Friday, July 15, 2011

Namibia: The preparations

I have finally finished my courses at Miami University for the summer! I took an entomology class as I mentioned earlier and ended up with a pretty awesome insect collection! We also got to visit the Cincinnati Zoo and got a "behind the scenes" tour by one of the zookeepers for the insect house (I feel terrible because I can't remember his name for the life of me now!)! Definitely interesting. (Did you know they use 3-in-1 oil to keep their ants from escaping?) Also, they grow most of the plants that they feed to their insects, which I think is a cool way to cut down on costs for maintaining the insects. I never thought about how much work goes into caring for an insect house and got to learn about what a fantastic insect house we have at the Cincinnati Zoo (it's one of the best in the country)!
My insect collection, it's a little in disarray because I added a few insects to it  that aren't in the right place yet!
A zookeeper at the insect house at the Cincinnati Zoo
I also took an infectious disease course which was really fast paced but I learned all kinds of things I didn't know before! I've started to appreciate how important getting vaccines really is. Also, to erase some misconceptions I wanted to add the note that there has now been no connection between vaccines (specifically MMR) and autism. The one report that said there was a connection was found to be essentially entirely forged by the scientist that reported it. Yes, even scientists can be unethical! 

So now it's time for me to prepare for my trip to Namibia! I'll probably put one or two more posts before I leave about my flight arrangements and also about all the crazy stuff I had to pack and things I had to do to get ready for this trip!

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