February 24, 2012
maker of heaven and earth
God is so cool: (from http://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=13&article=1118)
Q.
In Genesis 17:12, God commanded Abraham to circumcise baby boys on the eighth day of their lives. Why day eight? Is there any good, scientific rationale behind such a command?
A.
In Genesis 17:12, God specifically directed Abraham to circumcise newborn males on the eighth day. Why the eighth day? In 1935, professor H. Dam proposed the name “vitamin K” for the factor in foods that helped prevent hemorrhaging in baby chicks. We now know vitamin K is responsible for the production (by the liver) of the element known as prothrombin. If vitamin K is deficient, there will be a prothrombin deficiency and hemorrhaging may occur. Oddly, it is only on the fifth through the seventh days of the newborn male’s life that vitamin K (produced by bacteria in the intestinal tract) is present in adequate quantities. Vitamin K, coupled with prothrombin, causes blood coagulation, which is important in any surgical procedure. Holt and McIntosh, in their classic work, Holt Pediatrics, observed that a newborn infant has “peculiar susceptibility to bleeding between the second and fifth days of life…. Hemorrhages at this time, though often inconsequential, are sometimes extensive; they may produce serious damage to internal organs, especially to the brain, and cause death from shock and exsanguination” (1953, pp. 125-126). Obviously, then, if vitamin K is not produced in sufficient quantities until days five through seven, it would be wise to postpone any surgery until some time after that. But why did God specify day eight?
On the eighth day, the amount of prothrombin present actually is elevated above one-hundred percent of normal—and is the only day in the male’s life in which this will be the case under normal conditions. If surgery is to be performed, day eight is the perfect day to do it. Vitamin K and prothrombin levels are at their peak. The chart below, patterned after one published by S.I. McMillen, M.D., in his book, None of These Diseases, portrays this in graphic form.
Dr. McMillen observed:
We should commend the many hundreds of workers who labored at great expense over a number of years to discover that the safest day to perform circumcision is the eighth. Yet, as we congratulate medical science for this recent finding, we can almost hear the leaves of the Bible rustling. They would like to remind us that four thousand years ago, when God initiated circumcision with Abraham….Abraham did not pick the eighth day after many centuries of trial-and-error experiments. Neither he nor any of his company from the ancient city of Ur in the Chaldees ever had been circumcised. It was a day picked by the Creator of vitamin K (1984, p. 93).
Moses’ information, as recorded in Genesis 17:12, not only was scientifically accurate, but was years ahead of its time. How did Moses have access to such information? The answer, of course, is provided by the apostle Paul in 2 Timothy 3:16—“Every scripture is inspired of God.”
November 1, 2009
retreat
I guess this is the obligatory post-retreat post where I summarize my thoughts/emotions over the past week + reflect on the year so far. It’s good cause it forces me to sit down and think about my life, something I don’t naturally feel the inclination to do normally.
Today, when we were letter-writing, I found it hard for words to come to me. There wasn’t terribly much I wanted to say, which sort of characterizes the way I felt (have been feeling). Well…no, not really, cause I’ve been feeling a lot. It’s just been difficult to translate into words, and also in the sense that I don’t quite know what I’m feeling. Haha…so vague and not helpful, I know. But yeah, I don’t really know how I felt this retreat. It seems to pass too quickly, and I didn’t get to experience any one thing in a deep way. Things just seemed to pass, and I rode along with the flow. I can’t say I felt broken, euphoric, or even deeply affected by anything. Usually (especially during praise or prayer time) there is some instant during retreat where I experience something deep that makes my heart hurt (either in a good or bad way). That didn’t happen this weekend and I’m not sure what to think of that. I also usually end up bawling at some point, because of that heart-feeling and that also didn’t happen. Well, I cried, but that’s a given, cause I’m a leaky faucet and cry almost every time someone prays for me. But in general, I guess I’m kind of ambivalent toward the whole weekend. In some respects sort of disappointed that certain conversations didn’t happen that I wish could’ve happened, or the lack of hanging out with people who I wished I could’ve hung out with. But I really appreciated the experience of nature…even though it was rainy and gross on Saturday (and I had wanted to take a walk in the woods given good weather), there’s something incredibly calm and soothing about being out in the rain, amongst the trees and leaves. There’s a certain stillness and silence that comes over nature during rain, but its filled with sound at the same time. Hard to describe…but this summer in Honduras really developed my appreciation for the natural world. Hmmm…yeah, so I don’t really know what to think of this weekend. But it was good. I enjoyed it 
