Mom and Dad Come for a Visit

Mom and dad arrived on Friday night. They had a hard time getting here. There was an ice storm in Ohio and snow in West Virginia. They finally pulled up about 6 after leaving about the same time on Thursday. We celebrated their arrival by going to eat at the Dockside down on the intracostal waterway. Then we called it an early night since they had been on the road so long.

Saturday morning we got up to go to the Fire in the Lakes festival in Boiling Springs Lakes. It was pretty lame but surprisingly we met someone who's aunt and uncle own a home on Lake Webster just around the corner from our lake house. Then he had his buddy come over since I had just spent a week in Bermuda with his sister. What a small world. We chatted with my friends from class who work for the Nature Conservancy who were helping out at the festival. Tracy let me hold their snake.

It's a partially albino corn snake. The festival was really lame so we left to go geocaching. There were several in Boiling Springs Lakes but we only found two. One was at the boat ramp and the other was at "Sammy's House". This is Sammy.

After we finished our geocaching we went to have lunch at my mother's favorite restaurant.

The provision company. It was pretty chilly but the food was great as always. On the way home we stopped by the Orton Plantation Gardens. All we saw were a few alligators. They were so cute.

We ran home and took a nap. Then we went downtown Wilmington to go on the Haunted Pub Crawl. There were some good stories. Our guide looked like Hagrid. His name was Stan

We ended the night in Blue Post in the alley.

We ended the evening at my favorite Sushi restaurant in Wilmington: Nikki's.

Today we woke up early to head to the aquarium. I was diving at 10:30 and 2:30. I swung them by my new apartment so they'll know where to find me next month ;-) It was a good thing I showed up since the rest of the dive team called out.

My sign says "Hi Mom!" Mom and dad walked through the aquarium while I was getting ready. They got to meet Wilson and Wilma, our wood ducks

After the first dive we went up to the Surf House so they could see my other job. We met Marcia for lunch. She and my mom went to high school together and haven't seen each other since they graduated.

We let them catch up and Dad and I took Marcia's jeep out on the North End of Carolina Beach. Dad did a great job driving on the sand.

We also got some copies of the pictures the aquarium took of us.

This one is mom's favorite:

Mom and dad went hiking during my second dive to enjoy the sun. We stopped by the grocery store on the way home to fill my fridge with enough food for dinner. Now everyone's relaxing from all the fun so we can start again tomorrow. Vacations are hard work :-)

Happy Wednesday to you too

Today started off very productive. I took my time getting out of bed because I didn't have to be anywhere until 3. So after walking to dogs I got down to house cleaning. Mom and dad will be here on Friday and I've been very lax about things since I've gotten back from Bermuda. But the house looks lovely now. I considered started packing up some things I won't need in the next month, but I don't want to trip over it for the next couple weeks.

I had an appointment at 3 on campus so I took the dogs out early. There was a small dog sitting in our driveway with no one around so I sat the dogs down behind a bush and waited for it to wander off into the neighbors yard. Then I walked the dogs and kept their attention so they didn't notice it. Unfortunately, the neighbors saw me coming and started calling their dog. I tried to tell them not to, but they did and she came running at Kyle and Zoe.

So they started barking at the each other because Zoe (the dark dog) wants to play and Kyle's over protective. So I tried to keep walking and the neighbors started yelling at my dogs. I told them that it was their fault because their dog was off the leash and to please quit talking to me like that. The neighbor said he was talking to Kyle. I pointed out that through extension he was speaking to me as well. So to end the situation, I walked away and went off on our walk.

Unfortunately as I came around the corner back to our house, we live at the end of a cul de sac, the neighbor's sister walks out into the road and into my path so I had to stop or run her over. She started yelling at me. I'm not even sure what she said. I explained that their dog was off the leash so I wasn't at fault. She tried to tell me that the dog had just run out of the house but if that was true they would have come to get her rather than letting it walk around the neighborhood. I didn't raise my voice with her. I remembered that much of my conflict management training. I didn't even argue with her. Even when she started accusing me of believing children should be on leashes too because that's what my landlady says. I pointed out that I'm not my landlady.

