I know that I have already talked about some of the people that I am with on this expedition but here it is formally.

The Team
The principal investigator Lien, is a researcher for the Vietnam Russia Tropical Center. He has been working in Tam Dao researching butterflies as part of his PhD since 2002.

Anh (aka The Professor) as I stated before did diplomatic work in China for the Vietnamese government. He has a degree in Forest Management and has been with the project since 2002 as well.

Viet is Lien’s younger brother by 14 years and is a school teacher in his small village on the coast. He gets paid $10 US a month to teach and would like to become an “officer teacher” but you have to pay the government about $2000 US to get that title. It would bring his salary up to $40 US a month. I thought we had it bad.

The reason for the big age difference between Lien and Viet is because their father was a solider in the Vietnam War (here they call it the American War) and did not see his family for that period of time. There were three children in the family prior to the war and three born after the war. Sounds similar to our country.

Bruce and Charlene are a lovely older couple from Boulder Colorado. Bruce is an environmental lawyer who met Charlene in Washington DC. Charlene has worked with the federal government on environmental policy as well. Both are very active in their region of the country for conservation and environmental efforts. They have been in Asia now for 6 weeks and spent most of their time in China.

Rachel Peters teaches 4th grade at a private school in Washington and is basically me but with blond hair and married with a little boy named Tobias. She is very intelligent and has proved to be a great companion so far. She knows how to get this complicated research to a level that her students can understand and has provided me with a lot of help.

Jeff Bucs is a 7th and 8th grade science teacher from Massachusetts and is very eager to learn and reminds me of a kid on Christmas morning when it comes to the research that we are doing. I bet his students love him.

The Expedition

There are a total of six transects (paths) that we walk each day. Each transect is divided into eight smaller sections. The group is divided into 2 teams each day and each team is assigned to walk two transects.

When we walk the transects, we take nets and data sheets with us. If a butterfly is spotted within 10m of us we record it. If the species is not identifiable by sight then we net it and identify it.
There are a total of 360 species of butterflies within Tam Dao and about 200 species present within the area of the village.

I will speak to second block soon. I think you have enough to ponder for the moment.
To my third block lovelies, I plan on talking to you tomorrow night (for me) and that is when we will have our guest.
Tam Piet (goodbye)