Another week gone by. Although I have to say, this one has been a little more normal compared to the craziness of last week. Sunday was spent generally monging around, not really doing much, and that sort of set the tone for the rest of the week really. Pretty quiet during the week. Training started off really well with a 10km run. I took minicam with me, to do a picture document of where I run out here, to send to the girls back home. Unfortunately it ran out half way through the run, but it’s the same route back so it doesn’t really matter. Comedy value. I like to think so anyway.
Tuesday was an awesome day. Went out for the day on the SSV Corwith Cramer with 4 other staff/interns from BIOS, to see the work that they have been doing on investigating plastic accumulation and dispersal in the North Atlantic subtropical gyre. I love sailing, always have done, and so was thrilled to rock up and discover it’s a lovely, square rigged boat (kind of like a mini tall ship I guess). All the people on board were graduates o their semester at sea programme that they run for U.S Undergraduates, and everyone gets involved equally in the scientific sampling and processing and the physical sailing of the boat. One of my group was pretty seasick, poor girl seeing as it was her birthday too, and another one was pretty knocked out by the seasickness tablets that she took. A small selection of photos from the day are here. I got as involved as I could, so that pretty much counted as my days exercise :) hauling on ropes n fun stuff like that.
Haven’t been able to do that much training this week after that which sucks. Tried playing ultimate Frisbee again on Wednesday, and within about 5 minutes was fairly crippled by the return of the dreaded shin-splints. Ouch. So I went for a quick swim instead (proper swim, proper swimming costume and goggles rather than just fannying around in a bikini), but that was also fairly short-lived due to the number of jellyfish in the water. Fortunately I didn’t get stung by any, but getting a faceful of jellyfish a couple of times was enough for me.
Got some exciting/scary news this week though. My application for funding was successful to go to a conference in Hawaii in September which I am super psyched for, and have also been offered a three week teaching position back in Bermuda in October/November. I am super scared about this, just generally as I’ll be co-teaching a basic graduate level course, but also a bit worried about how much it’s going to affect phd work in this period. In theory it shouldn’t, as I’ll be applying to the graduate school to suspend my phd for 6 weeks or so, but still a little scary. They were both things that I’d be stupid to say no to. It does mean that between now and the end of November I’ll only be in the UK for around 7 weeks out of 20 though which does bite a bit. Not sure that the boyf is too happy about this, but there’s not a lot I can do about it.
Came second again in the pub quiz this week. Sad times as this was my last one. Our various teams were joined by people from the Corwith Cramer, which proved pretty advantageous on a few questions :) went back to the station from that in the boat which always makes me happy. Friday was the perfect end to the week, went out fishing on a friend’s boat after dinner, got to drive it on the way back in which was fun too :) Last boat I drove was when I was driving the barge (in fact I think that might even be me in that picture, not driving, but on the deck at the back of the boat). Saturday I got to go out on a station dive (basically one of the guys on station runs dives that the BIOS staff and interns can participate in, for reduced cost), which was super exciting and super scary in equal measures as I haven’t dived for just under three years or so. All went according to plan though and we had two good dives which was great fun. Very small selection of photos from that are up here. I did take way more than that (I get a little snap happy), but managed to cut it down to a few of the better ones.
As i write this am watching the replay of the Bermuda vs Finland lacrosse match from the World Lacrosse championships which are ironically being held in the UK at the moment (in Manchester). A friend of mine is playing for the BDA team so thought I’d pay attention to it. Know quite a few people that play lacrosse now, but most of them are girls, and it’s a totally different game. Not least because men’s lacrosse seems to be pretty violent.
Right enough prattling on, time to go and clean my bike off and then maybe a sneaky little trip to the beach for the afternoon.
Enjoy. xx
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