Au revoir Moorea!

Well, it's our last day here! The past couple of days have been really fun, since we finished our experiment on Thursday morning. On Wednesday, we were almost done with our experiment, so we hitch hiked to the "big" town of Maharepa to go shopping. I put big in quotations because the town is really only one street with about 5 little shopping centers and a few random stores. We hit up the ice cream parlor again, and this time I got a scoop of coconut ice cream and a scoop of vanilla caramel. Delicious.



We walked around and shopped, but I was so indecisive about what I wanted to get for myself and other people that I ended up not buying anything! It was still pretty fun to explore and we ended up hitch hiking back as well with a nice guy on vacation from Long Beach! haha.

On Thursday, we finished up our experiment and then worked on a project we have to do when we get back to school. After lunch I helped another group on scuba and then Lindsay, Theo and I took some sweet underwater scuba videos for our project! In the evening, a group of about 10 of us walked down to the nearest small town Pao Pao, and hit up this sweet crepe stand that is in a building shaped like a pirate ship! I got a delicious crepe with nutella and coconut!





Friday was finally our first entire free day and it was awesome!!! I went to the nearby juice factory in the morning, then walked with a huge group of girls to Maharepa!!! Its a pretty long walk (like an hour and a half around the entire bay and then some!) and it was freaking hot, but it was super fun!!! Plus the view on the walk is pretty sweet!



Four of my friends in my class were getting tattoos, and even though I couldn't get one since Disney doesn't allow employees to get visible tattoos and I just don't want to risk it, I still wanted to tag along and watch for a bit (and so did like 7 other people haha). So I watched tattoos and hung around the tattoo shop (which is basically a shack on the beach overlooking the water- so cool) with everyone, and then my friend Katie and I wandered around Maharepa again. And again all I bought was some coconut ice cream. Basically, coconut ice cream is my new favorite ice cream flavor! I'm definitely going to need to find some in the US!!! We headed back to the tattoo place to drop off some beverages for people and then just went swimming in the tattoo guys backyard basically! haha. On our walk back, a car stopped to give us a ride since two guys from our class were already in it! It was pretty nice to get a ride back since the walk was going to be brutal. That night, I ended up going to the crepe restaurant again, and this time got a chocolate, coconut and whipped cream crepe. Again, super delish! We happened to be walking past the Pao Pao like town center area, and there was a dance recital going on!!! It was so cool cause it was just like a local Tahitian dancing show, and there were lots of hips swinging and fire being thrown!!!

Saturday was also a mostly free day. We all had to pitch in the clean up the grounds, water tables and lab, but after 10 we had the rest of the day off and our teachers were willing to shuttle us around the island. I had the option of doing a waterfall hike, but some of my cuts seem to be infected (eww gross, I know. need to get those checked out when I get home), so I opted to head to the white sand beach!!! We also stopped at the ice cream place on our way there, and this time I got coconut and pineapple! (yes, I realize I got a lot of ice cream this week haha.) The weather was beautiful and the beach was glorious!!! Such an awesome vacation day!!!



Last night, one of the other groups of students here threw a dock party that was themed tie dye and mustaches (so random haha) so I brought down my pencil and liquid eyeliner and before long, everyone had some pretty sweet mustaches!!! As Katie called it, it was a mustachio bashio! hahaha. I also drank beer through a snorkel with a bunch of other people! Quite entertaining. hahaha. And I had some lovely conversations with people about how sad it is that we didn't become besties until now, and that half of us are going to be graduating! It was sad that it was our last night, but it was a really silly and fun way to end our trip!

Today has been going super slow. We moved out of our rooms at 7:30 this morning, did some cleaning, and now everyone is just sitting around feeling listless. We don't really have anything to do or anywhere to go until we head to the ferry at 3, so the time is just creeping along. We'll be taking the red eye home, so I'll be back in LA this time tomorrow!

i don't wanna leaveeeeeee!!!

i haven't done enough fun stuff yet! and i decided i would definitely live on a tropical island!!!! i don't want to go home yet! :(

some pics of our research station!

