Lots of work going on!

Some pictures included from the work we have been doing here in spain. We have worked so far at Albufera natural Park and also at a park in Montesol. Most of the week was spent making boxes (the green nets on the big boxes) which are used to keep birds and fish out so the natural plants can grow. There have been several invasive species introduced over the past 100 years that have been keeping the natural plants from spreading and has resulted in the endangered of many native plants and some animals. Unfortunately, part of this project involves carrying them out to these massive dry lake beds which are CRAWLING with spiders :( icky.
At this same park another group has worked on putting tracking devices on small birds to see their migration patterns and to monitoring any mating. We have also built a cajanido for these little birds. I am not much with screwing/construction. they showed me how to do it but my main contribution was decorating the front of it which our supervisor loved!

The other park we worked out was a smaller river park in Montesol which is about an hour outside of valencia by metro. There we looked for previously built bird houses (or as they call them, bird boxes, cajanidos) to see if the local owl population was using it. Out of 5 boxes, 2 were missing, 1 was empty, and the other 2 had honey bees (which is a good thing too but they were really hoping for owls). We then used the giant 5 liter bottles to go to the river, scoop up water and water trees, particularly younger ones that were only planted earlier this year and some planted in the last year or two. we could only water 2 trees per bottle so that involved   A LOT of watering. As Alex, the volunteer we worked with says, "the most boring work is often the most important" . I thought it was fun (:   If Lucia or Beatrice, our supers, send us back to montesol, next time we will work on removing the canyas (canes) that grow perhaps over 15 feet tall. They are an invasive species that have overrun the park! Our trip to this park actually had us show up an hour late because metros suck. Luckily Alex had waited for us but the other 4 people that were supposed to come just didn't show up...so JOsh and i were the only volunteers to show!
We get saturdays/sundays off and work Monday-Friday from 8am till 1 or 2 pm. (20 minutes of that is traveling). it is fun and the other workers/volunteers that are from valencia are super nice. They speak valenciano a lot of the time, which sounds more like french than spanish, which makes it difficult to try and understand sometimes. Out of the four volunteers, Josh, myself, Nicole and Aly, I have the most experience with spanish and am actually the only one that can speak anything more than hola and simple broken words. I found that highly discouraging because I am asked what they are saying. If the workers are speaking Spanish, I usually catch on to what they are saying but not so much when they speak valenciano. Nicole and Aly are from Canada and Nicole is a good worker and very enjoyable. Aly showed up once last week and is the LiLo (Lindsay Lohan) of Canada. She apparently stays at her apartment all day and just gets high. The supers don't seem to pleased with her. A waste of money if you ask me :/

BUt lucky for josh and i, we have an awesome room mate named ALmendra who speaks Mexican Spanish fluently. So when we go out as a group, she is able to communicate but when Josh and I go shopping, it is just me to do all the talking and so far we have managed (:  The spanish people are also very nice, especially if you attempt to speak. They always try to speak english at the end when we leave (like to say have a good day). The local volunteers, especially Alex, speak pretty good english but still ask us how to say certain things, the same we ask for words in spanish. Between eachothers broken Spanglish, we get along well. (:

But that is all for now! We are having great fun! Did the beach this week! (: plans in the future for aquarium and museums (: