By:  Gabrielle Cooper, Evelyn Wyman, and Brian Chu

Pancakes, warm, tasty, fluffy and light

And bacon and eggs, whipped cream and all the fruit our hearts desire

Nothing to worry about throughout the day or night

Cruising around the farmers market, seeing food cooked by an open fire

A day of buying oysters, a day of leisure, a day of rest

Kids out in the town, walking around

Exploring, and thinking today was the best

If you couldn’t tell, this poem describes a few of the highlights from our day. Saturday was our first day off from field work, and we had an opportunity to sleep in and make a gourmet pancake breakfast. We also visited the farmer’s market, unfortunately it was rainy – but we had a blast exploring. The locals took us to a quaint used bookstore called Serendipity where we were able to check some items off our summer readings lists.

Tim giving a sonar lecture

After our excursion to the farmers market, we returned to the Spring Street dorms, where Tim, one of our counselors, taught us about the use of sonar technology in the Navy, which he specialized in during his service. It was especially interesting to consider the ways that Naval use of sonar influenced the marine mammals and environment, which was especially relevant to this program. As a special surprise, Ela’s family visited the dorm with cupcakes in hand so we could all wish her a happy birthday.

Ela’s birthday celebration

To wrap up the day, Beatrice Grauman-Boss and Sasha Seroy, a PhD student at UW had dinner with us to talk about plasticity in bryozoans. We had the opportunity to visit each of their labs earlier, where Sasha let us help her set up a different experiment involving her research on snail teeth and environmental changes, and Beatrice showed us her research on barnacle cloning. Tomorrow we get to go out with Beatrice to participate in field study on invasive rabbits!

Sasha teaching us about bryozoans