Xining 2:59 AM. I'm still not over the jet lag. It's dark and rainy outside, sounds just like a nice soft spring rain back on the farm. Wednesday was another busy day. One of the highlights was visiting the specimen collection at the academy of science. Among the collection was an awesome wild yak- just a huge animal much like a Bison. But the real attraction was a 20 x 12 model of the Tibetan Plateau that filled the center of the room. It was amazing! Seeing the topography, water bodies, and deserts explains so much about the transportation and trade routes, patterns of human developments, species distributions, etc. After studying the model and collection for some time, we met with several of the scientists from the research institute. It's a biological research institute under the academy of science and every researcher is engaged in very interesting work from molecular biology of endemic plant species of the grassland to adaptive mechanisms of small birds to environmental change to you name it. We finished off our morning at the academy talking with a scientist with whom we will be collaborating on a snow leopard study.
After lunch we had another three meetings scheduled, but I was reassigned to start creating a project timeline and preliminary field survey for the snow leopard study. I was just finishing up with the survey and the first draft of the timeline when the two visiting scholars from the UK arrived to watch a film on the project area. (You can look for it at home under the name "Mountain Brigade" or "Kekexili"). I made it through until about 9:30 before I begged off to sleep.
Later this morning, Marc and the visitors from the UK and another researcher will be heading up to our normal office some 1000 km southwest and 7000 ft up in elevation from here. (Xining is already at about 7000 ft). After a staged ascent, they will go on a field trip into one of the project areas. Peter and I will be staying behind for a few days while the other vehicle is being repaired, but we should be following along by next Tuesday. I've gotten so used to the big city over the last couple of years that I'm actually a tiny but reluctant to leave Xining. HA! I guess my brother was right when he said the north was making me soft.
Well, I guess I should probably try to get back to sleep. Goodnight everybody.