July 14, 2009
a brief brush with civilization
*Edited with pictures: click on the links or go to the gallery at bottom*
It’s a funny thing, but after 5 weeks in the jungle, you start to realize how unclean and messed-up things became after man arrived and started wrecking havoc on untamed nature. Civilization has its own dangers, sometimes a lot crueller than those of the wild, but we’re just so used to them that they don’t bother us anymore. Two incidences this past week to illustrate what I mean:
Animals in the jungle are usually running in one direction: away from you. That’s usually the opposite of what we want, especially when we’re trying to catch them, but when it comes to large cats and snakes, its really a blessing in disguise. At any rate, you’re pretty confident that no animal in its right mind would seek out humans and attack them. We’re just that scary (ha!). This rule doesn’t hold in a village of people. There, people keep animals as pets (namely, dogs) and the abundance of human and animal cohabitants creates an environment where animals are no longer afraid of their two-legged counterparts. So dogs, chickens, snakes, frogs, cockroaches, scorpions (etc etc) all live together in unhappy harmony. Unfortunately for me, the home I was staying in (we all shacked up with a local family for the week…more on that after I finish this story) was at the bottom of a hill, past a house which had a pair of skinny, mangy (and probably rabid) dogs. Daytime doggies were fine (who knows where they were, probably wandering around the village), but come nighttime, they turned into savage beasts. If they were locked behind the gate, they would bark and growl at you as you walked passed, with their beady little eyes glowing in the dark like some demon from hell. That really freaked me out. One night, I was walking back to the house alone and was slowing inching along the path, hoping the dogs wouldn’t get too crazy. It was pointless, cause they still barked and growled like mad, and I got to a point where I thought it would be wiser to turn back and wait for some other people to walk with me. As soon as I turned around to head back up the hill, I swear I heard them right behind me, so I didn’t even think and just RAN. The farther I ran from the dogs, the closer they seemed to be, almost right at my heels and stilling barking and growling all the way. That 25 meters or so back up the hill was probably the scariest 10 seconds I’ve ever experienced, I totally thought I was going to die (ie. get bitten and get rabies). I think I scared all the other students when I charged back into the patio area where we eat/hang out. But when we finally went back down, we (the 3 girls who live down the hill) took 3 guys with us, armed with sticks. The dogs were locked behind the gate. In retrospect, they probably had been the entire time and I was just freaking myself out, but I wasn’t about to stop and check when I thought I was getting attacked by rabid dogs. It all seems less scary and more stupid (on my part) now, haha.
By God’s grace, for the 4 weeks that I’ve been in the middle of the jungle I’ve been both safe and healthy. Given that there’s such potential for uncleanliness here, the camps are uber-sensitive about washing hands with bleach water, etc. But back in town, rules get more lax, all supposeduly because things are more “civilized”. And so of course, that’s when I get sick: in a village. It could’ve been something I ate, something I picked up on my hands….dunno. But something I definitely noticed was that the first few days, there was no bucket of bleach water for washing up before meals. And unsurprisingly, after I got sick, said bucket appeared. After a day of sleep and some Ciproflaxin (antibiotics), I felt mostly back to normal, and now I’m totally fine. Praise God that it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as it could’ve been (same w/ the dogs).
Those were the two most exciting things this week. So…onto more mundane details: the village of Buenos Aires is lower in altitude than Base Camp, but it happens to sit right on the side of the mountain, so that if you look out you can see an entire range of valleys and mountains scattered across the horizon. There are some breathtaking views, some that can be seen from the main road, and even though its “lower”, its still high enough that we were literally living in the clouds. Mists would roll in and at first I thought it was smoke or dust from the road, but realized pretty soon that it was just a cloud was passing through. They don’t call this a cloud forest for nothing. I got pretty lucky in terms of accomodations. The family I stayed with was one of the wealthier ones, evident by the fact that they owned a truck. I got my own bed/bedroom to share with another student, with an attached bathroom that had a flushing toilet and shower. Given, the water was only on for a few hours per day, but the one time I did manage to catch the shower when the water was running (I didn’t know how to ask since my Spanish is nonexisitent…) was like heaven. Base Camp showers are way to cold to stand under (this one was still cold water but not as much), but this one was amazing and I actually got to rinse my hair properly.