Our house!!!



The wet lab and water tables!



The classroom and dry lab building!



I know it's kind of pathetic that I'm not uploading these pictures of the Gump Station until 4 days before I leave, but here you go!!!

beginning of the last week in moorea :(

Sadly, we have entered our last week here. I know I say this every post, but I seriously just cannot believe how quickly the time here has passed. The last four weeks have gone so quickly, but at the same time, it feels like we have been here waaaayyyy longer than just four weeks. I don't want to leave yet! Though I am ready to have some real food other than rice, bread and slop.

The last couple of days have been busy, but not as stressful as last week. We are quickly reaching the end of our project, now that we cut out some of the aspects and made it actually manageable. We were feeling pretty depressed this weekend cause all the other groups were doing super cool stuff like bike riding around the island, hiking to waterfalls and getting ice cream from the agricultural school (apparently its delish), while we were stuck doing work all day. So on Saturday our TA let us come with her to the hardware store in the "big" town of Maharepa and we stopped at an ice cream parlor. When I got back, I went on an afternoon kayak with my friend Jackie. We headed out around 3:30 on a rickty old kayak that she MacGuyvered to not leak with a rubber band and ziploc bag, and paddled our way out of the bay. We ended up going way further than we had planned and kayaked all the way to the next bay over, Opunohu!!! On our way there we passed the Hilton, and it was pretty funny since we kayaked right underneath the bungalows over the water! We headed back around 5, and the sun started to set pretty fast! We weren't planning on doing a night kayak, but it turned out to be pretty nice to watch the sunset from the water, especially since we never see the sunset from Gump due to the location of the station.

Yesterday we surveyed one of our sites, and had about an hour to kill before our professor was picking us up, so we layed out on the beach soaking up the sun once we finished. I haven't really been getting sunburned lately, so I've gotten lazy about putting on sunscreen, but yesterday I definitely got a bit lobstery! Luckily it had mostly turned into tan today, so now I look super tan (especially since my hair is bleaching really light)! In the afternoon, my group and I went to this site called the Sailing School to collect some algae and we went on SCUBA since we barely ever get to dive for our project. The visibility wasn't all that great, probably only like 60 ft, but it was fun and we saw a lot of fish and eels (but still not turtles!). Around 8 pm, a group of about ten of us went on a night snorkel along the reef crest in the bay! It was really fun and I finally got to use my new dive light that I bought for the trip! My friend Katie and I lagged behind the group a bit since we kept poking around in cracks and shining our lights to find all the fun stuff in rocks! We saw several small lionfish, a bunch of eels, lots of crabs with anemones on their shells, tons of gigantic sea urchins just hanging around (my questions is where do they go during the day!? I've never seen any of them!), lots of sleeping fish, a large puffer and a super weird lobster!!

Today our group had another busy day (surprise surprise), but I think it should be our last super busy day. The rest of the week we have just half days and then finally, a full day off on Friday!!! We spent the day putting out experiments and pulling in experiments, weighing algae and surveying sites. Basically a typical day in Moorea for H.L.T. (Oh, I forgot to ever mention that each group has a team name, and ours is Hot Lil Thangs, or HLT for short, which is all of our first initials- Hayley, Lindsay, Theo. hahaha.) Our day was pretty hectic from 8 am till 5:30 pm, but luckily we usually have pretty laid back nights. (Whereas one group is outside at the watertables right now breaking down one of their experiments- ick.) Tomorrow is a chill day for us, we will just be doing some surveys, and then I predict an afternoon off!!! Perhaps I will walk to Maharepa and buy some of you lovely readers some souvenirs!!!

Love to you all!!! <3

pictures!!!!

Also, I finally learned how to resize pictures! Now the only problem is that I haven't really taken any pictures! Here are a few from the first week we were here when we went on a tour of the island. I basically haven't taken any since then, since I don't really have that great of a camera and usually don't bring it with me anywhere. I just plan to steal everyone else's pictures from facebook when we get home and people upload them!









