Monday, July 22, 2013

A condensed week and a half

What a week. I haven't written in a while, but here it is. Some weekend fun from the weekend before last and one long week of collecting samples and doing lab work.

July 13th-14th:

What a fun weekend! We traveled to the southwest portion of the Island and stayed with PJ's parents in his home town. Early early Saturday morning, we drove to Arecibo to visit another REU on the island. They are a group of physics students studying at the Arecibo Observatory. It was such a cool place. We  talked to them about their projects which have to do with pulsars and other complicated topics all new to me. It's interesting, one girl, Thankful, who studies millisecond pulsars points the telescope where she needs it to scan and then (to my surprise) looks at graphs and from those graphs, she can tell a whole range of things, like if there is interference from phones etc, if there is a pulsar. Specifically if it's a millisecond pulsar meaning it rotates completely in 1-10 milliseconds. It was neat to hear about the history of the telescope, all of which has left me since a week ago :) I was really blown away by the size and nature of the telescope. I imagined, a large room with a seat in the middle where you lay back at a slight angle and peer into a little spyglass tube that connects to a larger one and a larger one and a larger one etc. They laughed when I told them, needless to say. Look at this thing..



We swam, ate lunch and eventually said goodbye to Arecibo.. It was on to Ponce from there..

In Ponce, we went to the kioskos, a little strip on the beach of restaurants, bars and shops. So much fun.. We had drinks and food and even took a flaming shot. We drank it through a straw. It was not bad but honestly, it was not good either. Midori, Grenadine, Some yellow stuff, maybe creme de banana, tequila? (Danielle, have you ever made one?) and 151 so it lights. Sure does, let me tell you. You put the straw in, drink up and hope you're quick enough that you don't melt it and inhale straw fumes.

That night we headed to PJ's parent's house where his sweet Mother had beds and snacks ready for all 14 of us. I was amazed that she found the space, the girls room was downstairs, sort of like a little basement attached to the garageport. You could not step without stepping on some bodies bed, Casey (a field tech for Gus who is doing fish research) had her bed on top the pool table. It was dark when we came in but when we woke up it was such a beautiful view. They live in the southwest portion of the central mountains. There were roosters crowing, fog clearing and a friendly pair of dogs playing in the road. 

The Inn for the Night, thanks to our TA's parents.


ooooooooooh so dang cute!!!


 We eventually left the endless fruit trees, homely feel and lovely mountains of PJ's hometown and headed to the beach. We went to Cabo Rojo, "Playa Sucia" meaning dirty beach. You can see, it's quite the opposite. Arguable the most beautiful beach on Puerto Rico's main island.





We did not stay for too long because we had a date with some snorkels at 2:00p in La Parguera. The guide first took us to a sand bar called the party bar, which was nice and fun. There we tested out our snorkeling gear and I swam over to the Pincho boat to get a grilled chicken kabob. mmmmmmmm. From there we went to a shallow spot to snorkel where we saw urchins, cucumbers fish, coral, grasses and other small sea biota. I like snorkeling, It's fun. It was the first time I had ever been. We moved from there (we were in a boat boating around the different keys) to a deep spot and woahhh how different it was! We saw lobsters and crazy crazy corals and so many fish. Schools of anchovies or sardines, or something. There were some corals along a transect that were tagged, somebody must be doing some research. I got out and as we were boating to the last spot, a mangrove, I learned that I get seasick. After I thought about it, I realized I have never been on a small ocean boat (that I can remember) so yeah, seasick.

We eventually left, got in the car and headed home. It was such a fun trip home. We were in 2 cars united by walkie talkies. We joked and sang back and forth which made the trip go by really quickly. The station was a pleasant sight. Sleep came easily that night. Monday would mark the start of chaos. 

And so it was, I began collecting and processing my samples. This is why I've been out of touch with the blog, because since monday it has been nonstop. I have stayed at Sofias home in Rio Piedras twice because the nights have been so late. Between collecting samples, placing them in tubes, going through a 3 hour light and two hour dark cycle with dissolved oxygen and mass measurements plus filtration in between, I would get back to the lab with samples at 12 Noon and not finish until 11:30 at night. Once a set was finished, it went to the chlorophyl extraction stage for 6-24 hours. Then, to the light absorbance on the spectrophotometer to eventually find the chlorophyll-a content. Basically place in tube, fill, measure DO, light cycle, make foil baggies, weigh them, Measure DO, filter, fill, measure DO, dark cycle, measure DO, filter, chlorohyll extraction in methanol, spec readings, back in the foil baggies, mass, oven dry for 24 hours, mass, burn, weigh. Mass Mass mass, foil baggies (no crucibles here, folks) for all 48 samples from each stream. It's like 18 of labwork for each 48 samples (not including the wait time for chlorophyll extraction, oven drying, and muffle furnace burns). 


So today is my last day of this madness and I am so excited to finally have data to work with!!!! All summer, I have just been waiting around, switching things out sometimes and mostly just hanging around the station waiting on my biofilms to grow. My time has come and it has done me in. It's almost over though, and tomorrow, we go to Culebra Island at 2am to catch the 4:30am ferry over. I'm going to sleep on the beach, get sunburnt, and have the most relaxing day of my life.


This post is almost as disorganized and ranty as by brain feels, but more to come eventually, maybe with some results next time? Who knows. 


blah,

Brandy


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