The food wasn’t really all it was cracked up to be. Strike one against it: there was absolutely no peanut butter. I LIVE off of peanut butter and tortillas for breakfast (so yummy…) and was deprived for a week. As soon as I got back to Base Camp today, I loaded my lunch tortilla with peanut butter. We did have chicken, quite a few times actually, but only one was it actually cooked in a way that tasted good (fried). Usually it sat in a puddle of oil and detracted from the novelty of having meat. There was a slightly different variety of food though, which was good (less beans, more eggs, more potatoes). The best meal probably was one breakfast where we got fresh mango, pineapple, watermelon and orange. Yummm.
I slept a lot in BA. Or at least assumed a (mostly) horizontal quite often. I blame this on the hammocks that were there. After a morning of hiking and sated with lunch, we’d usually retire to the patio and lie in the hammocks all afternoon, reading or listening to music. They are soooo comfortable, enough that I want to get one and hang it in Spelman next year. Wouldn’t that be sweet? All the froshies would come to our room cause it’d be the “room with the hammock”. Haha. I also played a lot of cards…we had a huge Rummy tournament going on.
In between napping and eating, I did manage to do some work. One night we hiked to the river (down a horrible hill which was had to come back up…in the dark) and saw a motherload of stuff. Huge tadpoles, a giant cane toad (ugliest thing ever), a few snakes, salamanders, and glass frogs! Those are the cute little guys, one of which is featured in the header picture for this blog (that one’s stolen from the internet though). They have transparent bellies, so when you turn them over, you can see all their internal organs and even its heart beating! And they make this adorable “cheep” noise, sort of like a bird or a bell.
So that was my week with the civilized. Now its back to Base Camp for another week, but since I’ve already sampled from every single river/stream within walking distance, there isn’t much to do in the way of data collecting. Guess its time to work on my tan…
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- patio area with hammocks
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- mi casa for a week
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- views from BA
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- sitting ON TOP of all the bags for the ride back up to base camp…sweetest ride ever
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- cute little frog that we spent hours trying to determine what species it was
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- big ugly cane toad
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- coral snake…very poisonous
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- see its heart?
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- glass froggie!
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- vampire bat…and to imagine i could’ve been doing this if i hadn’t changed my project at the last minute
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- one of the logs we had to cross going over a river
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- view of the surrounding landscape
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- coffee beans!
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- all the guys fishing for tadpoles for me while i watched, haha
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- coffee farm
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- the room where we stayed for a week
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- headquarters: included office and eating area
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- where we ate
July 3, 2009
salamanders, tadpoles, and frogs oh my!
Duellmanohyla soralia, aka the red-eyed stream frog. I took soooo many pictures of these little guys, they’re so cute!
These are tadpoles of the same species. This pool was just full of them, you could just reach in and scoop some out.
Halfway between a tadpole and a frog…look at its little forelegs still tucked in under its face! The big gaping thing at the top is its mouth, missing all its teeth rows. That’s either because a) it has chytrid or b) they lose their teeth as they morph.
At this point, I got a little too snap-happy and started playing around with the frog.
There it is on my computer. I think he liked it better than me.
He’s reading my guide on how to dissect a frog. How morbid.
And then he decided to jump onto the screen. I think he was attracted by a picture of himself (that’s the one that’s highlighted on the screen).
At this point, someone brought in another frog for me to look at. This is a Craugastor rostralis (no idea what the common name is).
Unfortunately, it was injured. 
See the tear in its skin? You can see the bone underneath. Poor thing… could be disease, predation, or just plain bad luck.
July 1, 2009
pictures galore
Pictures like I promised.
Here’s a few of the camp. There were two main areas (covered by the big blue tarp). The first two pics are of the cooking area.
This is taken from the cooking area, up into the other part of camp. You can see a few tables where we sat and a campfire.
The guides were helping the cooks make dinner. The two ladies were our wonderful cooks for the week (they’re married to the guides). This is such a cute picture!
Wonder what this is? See the shovel in the background?? This is the trench (aka the Black Cat), where you go to do your number 2. The tarp is to cover the toilet paper so it doesn’t get wet in the rain.
And this lovely cubicle is for number 1. It consists of a funnel on a stick.
On to more nature-y scenes. On one of our hikes up the mountain, we passed through a bamboo forest. My thought: what the heck is bamboo doing in Central America??
This is what our river climbing looked like.
A dead frog we found in the river pictured above. Dead frogs are always bad signs, possibly a sign of disease. It’s sitting in a jar of ethanol right next to my computer right now.
A lizard we found on one of our walks. Look at the beautiful coloring on its belly, all orange and blue and green. It’s in its full mating colors, all ready to attract females
This is a jewel scarab beetle. Tiny, but incredibly coveted by collectors all over the world. Apparently, people will pay hundreds of dollars for one of these, and collect ones in different colors like other people collect stamps. Part of the reason why these animals are becoming endangered.