That's all I can put up for now since I don't have that many and since we have a restriction on uploading stuff online, but I'll post some more when I get home!!! :)

"a rainy day in moorea is still better than a sunny day at school"

That title quote comes from my dad, who I just got off the phone with, and he's right. It's been a rough week, but when it comes down to it, I just have to look around me and realize how amazing it is that I am here (even though there's barely a week left! ahhh!) and remember to appreciate everything!

So, last time I updated, we were about to have a Tahitian feast. Well, the evening was fun. The staff brought all their families and a lot of people played volleyball, and one lady made tons and tons of traditional Tahitian food for our group. The food included a pig cooked in the ground, various types of poi (which is kind of like a squishy jello stuff made out of coconut milk and whatever you put in it- bread, papaya, pineapple), raw fish salad, cooked taro root, bread fruit, coconut bread and other squishy weird stuff. It was a really nice gesture, but traditional Tahitian food is just not for me. haha. I was polite though and tried a bit of everything, even this nasty fermented fish with fermented coconut sauce. Eww. Later that night, one of the researchers here from CSUN threw a birthday party out on the dock, so we all went and hung out there. It was super fun just to get to hang out with everyone and relax. A few other girls and I grabbed the empty coconut shells from dinner to use as cups and red vines as straws, which were a hit. :) After a while, we all just ended up laying on the dock watching for shooting stars and talking. At one point, a giant thing blazed through the sky right overhead, and we thought it was a meteorite!!! But the next day our teacher said it was probably just a satellite scheduled to burn up. Around midnight, a few of us jumped into the water just since its always (well when its not raining) so peaceful at night!

Then started my rough week. I woke up Sunday morning not feeling so hot, and I assumed something from the Tahitian feast just didn't agree with my Fischer stomach. As the day progressed I got worse, and several other students also were not feeling so hot. It turns out we all caught some sort of very unpleasant stomach virus. So I basically spent all of Sunday in bed, among other places. haha. I still felt pretty bad on Monday, but one of my other group mates caught the brunt of the virus that day, so I had to suck it up and deal since we really needed to put out our experiment. I've felt progressively better throughout the week, and I think I'm back to full stomach health! Not to be a complaining cathy (I just made that up. haha), but I do have a few gripes that I would like to get out somewhere. One thing that has made this week rough is that all of the experiments we put out last week were either ruined by stormy weather or faulty equipment, neither of which are under our control, so we have to redo everything we did during the first week of our group experiment. This is really frustrating and stressful because that makes it like we basically did no work last week and have to do our entire project is just 2 weeks. Another thing that is annoying me is that since we have to push our entire project back a week, the few days off we left ourselves at the end (since our teacher told us to schedule a few days off and we figured better to be safe and put them at the end than in the middle of the time here) have to be filled with work. Now I know I am here for school and that should be my main focus, and I totally agree, but its just really frustrating when other groups have so much free time to go to town or explore or whatnot, and no one in my group has even had time to go to the main town to go shopping even once. And I'm getting really bitter (clearly haha) every time I have to hear other people talking about fun stuff they have planned for their day off, or what they did during the day, since I most likely won't have any time to do that myself.

Ok done griping. Now back to the interesting fun stuff!!!!! On Tuesday, our teacher took us out on a dive to the fore reef. Its been pretty much destroyed by a variety of things, including a large hurricane that hit in February, so the coral was pretty demolished, but there were still a ton of fish. The visibility was really amazing too, probably more than 100 ft!!! Since we are certified as scientific divers under UCLA, and are using school equipment, we are only allowed to go to 30ft, which is kind of lame, but not too bad. I saw two relatively large lemon sharks, some pretty big parrot fish and a bunch of other stuff. Also on Tuesday, it was a girl Michelle's 21st birthday, so we all took about a 40 minute walk to the Hilton and ate dinner in their outdoor restaurant. I got a pina colada (since you have to get at least one tropical drink when you're on an island) and a cheeseburger (which was delicious since we haven't had normal food in ages)! One of the dogs here, Chicken, followed us, well actually she led the way the whole time haha, to the Hilton and even came in with us!! We tried to keep her out, but she seemed to know her way around the place! It was kind of amusing since the place was like super nice and romantic and Chicken is pretty mangy and gross and was running around like a crazy dog. After we got back from the Hilton, everyone enjoyed an evening of 21st-ness with Michelle, though I just partook in the festivities with water since I was still not feeling 100%.

