A place to call home

Well I finally moved! The new apartment is amazing! It's such a relief to be able to relax at home and just be comfortable. It's fully furnished so that's a huge plus. It has a nice view of the airport and a few bays on the south side of the island. It's pretty close to campus too. It's only about a 10 minute drive and I no longer have to drive through the downtown cruise ship traffic. YAY! I think Ivanhoe is also much more comfortable at this new place. Having him here makes it feel more like home. He's growing so fast and is turning into quite the mamma's boy. He is always ready to play but likes to cuddle a lot too which is nice. He's getting fixed this Thursday (shhh dont tell him!) and hopefully he wont be too traumatized.

School is really intense right now. We have 2 weeks left and about a million assignments to finish. Sometimes I feel like I will never be able to get it all done but then I just keep at it and eventually I cross something off the list. I have a presentation tomorrow on the management of the California Red Abalone fishery. For those of you who don't know... abalone are kinda like snails that live in intertidal areas clinging to rocks and eating kelp. They can get pretty big and apparently they are quite tasty. I've never had one and I doubt I ever will. I don't like eating species that are overfished! But anyway that's one of the many assignments I've been working on this weekend.

I had my first Thanksgiving dinner away from home last week. It wasn't quite the same as when mom makes it but it was still pretty good. My friends and I all divided up the work (I was in charge of stuffing and mashed potatoes) and we put it all together on Thursday afternoon. I think we did a really good job!

Here are some pictures of the new place and some of Thanksgiving dinner.

New Apartment in Paradise

Some good news and one lucky kitten

It's been quite a while since my last entry. I've been insanely busy! My coursework got pretty intense for a bit so I spent a good amount of time reading, studying, and stumbling through statistics problems. The good news is that I now have both of my big midterms out of the way! While I'm on the subject of good news I should mention that I now have a vehicle. It's a green Ford Explorer and I'm quite fond of it. It's a relief to not have to walk through the streets to get home. It can be pretty sketchy downtown and it's not exactly safe for a white, 22 yr old female to walk around. I definitely feel much safer driving an SUV that could squash anyone who tried to mess with me. =) I'm actually probably going to be moving before long now that I have the option of living further away from the bus stops. I'm anxious to get away from the crime and heat that comes with living downtown. Further up the mountain the temperature drops and so does the crime rate!

My RA work is coming along finally. We put out the finished sediment traps in Fish Bay last week. It was hard work and I don't think I have ever swum that far in my life, but I enjoyed it just the same. I really like riding on the boat and feeling the salty air rush by. It's one of those things that just makes you feel alive for some reason. Anyway, I have to wait until the next sampling date before I head back and change out the sediment-catching cups.

I have adopted a stray kitten. About a month ago I noticed a mother cat and her 4 kittens were living under the stairs outside my apartment. Of course, I couldn't let them go hungry so I got some cat food and started feeding them every once in a while when I saw them around. They got pretty used to my presence and weren't scared of me after a while. Then, two days ago I came home and gave them some food but one of the kittens just sniffed it and looked away uninterested. I knew he must be hungry because he was only skin and bones! I went and got some turkey from the kitchen and he wouldn't even eat that! Needless to say, I was pretty worried. I inched my way closer to him and reached out and just picked him up! I expected him to struggle and scratch me the way a feral cat should but he only mildly resisted. I brought him inside and put him on the couch. I put food and water out in front of him and petted him a little. He didn't want to eat but he certainly appreciated the scratches behind his ears. He even started purring for a minute. I was pretty surprised because feral cats don't typically like to be touched. To make a long story short I've adopted him now and he is getting quite spoiled. I took him to the vet today to get his shots and some deworming medicine. He is currently curled up next to me on the couch as if he has always been a house cat. His name is Ivanhoe. He's 1.4lbs and approximately 2 months old. He is a very lucky kitty.

Pictures of campus, my SUV, sediment traps, and Ivanhoe:

Island time

Sea Turtle Encounter

The past few weeks have been pretty stressful and crazy... but also fun in their own way. I've started car shopping. I don't think I would be able to survive here for 2 years without one. I'm looking for something that sits up and is 4wd but that's not too big, bulky, or expensive. I've test driven a few things but nothing has really felt right yet. I have faith the right vehicle will come along but it's just not fun anxiously waiting!

