Day 2: Orange Races

It's great to be back in school! It's funny how much you miss it once summer comes around. I just remember being in second semester (so this winter) and counting down the minutes until school was done but once you're actually done you start to miss it right away. That was definitely the case for me. Today we got into the classroom and had lectures and it just felt like that was exactly what I was supposed to be doing. The lectures may have been boring and not really about invertebrates but taking notes and listening to the prof was definitely a highlight of my day.


Don't worry Reader, I'm not that big of a dork! We did lots of stuff in the field today as well. This morning after our first lecture we went down to the docks and were told to collect any specimens of inverts that we saw. My partner and I found a star fish, some muscles and some tunicates (which in lamen's terms are basically goopy colonial animals). We brought them back to lab and found that our starfish had already eaten the muscles. Thanks starfish. So we ended up having tunicates and a starfish. We were instructed to draw any specimen that our lab mates brought back. I did a diagram of an urchin and let me tell you, that urchin was an escape artist! It literally tried to escape its plastic container three times. I had to flip it over just so it wouldn't try to leave! I named him Harry (after Houdini). Let's just say my diagram is pretty incredible. Not going to lie. 


After lunch we had another lecture but then we got to go back to the docks and learn about movement in the water (you know like the tide, ebbs and flows, currents, etc.). To do this we basically got to fool around with corn syrup (including one classmate eating three spoonfuls on a dare) and dyeing the syrup with food coloring. We then continued on with our learning by racing oranges. Yes that's right, we got to throw oranges into the ocean and race them while deciding whether the tide was coming in or out. I will again give props to this amazing prof. She kind of reminds me of Ellen Degeneres... Her voice is similar, she dances around a lot and goes off on random tangents while she's talking. 


So Thursday and Friday morning are going to be super early starts. We have field trips at 5:00am (yes that's right, five in the morning) because that's when the best lows tides will be. Yup, I'm thinking it's time to start saving up on sleep. That means early nights for this adventurer! Love and miss you all!