. We also saw blue footed boobies and a sea lion who had just given birth!

Mom, baby (with after birth), and a curious bird

Frigate bird with inflated red chest

Blue footed boobies!!

Later in the day we went to a wonderful beach where we spent a couple hours playing the water and enjoying the sand. Unfortunately, there were blue-bottle jelly fish in the water which gave a handful of people some pretty good stings. This is also where I took my underwater camera underwater (go figure) and it broke L Sad day. Therefore, the rest of the pictures for the trip are from various other cameras including Jacquie’s.

That night there were Halloween celebrations all over the island. I really love Halloween so I was excited to hear a group of students were dressing up to go out! We all put on whatever clothing we had to make costumes. A group of us went as “80s girls” with crazy side ponytails and outrageous brightly colored outfits. There were also sports players, trolls, models, and other crazy outfits. We must have looked pretty crazy around town. We went to several discotechs (dance clubs) looking for the best deals and had some fun dancing! A group of us headed back early because we knew we had a big day tomorrow but I know some folks stayed out til the wee hours of the morning.

The best 80s costumes we could come up with!!

Sunday was also an excellent day. First we headed out on a VERY choppy boat ride to go snorkeling. There were nine of us in my group so it was small which was nice. It was really cold but we all jumped in and were rewarded with amazing snorkeling - full of great fish! I started swimming to a slightly deeper area to check out a large school of fish that were swimming really quickly. I dove down to check them out and when I looked out all of sudden SHARK! It was a big guy just lurking about 20ft away. It totally caught us all by surprise but was really cool to see!

Then we were back in the boat to go check out more sharks and iguanas (however, for this view of the sharks we stayed on dry land!). The iguanas were all over the lava rocks - we saw dozens. They aren't dangerous so you can get up real close to them. It felt a little like being in jurassic park - creepy!

A HUGE iguana!

Our last stop of the morning was a river that was partially salt water and partially fresh water cut between two high cliffs. This was the place we went cliff jumping (one of my favorite parts of the trip!!). We climbed up to the top, about 45ft up, and looked down. It was definitely intimidating to see how far down it was but the way the cliffs were there was really little danger of hitting any rocks. They told us to jump like a pencil and so off we went! Jac jumped before me. Unfortunately she started absolutely perfect but by the time she got to the water she had accidentally started to tip backwards causing her landing to be on her back and leaving her with some amazing bruises (but no serious problems). I jumped without any issues - it was the craziest feeling to be in the air for long enough to realize that I was still falling!! It was really freaky the first time but after that I went back and jumped again! Super great adrenaline rush!

Not the best pic but you can get a sense of the heigh even though you can't see the water!

After this we had a break for lunch and then we went to visit a neat lava tunnel which was pretty cool. Finally, we ended at a beach to relax but unfortunately it was pretty chilly. Corinne, Elysse, Travis, and I went in the water but ultimately we left early because both those on land and those in the water were chilly. The night was fairly uneventful although we did do a little shopping and lots of chatting as we got ready to head to Isabella the next day!!

San Cristobal Island, Galapagos

A post from Sarah Schmidt

I have officially been absent from my blog for two months. For this I am sorry. I'm not sure where the time has gone but ever since I have arrived to the islands there has been beautiful beaches, sun, animals, snorkeling, and of course class to distract me.

I'm not sure where to begin my tale of island living but I figure a lot of pictures will do an adequate job of telling my story.

This is my host families tourist shop. Tourists stop by on their way to the beach and rent kayaks or snorkeling gear. Our house is directly behind the shop. My room and bathroom are separate from the house which has proven to be a nice quality since I have two little host siblings (2 yr old boy and 7 yr old girl) that would probably spend every minute of the day with me if I let them.

This is my host brother Dante. He's so cute but sure does love to test his boundaries; especially with me because he knows I can't yell at him if I don't speak Spanish.

Spanish has probably been my biggest challenge so far (besides not being able to watch the Packers play). My host parents don't speak any English which makes for interesting dinner conversations but I am slowly learning. Their two daughters who are in their late 20's and early 30's and still live at home (see mom and dad, it could be worse) speak English. They give me some relief from translating but often times speak to me in Spanish so I learn.

It's a tough life when your university is directly on the beach and your house is a block away but I've been able to manage. Beautiful sunsets accompanied by the sea lions are a frequent occurrence.

The variety and multitude of animals in the ocean, on land, and in the sky might be my favorite part of being here. The best is the hundreds of sea lions that line the beaches. They are just as interested in us as we are in them. This can be scary at times because of their sheer size but they are amazing creatures and the babies couldn't be cuter. The giant tortoises and blue footed boobies are pretty cool too!

More to come on trips and activities!

Marine Conservation Ecology

A post from Scott Hammer

Lonesome George

The third class I took on the Galapagos was called Marine Conservation Ecology and was taught by Luis Vinueza.  Since we already had Luis for our class in Quito, we knew it would be a great class, but it turned out to be very different from the previous classes on the islands.  Our main topic was invasive species and we had a 3-week long class project to write a group paper on the prevention, control, and restoration of habitats as it relates to invasive species.  Apart from this project, we were split into three groups to lead class debates about hot topics in the Galapagos.  The topics – Tourism, Sport Fishing, and Ecosystem Based Management – were all very interesting and allowed us to talk to some people involved in the Galapagos National Park to research.  I was in the tourism group and did my best to argue that tourism was sustainable in the Galapagos if an emphasis was placed on ecotourism and the number of tourists was capped each year.  Even though we had no underwater  fieldwork, all of these debates went really well and we are all still friends (I think). 

The last week of our class, we went to Santa Cruz.  Here, we went to the Charles Darwin Research Station to hear presentations from the head of the marine lab and the head of the fisheries management team.  It was cool to be able to talk to these people and they came and had dinner with us one night and we presented our invasive species paper to them and got great feedback on our ideas.

Not everything we did in Santa Cruz was completely related to our class.  Of course, we went to the CDRS and saw Lonesome George and went and jumped off of Las Grietas again.  One time, as David and I waited for Erick's countdown to jump at the same time, David started to jump on 3 while I was waiting for "Go".  When he realized that I was not going, he stutter-stepped and teetered on the edge of the 60plus foot cliff for a second before gaining his balance.  It was scarily close to a disaster and we made sure to clear it up before we jumped, and succeeded the second time.  On Wednesday, we all went to Floreana for the day and were greeted in the Floreana bay by a huge pod of dolphins!  We went to the highlands and saw the cave where the first Galapagueñan was born and enjoyed the sun and snorkeling at a black stone beach, Playa Negra.  We also had dinner with two representatives from the Sea Shepherd Galapagos office.  It was very interesting to talk to these people about what they are doing and what they see as the biggest problems facing the Galapagos.

Floreana

Mixed in with the hot showers (a rare treat) and classwork and excursions, there were plenty of “only in the Galapagos” moments.  During a break one afternoon, for example, I was reading a book titled “Galapagos at the crossroads” on our hotel balcony and I looked up as I turned the page to see a blue-footed booby fly by with the outline of Santa Fe in the distance past Academy Bay.  I never thought I would ever be so lucky to have this experience, and I am constantly reminded oh how incredible and unique this place is that I call home.