Day 24 - Sundays and "Not Sundays"

The days and weeks are zooming past, and I have to admit that it's extremely hard for me to remember exactly what day it is while we are here.  It finally dawned on me that because our days start early and go late, and we are busy all day long the days sort of stream together.  Plus, while we are busy every day, there is little that we do that is day specific, well, except for Sundays.

That's when it hit me.  During an experience like this there are only two days of the week: Sundays and "Not Sundays".  

On "Not Sundays" we hit breakfast around 7am, then prepare for the day, do some morning chores...writing, research, as needed, followed by a few hours of lecture at 9a or 10a.  About then the lunch bell rings and off we go.  When the tide is low we either go somewhere as a class or research teams head off to collect field data.  In the meantime other research teams collaborate on writing or visit the library to do background literature searches in the scientific literature.  This goes on until dinner time (5:30pm).  After dinner students return to writing, research, or the lab as needed.  In the meantime I prep and review course material for the next day.  I also chat with students about research, statistical questions, manuscript formatting, etc.

Today's lecture topic was Tropical Communities with an emphasis on coral reefs.

You may be happy to hear that yesterday in the mid-afternoon several of the crew decided that they needed an ice cream break, so off they went, walking down the road to "Davey Jones Locker", a small convenience store about a 5 min walk from OIMB to score some ice cream.

Just in case you are curious, "Roxanne" the octopus is doing well.  She's eaten some fish and getting along fine in her holding tank.  Here's a close-up photo of her for your viewing pleasure.

Tomorrow is the last class lecture.  Then Thursday we go out on the OIMB research vessel for the morning, and on Friday the class will do some canoeing on the South Slough Research Reserve.

So that's it for now.  It's time to take full advantage of another "Not Sunday".