(12-09-10) Ecology Project

(Written on 12-09-10)

Wow, I'm glad that's finally over! Not that I didn't have fun, but what a lot of stress! I just had the ecology project at my house, and I'm really tired now. After wondering whether anyone would arrive or not because of the rain, my mother and I finally found out that they would really arrive so left for the station. We lead Mr Elst to our house, where everyone got some mint tea from our kitchen garden, with our honey. We discussed for a while what we would do, and my mother decided we could give a tour to the group (Anna, Chuck, Rachel, Mohamed, Faris and Alexander). My mother originally had planned to make us work in the earth, taking out weeds, but since the earth is wet from the rain we couldn't do that. Mr Elst left and we started the walk. My mother showed them many interesting plants that they could taste, which was a strange but interesting experience for them I think. They had a taste of the Sassafras stem, which tastes a bit like chewing gum.
Sassafras on Wikipedia
Then we went to a Caucasian pear tree, the pears of which look rotten inside when they're ripe. This scared the group at first, Faris even spat out his bite when he saw the brown color. My mother saw there were many pears on the ground and thought we should pick them up after the tour. Then we moved on to a Chinese pepper tree (or Sichuan pepper tree). The pepper has a very peculiar taste as it makes the tongue sleep and tremble. This was very strange for all of us except Faris, who had taken more than one and said he liked it. We continued the tour and showed more plants, such as the Ginkgo Biloba, and then finally returned home. There, my mother sent us back the the Caucasian pear tree with lots of baskets and a wheelbarrow. We filled up all the baskets, not without some pears being thrown around by the group, and put them in the wheelbarrow. Being used to pushing wheelbarrows around, I took it and returned to the house, followed by everyone else. It was very tiring with the high grasses and all the bumps, so closer to the house Chuck took over. But when we had to go up a few stairs, he didn't know what to do and Anna and I had to push it up (what a gentleman...)
We all would have liked to drink morem int tea then, but we were sent to get more apples and pears somewhere elso, closer to the house. This also included some playing around, but we did manage to get the apples and pears for our juice. When we were almost done with that, the group wondered what was behind my grandmother's house so I showed them a sort of labyrinth which isn't really a labyrinth (you can't get lost in it). Anna, Chuck, Rachel and I were a bit faster than the other three, so one of us said we should hide from them. And we hid from them, like little kids, running away and giggling behing some wall. It was fun to play like I used to years ago, especially after hard work. We ran around while Faris was calling out our names, but after a while we were found and we realized it was almost time. So we went back to the house, where everyone gathered their stuff and got in the car. I couldn't get in because of the lack of space, so I waved goodbye to everyone and went in. I think they all had fun and I'm quite pleased with myself, although I think we could've worked more.