Classes are going well. I like my professors a lot and I really enjoy the Friday ecology labs. This past week we got to dive in Brewer's bay, set up some transects, and video record along the bottom. Next week we are going to use a random point generating program (called Coral Point Count I think) to analyze the data. I've used CPC before so it shouldn't be too hard. Also, I'm supposed to actually start working on my RA this week. Tyler and I will be constructing the sediment traps and hopefully start putting them out in the field. I'm pretty excited about it if you can't tell. It's just a nice feeling when you are getting to do something that actually matters and you enjoy it.

Speaking of enjoying things, I went snorkeling in Hull Bay the other day! I love snorkeling. At this particular location it was actually pretty sad to see such a dead reef that had obviously been thriving not long ago. It was like a coral graveyard. Apparently, the private owners decided that they wanted to bulldoze all the mangroves out and make a nice little beach back in the 1980's. Unfortunately, they didn't understand how incredibly vital the mangroves are to nearby fringing reefs. Besides their physical matrix of roots protecting the reef from terrestrial sediments flooding into the water, the mangroves also serve as an important nursery for many reef organism's larvae. SO in other words it's a pretty bad idea to clear them out.

Anyway, back to why I was enjoying my snorkeling trip... I got to pet a wild green sea turtle! It was amazing. I saw her swimming along beside me so i kinda slowed down and let myself drift in her direction. She was grazing on some algae. She decided to surface to get a breath and in doing so came very close to me. She watched me for a while and then actually started swimming toward me! I was a little scared. She was pretty big (shell around 3ft in length). I just watched her and didn't make any sudden movements. She got closer and closer and then turned her back toward me and just hovered there in the water. I had heard that sea turtles like the feeling of a person scratching their back (they feel a kind of pressure like when you push on someone's fingernail lightly). I reached out and rubbed her back a little and to my surprise she continued to hover there! This went on for about 30 seconds and then she swam back down and started grazing again. I watched her for a while and then swam away with a huge grin on my face. It was an awesome experience.

Research Assistantship

I have finally decided on what RA I will be doing this semester. I will be working with Dr. Tyler Smith (quite an awesome guy) on the effects of increasing sediment loads on surrounding reefs. Basically, there are multiple road restoration programs that are going to take place on St. Thomas and St. John over the next few years and this construction will cause a larger volume of sediment than normal to be washed into the ocean and onto the reefs. My job will be to monitor sediment traps along the land/sea gradient and to analyze the collected samples. I will also be monitoring established coral reef communities before, during, and after the restoration events to try and determine what effects the sediment is having on the aquatic biota that is essentially being dumped on. It's all quite fascinating to me but I will refrain from getting into too much detail because I know not everyone is as interested in these things as I am! All you really need to know is that I'm quite excited about making an original contribution to my field and that I will be having some fun over the next two years playing with dirt, corals, and fish!

The other day was quite an event. I tried to put up curtains in my room. I did not realize that this was going to be an all day event and test me to the limits of my patience. I also didn't know that around the walls of my windows there is a metal plate of some sort only 1cm under the wall. This makes drilling holes practically impossible. Need I say more? It was an awfully frustrating experience! And to make things worse I didn't have a handy Dad to do it for me. (Speaking of Dads I think mine should come visit me soon!) I did manage, with the help of a friend or two, to get the curtain rod and curtains on the wall. They have not fallen off the wall yet so I suppose the event was a success. They do look rather pretty and add a homey feel to the room.

Pictures

Here are the promised pictures! Most are of my new apartment but there are some of a few places around the island as well. Enjoy!

Settling in

Thank you Ben Franklin for electricity!

Well, I moved in two days ago but I had no power! Luckily, I had bought a few candles at Kmart that day so I wasn't completely in the dark. However, I went to bed pretty early anyway out of sheer boredom. Then, after a pretty hot and sticky night, I woke up and went to my first day of classes (after a quick cold shower of course). We didn't really do too much in class; just went over the basic first day things. The professors talked about themselves, their research and then went over the syllabus. During my lunch break I did manage to get an oncampus post office box. I also had time to check out the library. I wasn't very impressed with the selection but I managed to find an interesting book by Bill Bryson called "The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America". So far I am enjoying it immensely. It's about a young man who decides to explore America by driving from one small town to the next in search of the picture perfect place. He's quite witty and sarcastic and I have laughed out loud numerous times even though I'm only on chapter 2. You can imagine the kind of funny things he runs into in some of the small towns he passes through. It's not a completely original idea but his style of writing and humor hits my funny bone in the right spot I guess.