A snake on the path. This is one of the poisonous ones. Jon (my advisor) got bitten by one of these last and had to get evacuated out by helicopter. We found several of these while we were at Cantiles. Because of the temperature (cold) and the altitude (high), there was an abundance of snakes in camp. Thankfully we have trained herpetologists who know how to get rid of them.
June 30, 2009
Back to Base Camp
During the one week I’ve been gone, the rest of the world has apparently experienced some drastic changes. The first piece of news we got via radio dispatch one night while we were sitting around the campfire: Michael Jackson is dead. The next morning, we hear that the Honduran President tried to circumnavigate constitutional law and run for reelection, resulting in his subsequent removal from the country. Basically a military coup (although the US has not officially called it such) happened while we were happily traipsing through the jungle.
(And before you all freak out, yes, I’m fine. We’re all fine here. The middle of the jungle in the middle of nowhere is probably the safest place to be in this country right now. From what we’ve heard so far though, things have been pretty peaceful, although a lot of people have been on strike (an excuse not to go to work, basically). At any sign of violence, Opwall (the program I’m with) is supposed to evacuate us, so no worries. When I opened my inbox this morning, I also found an email from Dean Kanach from OIP at school: she wanted me to update her on my status and sent me the US Embassy contacts numbers and other emergency stuff. I found it pretty amusing, considering none of us feel threatened at all, but reassured at the same time that Princeton is keeping tabs on us.)
And then, this morning we get the news that Obama has finally declared that the US is pulling troops out of Iraq. Wow…so much stuff has gone but it all seems a bit surreal. I feel like I’m living in a bubble here, away from the rest of civilization, so much so that whatever is going on “out there” doesn’t affect us in any way. We’re still going about our days normally, hiking up and down transects, eating beans and rice, etc etc. Same old same old.
But, to recap on the past week: it’s been seriously awesome. I think I’m finally starting to get the hang of this place, and really enjoy being here. Being at Cantiles was entirely different from being at Base Camp. First of all, it’s smaller (fewer people), so the environment is a lot more intimate. There were about 12 of us doing our projects, with 8 more locals who served as our guides/cooks. We all ate together and sat around the campfire together, and really got to converse and live together in a way that just isn’t possible at Base Camp among a mass of people. A couple of nights, the Honduran guides would sit with us and we’d take turns teaching each other Spanish and English. They’re such eager learners and teachers, incredibly patient with us when we have no idea what they’re talking about and just gesticulating madly, and constantly cheerful hiking up and down the transects with us, even when we’re incredibly slow. One night, we helped the cooks make dinner. I learned how to make tortillas! It’s amazing how much people can work together even when they don’t speak the same language, and all of us chopping and cutting and kneading dough really brought us (Hondurans, British, American) together. There was an incredible feeling of camaraderie, and that was definitely part of why Cantiles was so great.
The entire camp is built on a hillside, so every night it was a muddy trek up the mountain to my tent. The camp is flanked on two sides by rivers, one big one, and one little one (more like a stream). We used the big river for group bathing/sun tanning, which we managed to do one day when the sun decided to show its face for more than three hours. It’s so relaxing just to lay out on a big rock and bask like a lizard. The small stream we used for private washing, and there was a little waterfall with a pool surrounded by huge rocks, so it was extremely private and pretty. Imagine those TV shampoo commercials where the girl comes out of a tropical pool in the middle of the forest, flipping her long hair…that’s what the place looked like. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of it, so you’ll just have to make do with your imagination.
As for my project, I managed to collect samples from about 20-something tadpoles, so I’ll be spending this week testing them in the lab. To find the tadpoles, we walked up and down the rivers, poking under rocks and leaves. And when I say walking down the river, I literally mean walking in the river, jumping from rock to rock, occasionally falling in and getting soaked. The entire experience was thoroughly enjoyable though, especially when your boots are already squishing with every step you take, so you’re just like, “screw it”, and splash around some more. We had some excitement one night, after a day of looking for frogs, when one particularly stupid (or cold?) one jumped right into our fire. I managed to rescue it before it got too charred, but unfortunately it had twitched its last by the time I got it in my hand. I hope to dissect it later this week and get some tissue samples.