I was so upset I was shaking on the inside. The woman had 75+ lbs and several inches on me. I was very polite. She mentioned she was forty and I didn't tell her to act her age like I wanted to. She also gave me a perfect opportunity to ask her if she wanted a cookie, but I was afraid I'd get hit. Finally her brother, the dog owner, came out of the house and yelled at everyone in his family to get in the driveway. He asked them if they were a bunch of rednecks. His sister said yes, apparently, since they were loading up an RV in the driveway. I finished my walk. I was shaking by the time I got home. I am so tired of all my neighbors letting their dogs run loose and then taking it out on me when they start barking at each other. Thankfully I only have about three more weeks of walking the dogs. Tomorrow morning, then my landlady will be home next week, and the two or three weeks til I move. I'm counting down.

But even after this I still had to go to school. I drove with the top down since it's finally beautiful out. Then I mailed off my application today for a full time position at the local aquarium. Please keep your fingers crossed for me. If I get it, I'll most likely be staying in Wilmington. If I don't, it just means there's somewhere more fun and exciting that I'm supposed to be. But I'd love to stay. I also mailed off my camera to get it fixed so it will quit leaking underwater. And I mailed off my application for my North Carolina Education Certification so I can tell them with all honesty that I'm working on it if I get an interview at the aquarium.

Then as I was walking up to class a woman stopped me and told me I looked like summer. If that isn't enough to cheer you up, I don't know what is. I also got several compliments in my class on my dress. Tonight I team taught a class on GIS which is geographic information systems. Basically it combines different types of maps of the same place so you can look at the connections. For example you can look at how soil types affect your vegetation types. Well, it's a very complicated subject, they teach whole classes about it in my department, and we had to teach teachers how to use it in their classrooms. I had come up with an activity and a list of websites with great, simple GIS resources. The class and teacher loved it. He had never seen the sites we used and he was very impressed. I was a little nervous because it is so complicated and I wasn't sure they'd find it as interesting as my partner and I did. Thankfully they loved it.

So tomorrow's a new day. I'm teaching a very interesting lab this week that the students love. Then tomorrow night we're going out to celebrate birthdays. My friend turned 23 yesterday and I turn 26 next week, so we compromised and are having a big bash tomorrow. It should be fun. We're having the rum cake I brought back from Bermuda. It doesn't get much better than that.

What a week

It's been a busy week back. I've had several papers due this week so I've been a busy bee. Class on Wednesday was really exciting. It's a class called "Teaching Environmental Education with Technology". Basically we play with fun toys you should use when teaching like hand held microscopes that take digital pictures and video straight to your computer. This week we played with GPS devices and did a scavenger hunt around campus. We had to take goofy pictures at each of our locations. My groups won. My teacher said I was so creative I should go into environmental ed.... duh.

After that we had a guest speaker from the local alternative school. He talked about using a website about roadkill to teach math and science skills. After he finished talking I went to discuss an idea with him. When I was in Delaware for the Midatlantic Marine Educator's Association conference back in October there was a woman from another aquarium talking about a project she had started. She worked with the local juvenile delinquent center on the 7 ocean literacy principles (which I am also taking a class about). She taught them 8 times and any of the students who passed were allowed to become junior docents at their aquarium when they got out of the center. This way they would have a healthier place to spend their time. I've wanted to start something like that with our local aquarium and so I brought it up to this teacher. He said he would love to do a program like that and even if I don't have a place to teach, he'd still like me to come teach their class sometime anyway. So here's another big plan of mine. Maybe I'll change my project plan for next semester. We'll see.

After class I went down to the beach bars with my girlfriends for St. Patty's Day. We played a bunch of Flogging Molly and Dropkick Murphys on the jukebox but then people went back to slow sad music. It was very very chill that night. Thursday I went out for my friend's birthday and had a great time.

Friday I went apartment shopping before I went to work at Surfhouse. Then my friend came into town. She's been living in Brazil for the last two years so we went out to dinner and to Blue Post which is a very chill bar. They wouldn't let us bring in our ice cream though. I'm surprised none of us got sick. We had seafood with margaritas followed by ice cream and topped off with vodka cranberry. Yuck.

Saturday I got up and went to a Project Aquatic Wild workshop for part of my North Carolina Environmental Education Certification. It was a nice workshop other than I knew more about the animals than the instructor. I kept my mouth shut and didn't correct him when he gave wrong information. Who says I can't learn to keep my mouth shut? ;-) I went straight from school to see my friends again. We spent the rest of the afternoon laying out and drinking margaritas. It was great.

