I spent crazy hours doing the very-time-consuming work of segmenting my scans. The reason why it took so much effort is because the software available was not the best, and the saturation for the segments was also not the best since a lot of them were very old. The most valuable part of this research is likely describing the morphology of the insects.It was a challenging week since I would feel the deadline creeping up of having to return home, so I was frantic to finish all I had to do timely. I often would leave the lab at 9 or 10pm.

I started to get more serious on my literature review, so that I could write up a paper on this project and also for an abstract for a poster I will be presenting at the annual meetinf for the Society for Integrative and Comparative biology happning next year in January. 

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This week there was an awesome event at the University that I was looking forward to: the Agroecology fair. I  had been seeing people putting up tents and stages for almost  a week, so I was curious what it was about. The fair was dozens of small vendors selling food made mistlywith organic and self-grown foods. There were also a lot of militant groups, advertising themselves and their merch. I was able to buy some locally produced coffee (very exciting) as well as cool posters and shirts. The fair also had plenty of live music, with a couple famous artists playing later in the evening. The agroecology fair went on for about seven days, so as you can imagine, I was eating very good, organic food that week.

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The people at the lab wanted to make a little going away party, and seeing that I would be leaving Saturday early morning on the next week, we decided to do it the Saturday before that. If you have never been to Brazil and don't understand the bar culture, I will just say that this was the first of three going away parties. We went to this incredible spot called "Bar do Alemao" or German's bar. It is a very classic Curitiba outing according to Alexandre. Their main drink is called "submarino" or submarine, and consists of a shot of Steinhaeger in a glass of draft beer. Each shot glass is unique and collectible, featuring landmarks of Curitiba and Germany. I saw interesting sides of every person in the lab after the third or fourth submarine. After that we walked to a karaoke bar and had the time of our lives. It was an incredibly fun evening. ​

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The day after that, me and some lab people met up at the famour Fair that happens, funnily enough, in the same  place as the bar from the day before.

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