Back in Manila.

Well, I survived Mindanao. My professor, one of his graduate students, and I went to the region of Surigao del Norte, the most northern part of the island. We were staying in a rural village called Bad-As (funny.) in the NCIP office (National Commission of Indigenous Peoples). We were able to visit three different settlements of Mamanwa tribes. Most of my time was spent hiking up slippery, humid, rocky, wet mountains and helping my professor with his project. (If you are interested, check it out - Nathaniel Dominy, the evolution of the pygmy phenotype)
Helping him is really awesome and I feel very priviledged/honored to be a part of this. I get to learn about recording data, tropical rainforest ecology, meet and interact with very unique/interesting human beings, how to use an ultrasound to measure muscle size, among many other things.

In addition, I have been able to collect some pilot data for a project that I am starting to develop. This project is focused on age of menarche of the Mamanwa tribes in comparison to other human populations of similar stature (short). We are now in Manila and have tomorrow to rest, and then on Wednesday we will head to northeastern Luzon to work with another population, the Agta. In order to collect more data for my project, I will need to return to Mindanao after helping Nate (my professor).

I am generally really happy and I am enjoying myself. This has been a great experience --- even though I have never been more sweaty, hot, wet, smelly, bug-bitten, and scratched up in my life...it's totally worth it, I am really thankful.

This is a photo of me and Nate using the ultrasound on a woman who was pregnant and wanted to see her baby.