Today was spent at Surf House. It's been my third day back. Friday they asked me if I want to be the front of house manager for the summer. Of course! As long as I can work my schedule around the aquarium. I should hear from them this week as to whether or not they're hiring me for the summer. Then in April they should be having a full time job opening. We'll see. I finally told my landlady I'm moving next month. She took it extremely well. Much better than I expected. So now I can start working on that. I'm moving to Monkey Junction which is about halfway between school and work. I'll only be on campus one day a week next semester so I don't need to be so close and I don't want to drive an hour each way to work this summer. So it's a happy medium.

So now I'm going to have dinner with my girls again before Jess heads back to Brazil. Mom and dad will be here Friday for a week and I can't wait. It's been another wonderful week in paradise. A girl in my class on Weds told me I live a charmed life. I do and I'm so thankful for it.

Home again

Yesterday was our last day in Bermuda. We woke up to rain, which was fine with us since we had to spend all day inside listening to everyone's final presentations. They were surprisingly interesting since we were all talking about the same thing. I went 9th and was really excited because noone else had given a presentation on my topic yet... until the guy right before me. Go figure. We look at the data very differently so our presentations were very different. I was really bummed though because my font had changed when I moved the file from my computer to the presentation one. And some of my colors were messed up... but people asked a lot of questions and I was able to answer them all so I was happy. After lunch we took a group photo then it was time to head off to the airport.

The flight home was uneventful until we went from Atlanta to Wilmington. The kid sitting behind me was drunk before he got on the plane and was obnoxious the whole way home. And the stewardess served him more alcohol on the plane.... it went downhill from there. Pretty irritating.... but really, if that was the only irritating part of the trip, I'm very lucky. I got to see all the animals I was looking for while we were there. We had an amazing time. All of the students were really nice. And everyone got along well. The group I worked with all week was very organized and we got our projects planned quickly and were able to complete them. The other group had a harder time. It was an issue of too many top dogs...
I've posted about 600 of the 1400 pictures I took while I was in Bermuda. Here are the links
Album 1
Album 2
And the Aquarium
Now that I'm back I have two papers to write that are due tomorrow and Tuesday. I also start back to work at Surf House tomorrow. So things will be going back to normal. But normal for me is exciting for everyone else. Life is so good. My family is very blessed. Colleen finally got word that she was accepted to Florida State for grad school. It was her first choice and all the other schools had wait listed her. We had just talked earlier today about how she would get in where she was supposed to be and sure enough :-) She and I have been talking about her possibly coming to stay with me for a while this summer. It would be lots of fun. But for now, I've wasted enough time and have work to do... I can't blame it on island time any more :-)

Running Wild in Bermuda

Since Ashley, Ben, Robert and I all finished our presentations last night we headed out into Bermuda today. We hopped the bus and went off to the aquarium. The rest of the group weren't so sure they wanted to go because they hadn't heard very good reviews about it. Being the nerd I am, the aquarium was the one site I've been waiting for all week. Their minds were quickly changed when we met the doormen.

There were five Green Sea turtles just chilling in a pool out in front of the aquarium. Ashley kept petting them. We walked into the aquarium and I was overwhelmed for a moment. I love new aquariums so much I never know where to start. One of the first exhibits had 11 gray triggerfish in it. I couldn't believe they had that many

I took so many pictures and I can't wait to post them all, but for now we're doing a highlight of my trip to the Bermuda Aquarium Museum and Zoo. Also known as BAMZ! Which is why I've had Black Betty (bam da dam) stuck in my head all day today. They had a lovely common octopus who came out of his hole and let me take his picture.

There was a lovely full wall exhibit with all sorts of beautiful fish in it: black durgeons, cowfish, and even a couple that go by the name puddingwife. Apparently one of the grouper in this exhibit is named Darth Vader. He likes to be scratched... I overheard an employee giving some donor a private tour.... I thought about seeing if they noticed that I joined them....

We were chasing around a shark but he wouldn't come close enough for a good picture. The hogfish on the other hand was being a diva. He kept posing for pictures.

It was hard but we finally left the aquarium to enter the zoo. Waiting to welcome us were the harbor seals that were chilling while their tank got cleaned.

The next building we entered had local animals in it along with a touch tank. I found another one of the animals I would have loved to see, a zebra sea slug. The hot pink spirals in the picture are actually egg cases. The sea slug is the yellow thing on the bottom left.

Right next to that guy was a giant sea anemone with a teeny tiny shrimp. He was impossible to photograph but I got him on the first try, it was the only pic worth while.

