Surveying with Ralph

This morning, I was allowed to sleep in and woke up to the thought of oat meal.  After my bowl of you know what, I went to help Ralph survey.  He is an architect designing a new clinic for the Surmang Foundation.  In the morning, we walked down to the land on which the new clinic is to be built.  Ralph set up a a tripod with a compass on the top.  On the compass there is a little sight that you can look through to see a desired point in a straight line ahead of you.  This is used by surveyors to mark out lines on the property.  We staked out straight lines for the walls of the clinic and recorded all the angles. 

Ralph and I walked back home and were just in time for lunch.  When lunch was over, the Tibetan ladies laughed and pushed each other to sit by the men.  Soon men and women of all ages were getting their pictures taken.  

Later, Ralph entered our data into the computer.  He realized that the information we had collected was inaccurate.  We had to go back into the field and measure the same lines and angles in a different way.  We quickly found the errors in a couple of angles.  We headed home feeling tired but happy that we had found our mistake.  Back in our clinic, sadly the readings were still wrong.   Tomorrow we will try again. 

On the second journey, I found two skulls in the river. We think one is a horse skull and the other a dog.  We brought them both back to the clinic, and my dad loves them!

5 MORE DAYS TILL XINING!

Thank you for reading Rohan Geographic!!!!