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hopeful holds the tension/ dew jewels cling the sway/ clasped tight against the world/ not yet knowing it's ok/ the waiting deepens color/ trying to accept every sun ray/ gathering its truth song/ beauty at bay so long/ awaiting opening to day/

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Flowing, particularly when stressed

Yesterday morning, around 7am, my "parents" dropped me off at SPU so I could catch a ride with a really cool girl named Heather up to Anacortes. We got to Anacortes nearly an hour and a half before we needed to so we drove around, talked about boys and then went back to the Skyline Marina where we found the boat we were going to take, The Paraclete, with the rest of the BIO 1100: Marine Biology class (7 other people including the TA) to Blakely Island Field Station (owned by SPU). The ten minute boat ride took us to two big vans waiting to load all our stuff to take us across the island (it was starting to feel like a mini-Iona) to our main buildings: the dorm and the dining hall (both circular) with a beautiful pathway in between. There are trails, woods, animals and a deeply serene lake about two minutes from the dorms. The island is remote - as in, no cell phone service in most places, and the fastest they've seen the equivalent of 911 (the San Juan police) respond is 45 minutes). My roommate for the next two weeks will be Heather and the rooms are heated - thank goodness because, in all the rush of being back in Seattle, seeing friends (and a VERY special person again), beginning the process of finding a new place for Norris and I to live and getting used to the time change (which I've still not done...), I didn't prepare well enough for this two week trip here...mostly, I just didn't bring enough clothes. Also, my "parents" are going to have to send the book to me up here since I didn't order it in time. But, the class, for the most part seems totally laid back. Well, except for the tight meal schedule the resident manager's wife runs (breakfast at 8, lunch at 12, dinner at 6).
Oh, and the fact that we already had our first lecture today (once a day for 2 hours, plus an hour movie...readygo). It was about plate tectonics and how mountains form: "The lithosphere slides outward above the convection currents of magma underneath it in the anesthosphere; the oceanic crust (the lithosphere) flows, particularly when stressed..." (at this point, the thought "wouldn't it be nice if people were like that?" ran through my head).
To end my day, my roommate (Heather), the TA (a happy-go-bubbly Bio nerd who looks a bit like a clown) and I went out in a too-tippy rickety canoe on a heavy-silent lake (Lake Spencer) to do a "vertical plankton tow" just for fun: we paddled out in the middle of the lake, dropped a net and a "catcher" in to the end of our rope, dragged it up and dumped all the little critters we found under microscopes. It's a whole different universe down there, whoa hey.
Weirdly, I've got studying to do now....it's good to be back. :-P.

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