We left the local house and headed off to reptiles. Reptiles included one snake and one giant American alligator. This guy what about 3 feet wide and 10 feet long. He was a monster

There was a peacock or two hanging out that Ashley kept trying to chase around. I did my peacock impression but they didn't respond. This guy was headed to hang out with the chickies in the flamingo pond.

There were some parrots and tamarinds. The problem was that their enclosures had this mesh fencing that my camera kept wanting to focus on. That was the problem with the alligator. So here's the best I could get with the fence in the way.

Then we saw some of the biggest Galapagos tortoises ever. They were just chilling in the sun. Then we headed into the Australia building where we saw mouse deer and Asian river otters. They were so cute!  

 Then we walked through some water falls and looked at some more turtles. Then we came to the most interesting animal of the day: The bearcat. I've heard of the bearcat as a mascot but who knew they were real?

He was really hard to take pictures of because of the stupid mesh. He kept pushing on it to come out and play with us. Past the bearcat we saw a tree kangaroo... all these animals are so confused.... The peacock was there again and Ashley tried to go offroading to catch up with him.

Then we entered the aviary. I was so excited to see scarlet ibises everywhere! There were also roseate spoonbills a cattle heron and a night heron.

I chased them around taking lots of pictures. We left that area and found the wallabys. They were really cute. That brought us out of the zoo and into the natural history museum which was very interesting as well. By that point it was way past time for lunch so we hopped back on the bus and headed into Hamilton.

We had lunch at Mr. Chicken, which surprisingly served a much larger selection than just chicken. Then we wandered around the city. We found Fort Hamilton and were very devastated to find that all the best areas were gated and inaccessible. They were supposed to be open til 4 but since it's offseason I guess everyone left early. We were mostly upset about the gardens being closed.

Now I know my family's asking why we didn't go any way, but it's hard to break in through steel bars and the only other way down was to jump off a 20 foot bridge. The garden was in the moat. We found all the big guns that were there and took some pictures. I'm ready to fire!

We got some great shots of the city from up here as well. The city hall had a really cool weather vane that was on top of the building as well as designed to look like a clock on the side of the building as well.

Then we went to look at the big cathedral in the city.

For three dollars you could buy a ticket to tour the tower. There was noone there as the visitor center was closed for the day. We found the door to the tower which was open and let ourselves in. We hiked up about 100 tiny stone steps in a spiral staircase. The door at the top was bolted shut but we figured it out and got out on the roof of the tower (see, you doubted my breaking and entering skills... although I'm not sure it counts if the doors were open). It was beautiful.

We wanted to catch the four oclock bus back to BIOS to beat the rush hour traffic on the buses. All of the school children ride public transportation to school so it was crowded anyway. In fact, the bus we rode to the aquarium was packed with students going on a field trip. I thought it was really cute. They didn't get to go to the aquarium which I'm kinda glad about. So we met back up with everyone and took the bus back to the base. Tonight we're packing and practicing our presentations for tomorrow. After that it's back off to the states. It's been such a great trip and unlike some trips I'm not ready to leave yet.... though I could do with some clean clothes. I didn't believe them when they said it was going to be cold so I've been wearing my only sweatshirt all week.... But what a trip it was. Final count as of tonight: 1382 pictures taken :-) I can't wait to get home and upload them all.... I guess we'll have to edit down some. Now it's time to pack and head off to the Passing Wind (the pub) one more time. Next post will be back stateside. Sigh

Those Crazy Corals

Today was coral day! It was absolutely beautiful this morning. The water was absolutely glassy.

We left extra early to take a boat out to the coral reefs.

We passed all sorts of interesting homes on the way out. We got a great look at BIOS and their research vessel that came in yesterday. We're supposed to get a tour of it tomorrow.

On our way out we got instructions on how to sample corals. We were using our transects again and diving down to see what was there every half meter.

There were some interesting sites on the way out.

The old railroad bridge. And sea turtle crossing

We saw some people climbing cliffs to go fishing. Look really carefully, you can see them.

My roommate's been waiting all week to see the Bermuda longtailed bird and we finally found them today. They were off shore from where we snorkeled two days ago.

When we pulled up to the first site, our guide found a sea horse on the mooring line.

We got in and the bottom was covered with coral. I've never seen so much coral in one place. They were beautiful. These were boiler reefs.