As for my group project, Lindsay, Theo and I have just been doing a lot of benthic and fish surveys and we just pulled in our repeated growth experiment today! While it didn't really look like there was much of a difference between our sites, at least our algae wasn't destroyed like last time! So that's good news!!! We'll just need to analyze our data to see if anything is significant! Tomorrow morning we will be up bright and early collecting algae at 6:30 am in order to put our next experiment out! This is a new experiment that we haven't tried yet, so keep your fingers crossed that everything works out!!! We will be taking different species of algae from the two bays and doing a reciprocal transplant, which means we will be putting the algae from one bay into the other to see how its growth and herbivory rates change.

Well, this was a super long blog post, so I hope you loyal readers enjoy it and aren't too bored!!! I can hardly believe I'm only here for 10 more days! I'll leave you with some island wisdom I've figured out so far: No matter how ratty, mangy, wet or tangly your hair looks, a flower tucked behind your ear always makes you look good! :)

almost the end of week 3!

Somehow, the time is flying, and it is basically the end of our third week in Moorea! I can't believe we only have two more weeks here! We still have so much more work for our group research project and there are still so many things I want to do for fun on the island! I really hope I can squeeze everything in!

Today was our first (almost) fully sunny day! We had about 5 minutes of sprinkling this morning, but that's about it. Yesterday (Thursday) had even worse rain than when I wrote on Wednesday- it was basically a hurricane! The morning started out nice, sunny with a few clouds, and then it got really warm and sunny! So after my group and I finished our work in the morning, I decided to "assist" another group at one of their research sites, but really we just planned to check a few cages, snorkel and lay out on the beach! Unfortunately, mother nature had other plans for us since 5 minutes after we got there the weather changed from hot and sunny to torrential downpour, thunder and lightening!!! I did see a spotted eagle rays, which were really close to us and super cool, and one sea turtle off in the distance though. We ended up getting picked up by our teacher earlier than we had asked due to the lightening, but thank god she just showed up out of nowhere cause we were freezing and miserable (and sitting in the water to stay warm probably isn't the best idea when there is lightening basically directly overhead!) The rest of the evening and night was super stormy!

This morning, however, was lovely weather as I mentioned before, and we pulled in our growth experiments from all our sites in the two bays! We had to weigh all the algae after bringing it back, so it was a very long (like 9 hours!) day! Our data kind of sucked, but hopefully we will be able to work it out.

Tomorrow we will be setting out our herbivory experiment, so it will be another long day. But the afternoon/evening should be fun since the Gump Station staff will be throwing us a traditional Tahitian feast! An entire pig, literally a whole entire pig, has been in our freezer in the kitchen for the last couple of days, so we will definitely be eating the traditional "pig cooked in a hole in the ground" Polynesian meal! There will also be a volleyball game between the staff and the students here, but since I'm pretty bad at volleyball, I think I'll just be a cheerleader.

Well, its been a busy few days, and the next couple of days will be just as busy! :)

its raining, its pouring!!!

So we woke up this morning at 6:30, with aspirations to get out in the water and clean off our experiment bags and get some surveying done. Our morning started out alright. The sky was a bit foggy and cloudy, but I thought it might clear up since its been cloudy then sunny most days this week. We headed out on scuba to one of our sites to start surveying, and after about an hour it started pouring rain! It was really weird because I was underwater at the time and didn't realize it was raining. I just heard some odd noise, and thought maybe there was a boat nearby, but when I looked up to the surface, I noticed that it was a torrential downpour!!! This made the water really really choppy, but we managed to tough it out and finish our survey for that site! Now 2 surveys down, 6 to go! It's still pretty cloudy and rainy, so hopefully this afternoon when we head out to our other sites to clean it won't be pouring again! But that's tropical weather for you!!! :)

Lovely day off!

