Work then Play!

I've been running a lot since i've been here and every way I run takes me to a beach. So I usually stop and sit there for a while, which has been very therapeutic... and I think something i'm going to miss a lot coming home. But it was great while it lasted :)

On the ship I'll be doing a research project with a girl named Liz. We're going to study the distributions and abundances of pteropods in the Atlantic. Pteropods are free swimming pelagic sea snails and we're going to collect them using a neuston net. It's going to be cool and very interesting because they will show us how the climate has changed since previous research has been done! Exciting. But we had a poster session where we had to present our ideas to the class and other SEA faculty and our chief Scientist for the trip.

A PTEROPOD

A map I cut from hand. (can you tell i'm proud?)

As part of Nautical Science we got to take apart a diesel engine and put it back together so we could learn how they work... which is a fascinating thing. But this is the engine we used! It was lots of fun and I feel like I actually understand how engines kind of work! CRAZY.

Last week two of my friends, Kelsey, Margaret and I went out to lunch. Funnily enough, the place we went was somewhere I ate dinner when I was a nanny in Cape Cod for a summer when I was 17. It was a chinese/sushi place and it was unbelievably delicious.

avocado, shrimp salad. Nom nom nom

Marge's food

mine!

Kelsey's

Marge Eating Wasabi.

After lunch we decided to go to a pumpkin patch and pick pumpkins to carve! Since we're missing halloween/ having it on the boat, we're not getting our pumpkin fill, so we decided to do it early! We found a pumpkin patch and got everything we needed! When we got back, we carved them up and had pumpkins for about half a week before the squirrels, bugs and humidity got to them.

My Pumpkin

All three

Here are the dead pumpkins.

sad narwhal

no longer a boat.

We have a surprising large number of birthday's on the boat... five or six I think, and because my birthday is on the boat too, I decided we needed a birthday cake. Since I almost never go a birthday without the delicious family deliciousness that is Marie's Cake, I had to make it. I decorated accordingly and it was gone in less than 24 hours. :)