Sadly, my camera flooded right after I took this picture so I missed the orange stage white spotted file fish that swam by. We took our data and snorkeled around a little. There were so many sargent majors and parrotfish. I also saw some really cool ctenophores (think jellies but flat). They were changing colors and flickering. I was really disappointed I didn't have my camera. When we finished here we drove back to the rock I took many pictures while we were at Well Bay on Weds. I did manage to get a shot of it on our way out to the first reef. This was a patch reef.

This reef was very different. It was mostly soft corals like sea fans and sea plumes. I saw some parrotfish but my roommate saw a trumpetfish. Our professor told us the other day that they should be called stealth bomber fish because their jaw is designed so that as they swim they don't create any pressure in front of them so their prey doesn't know they're coming. Pretty neat. The water was really cold so we got out after our transect and headed back to base. We've spent all afternoon looking at data and putting together our presentations for Saturday. We have all day tomorrow to work on them but I think everyone will get finished tonight. My plan is to go to the aquarium and visit Hamilton. I'm very excited. Hopefully the weather will be very nice. And don't worry, I brought two cameras on this trip so there will be plenty of pictures. There's supposed to be spotted eaglerays that hang out by the aquarium. Some of the other students want to rent mopeds but I told them I'm not allowed.... our family doesn't do well with them, besides, the way people drive here, I'd rather take the bus.

Oh Man! (O'War)

Today was fish and coral day. We started with a lecture about coral biology and the corals we can expect to see tomorrow on the reefs. It was a very interesting talk but most of us had a hard time staying awake just because it was so early. Then after a lunch of fajita's (I think they were trying to drown us), we walked back out to the area where we went snorkeling on Friday. We got into Whalebone Bay. It was beautiful.

The beach was covered in trash because Bermuda is in the middle of the Atlantic Garbage patch. It was also a sea glass paradise. I found all sorts of colors: green, blue, brown, clear, and even purple which is very rare.

Sadly you're not supposed to collect any of it. It's considered a natural resource and you can get arrested. Especially for trying to take the pink sand or dead coral pieces. I would never take coral, but shells and sand..... sure, except I don't want to see the inside of Bermuda from the local Jail (Even if it is nextdoor to bios)

That's the Jail.
There were also several dead fish washed up on shore.

We got in to swim around and see what the bottom looked like and what sort of fishes were swimming around. Our group was looking at the number and types of fishes on two different bottom types. We saw a lot of really neat fish and some sea whips and sea fans.

The sand has black streaks from the basalt under the island. It's pretty neat.

We checked out the fish and I found yet another sea hare. I actually got a picture in it's natural habitat. This was the second one I had found today

Today we laid a transect line and swam along and counted the number and types of fish with in a meter on each side. I found some neat ones I didn't know like this guy

Can you find him? I also saw a butterfly fish

And some sea plumes.

And some really neat giant anemones with purple tipped tentacles

Sadly, as I went back to collect our transect and take some more photos, I had a run in with a Portuguese man o war. On the way to the bay one of the girls asked if I had ever been stung by a man o war. I said no. She asked if I thought I might get stung today. I said hopefully not, knock on wood.... but I never knocked. So I'm blaming her for me getting stung. From all the stories I've heard I expected to feel like my hand was going to fall off. It was just kinda like a bee sting in multiple places. I had to get my dive buddy (the same girl who asked if I was going to get stung today) to pull off the tentacles because she had gloves on and I didn't want to sting myself repeatedly by trying to pull it off with the opposite hand. Five of us were stung in total, including two women in the face- so I consider myself lucky because the tentacle was coming straight at my mask. I just thought it was a shred of a tarp, being that we were in the garbage patch... but no... I almost stayed to take his picture, he was just a little guy, but I needed to get the tentacles off my hand. So here's a picture of some of his friends on the shore.

I stepped on them and popped them in revenge but it didn't help my hand at all. It feels fine now, just a little sensitive. We finished up at the bay and came back for dinner. Shepherds pie, one of my least favorite meals... and it was served with mashed potatoes as a side which makes no sense considering shepherds pie is made with mashed potatoes. The Brits informed us, though, that it was cottage pie because it was made with beef and not lamb. Following dinner we went to the lab to look at our fish data. Nothing we didn't expect. Then we hung out at the Passing Wind for a while. In the morning we get on the boats to go to the reef. It will be our last day on the water. Pretty sad. Keep your fingers crossed for good finds. Including a frogfish. But for now, I need to get my rest so I'll be ready to find one.