After lunch and more classes my roommate and I came home to find the power still not turned on. I wasn't looking forward to another night in the dark but there really wasn't much we could do about it. The power company had already closed for the day so I resolved to call them in the morning. I called my wonderful boyfriend, Zac, and vented to him for a bit which made me feel a little better. Then I set about to utilize the remaining daylight to unpack and clean up my room. Having everything put in its new proper place raised my spirits even further. I laid down and read my new book by candlelight before eventually drifting off to sleep.

Today I got up and opened up a local bank account. Then I tagged along with my friend, Robert, while he went shopping for a car. At some point I called the Power company where they informed me that the power had already been turned on last week! I couldn't believe it. The lady told me that I needed to go out to the power meter and flip a switch. I don't know why they couldn't have told me this last week when I signed up to get my power turned on, but honestly I'm not too surprised they didn't. Things down here never happen as I think they should. Anyway, Rob an I stopped for lunch before heading back to my place to turn on the power. I'm happy to report it was a success and we now have electricity! After that it was a quick trip to Kmart for a few necessities and then back here to crash for the evening. It was a long but productive day and I am now comfortably sitting in my well-lit room enjoying the artificially generated breeze created by my new box fan. =)

I promise to have some pictures to post in my next entry!

Arrival

Despite a teary goodbye in Raleigh the flight was smooth and painless. Between reading, listening to music, staring out the window and playing games on my Zune I managed to waste the few hours on the plane without too much trouble. After flying to Australia and back (at best a 27 hour ordeal from start to finish) most other flights seem like nothing. I arrived at the airport in good spirits and collected my baggage with ease. The taxi cab overcharged me for the ride to the guest house I was staying at but I didn't feel like arguing with him. Besides, he was polite and helped with my heavy bags so I didn't begrudge him the few extra bucks. After greeting my roommate, Shruti, and checking in with everyone back home I settled down on what apparently passes as a cot down here and tried to sleep. It was a hot night and the "bed" was hard so I didn't get much sleep. Regardless, I woke up in good spirits and was ready to begin the day.

Shruti and I made our way to the University to check it out and meet up with another student who had already arrived. It turned out to be a bad decision. We wandered aimlessly around and only managed to get sweaty, tired, and hungry. Then we gathered with a few other grad students and got in line to register for classes. After 4 hours of confusion, standing in lines and filling out papers I managed to get my loans approved, classes registered, a student photo ID, and a library card. By this time my stomach began to remind me that I had only eaten a meager banana for breakfast and it was now approaching 5:00pm. Luckily I hitched a ride with another grad student, Robert, to Subway and was able to get a much needed sandwich. Robert then graciously took me and Shruti back to our guest house where we both showered and collapsed into a heap in front of our computers to talk to our friends and family back home.

I slept only slightly better that night but still woke up refreshed and excited to go apartment shopping. For the past few weeks I'd had my eye on a cute little 2 bedroom apartment downtown I had found on the internet, so that was first on the list. We ended up deciding that this was indeed the place we liked the best and actually signed the lease and paid the deposit that same day. We are moving in tomorrow night and I will have some pictures before too long.

Orientation was yesterday and it was a very relaxed and fun orientation. We got to meet most of the professors in the science department and they all seem like great people. We also got some much desired information on what our classes will be and how things are going to work in general over the next few years. Today, Shruti and I hitched a ride with Robert to the biggest Kmart on the island. We got a few things we knew we would be needing at the apartment right away and also started inquiring about how to get internet working at our new place. Hopefully we will have it up and running next week. After shopping we went out to eat at a place called Tickles down at the marina. It wasn't exceptional but it wasn't bad either. After a short rest we all went snorkeling. It was good to get back in the water again. Shruti was quite excited because it was her first time. She is from India and has never had the chance to snorkel on a reef. Then we all got some chinese food and went our separate ways.

All in all it has been a good first few days here in St. Thomas. I'm still getting used to the island but already I'm adjusting to the weather and becoming more comfortable navigating my way through the curvy, unlabeled streets. Tomorrow is the big Chili Cookoff down at Brewer's Bay and then we start classes on Monday!