Hello readers!!!

Yesterday we finally set up our experiment! If you've been following my school blog, then you should have seen the sweet pics of me and my group mates tying our experiment out on the reef! A quick summary for those who haven't read the other post yet: our experiment will be comparing nutrient levels and herbivory levels in the two bays on Moorea, so yesterday was a very long day and we spent nearly 7 hours in the water tying our growth assay to rocks in our 8 sites! It was a ton of work, but it felt great to get it accomplished!

Today we had a bit of a day off (since we make our own schedules now). We helped another team tie their experiment out this morning since they gave us a hand yesterday, but that was basically it for the day. I enjoyed a morning lying out in the sun/water with some other girls, and after lunch I spent another hour lying out in the water reading a book and enjoying the scenery! Around 3, three other girls and I took a walk down the road to a small public beach, which was empty except for one old speedoed French man feeding the fish with a baguette! It was really relaxing to just lay out, read and gossip, and nice to get away from the Gump station for a bit! Tonight we are having a meet and greet with the director of the Gump Station up at his house in the hills above the station. It should be fun! I actually dressed nice and put on a touch of makeup for the first time this trip!!!

I miss everyone, and I'll try to be more consistent in updating this blog!!!! <3

other blog

hey friends!

sorry i haven't been posting on this blog very much! we are just so busy that i tend to forget! i will post a more comprehensive blog in a few days, but if you want to see some fun pictures, check out my class group blog!

http://majesticmoorea.blogspot.com/

<3

It's already been a week!?

So we've been in Moorea for one week now, and it sure has gone quickly! I can't even believe it is already May! Only 4 more weeks here! :( But at the same time, we have been so busy and have already done so much, that it feels like we have actually been here much longer than a week.

We have been continuing class projects for the past couple of days. On Friday we went out to collected sediment from the area between the barrier reef (the one further from the island) and the fringe reef (closer to the island), to see how the sediment sizes change over a distance and to see what the sediment is composed of (i.e. coral pieces, shell fragments, etc). I was one of the diver for my group, so we went down to about 10 feet and filled up giant bags with sand! It was pretty fun actually. Then we took all our sand back to the lab and sieved and sorted it. That was not so much fun, rather much more tedious. Then on Friday night, we decided to stay at the Gump Station instead of going to the local club, since we didn't really have a way to get there and back. But it was really fun just hanging out with everyone at home and being merry. :) We even took a late night swim! (Well, it was more like sitting in 1/2 foot of water along the shore. haha)

Yesterday (Saturday), my group was assigned to a herbivory class project. We started the morning by drying, weighing, bundling and bagging algae in the lab. After lunch, we took those samples out to the next bay over, Opunahu Bay, and tied the samples to various coral heads. This experiment was to test if there is greater herbivory in high or low complexity areas of coral or algae. It was pretty fun to set up an experiment that we might actually be doing ourselves for our group projects. My group mates Theo and Lindsay and I also met with one of our professors, Peggy, to discuss our group project. We will be comparing differing herbivory and nutrient levels in Cook's Bay and Opunahu Bay to see what influences the presence of different algae species. That might sound boring, but it will be pretty fun to conduct since we will be utilizing a lot of scuba diving and many scientific techniques we've learned such as surveys, herbivory assays, nutrient addition, etc.

Today we have a free morning, since our group did not have any work to do for our class project. This is nice since our invertebrates test got moved to Monday. We have some extra time to study for our test! (And post this blog!) This afternoon we will be doing some more sediment stuff with our professor Dave. We will be diving and finding acorn worm sand poop piles (fun, I know) and measuring how long it takes from them to dissipate over a course of 8 hours.

I just wanted to give a quick shoutout to my grandparents and any other family who might be following along with this blog! :) And a big thanks to my Aunt Becky for the rash guard she gave me for Christmas, since I've been using it almost every day! :)

Well, I better get back to studying those invertebrates!!!