Chimpsmart

Yesterday I met with my Creole tutor for the first time. Over the course of 2 hours I told him I think I am terrible at hearing what is said. He told me that he could tell from working with me for 2 hours that I had an excellent memory. As soon as he said that (for whatever reason), I was reminded of this study that was done looking at the memory of chimps versus humans:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTgeLEWr614&feature=related

I guess one idea is that as humans developed more higher-level, complex cognitive abilities (reason, language, etc), that we relied less on memory and more on problem solving. Thus the chimps still have the highly developed memory. Interesting because all I could think was “hmm, I wonder if my good memory has something to do with not being able to hear what people say and having no internal compass AT ALL.” At any rate, my tutor was great. Now I have Creole HW to do each night too. (m' gen travay anpil!)

A very close family member of one of my roommates here died; I am reminded yet again how fragile life is, whether you are in the states or Haiti.

Speaking of, I recently have become friends with a Dr down here. Pretty remarkable; he grew up in the DR and Haiti, and is applying for residency in the US right now. It was crazy to hear how hard it is to get into the US residency system if you are a foreign graduate (and not a US citizen). Again, even with Drs here, I feel like I have lived such an easy life. But what can we do? Just like these people didn’t choose a hard life, I didn’t choose an easy life. I guess the best we can do is to keep the old adage in mind: “to whom much is given, much is expected.” I’m expecting a lot more out of chimps these days, too.