Out to dinner with the keepers from the base
Jasmine’s the last of our interns to share her experience about life in Ya’an. Here’s what she had to say about the first couple of weeks:
“Adjusting to life in Ya’an seems like it was a little different for me than for the other interns. I have family in China that I visit roughly every other year so I had a better idea of what I was in for when I arrived. What I ended up having difficulty adjusting to was having to reconcile Lauran and Miranda’s new experiences of life in China in relation to my own cultural background, as well as suddenly being the primary speaker of Mandarin in our group. There were things that they found so out of the ordinary that I had already added to my mental list of “things to expect” when I landed in Chengdu, so hearing those things verbalized helped me see their fresh perspectives on the local culture. It was also a challenge to suddenly be the one who could understand what people were saying (to some extent), and to be responsible for accurately telling them what we were trying to say.
Jin Ke looking angelic as he takes a nap. Just one snapshot of my amazing days here!
Aside from adjusting to cultural differences, I was worried about the massive time difference incapacitating me for some period of time, but the first night in Ya’an, I slept for a solid 12 hours and woke up in time to visit the base! My first day was full of introductions – to keepers and officials as well as giant pandas! It was very surreal and I left feeling like it hadn’t happened. Since then it’s definitely sunk in that I get the amazing opportunity to work with these animals in a way that is beneficial to my studies in behavioral psychology while allowing me to stare at pandas for hours! I’m so excited to spend the summer working on projects that are part of the larger effort to gain a better understanding of these animals!
-Jasmine”
I also had to share this cute picture of Jasmine’s Facebook page. I guess the interns and keepers found an abandoned baby squirrel that they’ve been raising.
“You can take the girl out of the rat lab, but you can’t take the rodents away from the girl!” photo courtesy of Jasmine Huang