There’s a lot more I can say about Cantiles, but this is a massive post already. Basically there were two instances/thoughts that really struck me this week: 1) during one of the hikes we went on, when we were practically clawing our way up a muddy vertical hillside, and my thought was “I really love this”. After a certain point, being dirty and gross doesn’t matter as much, dying of exhaustion isn’t as painful, cause you’re with people you like and ultimately, going up always means going down later (and go down that steep hill we did, doing crazy mudsliding stunts on the way. I think someone else has a picture of me on their camera.). 2) Just the fact that we are here in the jungle, doing what we’re doing, makes us incredibly privileged compared to the locals who live here year round. I keep thinking that because we’re not in the city, I don’t see as much evidence of poverty, but the guides and cooks who work for us receive a bulk of their yearly income from these few weeks of working for Opwall. They sell chocolate, cookies, and pop to us to make money, but are too poor to afford it for themselves. I thought I was deprived in not having eaten meat in three weeks, but talking to one of the cooks in Cantiles, the last time she ate meat was last year. Most of them have never been to San Pedro Sula, a mere two hours down the mountain by truck (because none of them have cars). It really puts things into perspective, and makes me appreciate so much more what all of these people do for us (aside from saving our butts/keeping us alive in the jungle), and makes me wonder what we can do for them.
Generator is going off in 5 minutes. As always, pictures later. Thanks to everyone who’s sent me a note asking how I’m doing. I know your prayers and thoughts go before me. Please pray for continued health and safety, and that I’ll be able to stay strong in faith and spiritual discipline.
June 23, 2009
at the quarter mark
Two weeks have passed. That’s ¼ of the way done! Some people are going home today, and I envy them for their warm beds, hot showers, and good food that they’ll have soon. As for me, I’ll be heading out to a satellite camp called Cantilles tomorrow, so I won’t have internet for a week. It’s supposed to be really cold out there, cause it’s the camp at the highest elevation. I’ll be hunting for tadpoles and frogs there as well, so hopefully I’ll come back with a large collection of samples.
Project Chytrid (thesis) has finally started full force. Jon (my field advisor) took us to the river near Base Camp yesterday morning to catch tadpoles. A few of us went out armed with fish nets, trying to peer into the clear water and find dots of black hidden in the leaf litter. I realized it would’ve been a lot easier if we were wearing waders, or at least took off our shoes. But we did manage to catch quite a few, although none of them were by me. I just stood there with my swabs and little vials of alcohol and swabbed the ones that other people caught, haha.
some of the tadpoles we caught
this is what swabbing a tadpole looks like. tiny tiny tiny
close up of the underside of a tadpole. the open part on top is the mouth, which is where i have to swab. the black lines are the teeth rows, which are pretty intact on this one. chytrid fungus tends to erode these teeth rows, so thats an easy way to guess if specimens are infected.
On the way back from the river, Jon also caught a snake. It was a vine snake that was sitting on a leaf right next to the path. I think I walked right past it without noticing, with it sitting not one foot away from my face. There was a bit of snake wrestling since Jon accidently picked it up by its tail (number one rule in catching a snake: don’t EVER hold it by its tail. Jon was also the guy to get helicopter lifted out last year due to a snake bite…that’s pretty funny in retrospect).
this is jon with the snake
close up of the vine snake
Btw, I’m soooo sick of beans. Beans and rice, beans and tortilla, beans and vegetables….aaaah, no more beans! Almost every single conversation we have around here inevitably comes back to the topic of food. We’re simply starving for some good hearty meat, fried chicken, steak….mmmmmm. The one saving grace just may be the coffee. Right down the mountain there’s a huge coffee plantation, which is how most of the locals earn their livelihood. The Honduran coffee is nothing like the stuff in the US. It’s much more rich, with almost a chocolately expresso taste. I can drink it black and its not too bad, but best with two spoons of sugar and a lump of (powdered) milk. Soooo good, but it makes me pee a lot. I’ll probably bring a bag back.
OK…more updates when I get back in a week!
June 11, 2009
Day 2 (today)
First day of Jungle Training. We hiked out this morning for a 4 hour hike, which was pretty tame considering I was thinking we’d just be dumped in the jungle for 5 days. But apparently, we only do a 3 day overnight hike, and the others are all day hikes from Base Camp. This morning’s hike was very cool though, got to see some really neat jungle scenery, and even swung like Tarzan on a vine, hehe. In the afternoon, we hiked out to a waterfall. The trail that led to it felt like we were scaling the side of a cliff, which might actually be what we did. It was incredibly rocky and steep, but the final destination was definitely worth it. Check out some pictures.
Tomorrow we leave for our 3 day adventure….post when I get back!
