DUNZO

Today is the last day of camp--I am on end of season cleanup duty today instead of being with the kids. Which is awesome. My jobs are to do an inventory of the first aid materials and make new first aid kits, and to get everyone's photos from the summer organized. The kids leave tomorrow and then we have amazing things planned!! Sunday night we are having a big dinner party and then a bonfire, Monday we were invited on a free whale watch all together, and Monday night we are going on a sunset kayak trip to Indian Beach where there are AMAZING rocks. It'll be nice to hang out with no kids to take care of. Tuesday night I'm leaving and going to visit Red in Bar Harbor!!! Can't wait to see her yayyyyyy.

The past two weeks went really fast...Mom and Kim came to visit last week.  We ate really good food and went hiking and beach glass hunting. It was very fun! Then I went on my last travel day and had my day off. I spent the day at the beach with my roommate and it was warm and sunny like a normal SUMMER! Its been a long 9 weeks and I am really tired....and excited to go home. I have about a week in MA before I go to DC!!! YAY exciting times. Guess its time to end this blog. Or change it. Bye Bye BYE!

best whale watch of EVER

Hello hello. Here is my new video from the best whale watch ever!!!!! Tons of breaching--this video shows 3 breaches in just a minute. AMAZINGNESS. sorry for the bad quality--I took it from my iPhone and it was all I had...but better than nothin! Also please ignore my obnoxious squealing....I was very excited. As you would be too.

TWO WEEKS LEFT??

It is the beginning of week 8...the second to last week! Craziness. I spent the past weekend here at camp while the other 4 ESI's went on travel day. Lets see where I last left off...

Week 7 was somewhat of a wash because I didn't spend a lot of time on program.
MONDAY I had the most amazing whale watch on Whales n' Sails...it was pouring rain on our way in and out of the harbor, but once we got out there we had a great time. First of all...we saw a MOLA MOLA aka an ocean sunfish...the largest bony fish. It's basically a pancake that sits on top of the water with fins on the top and bottom of its body. First one they saw all season on the boat! And I spotted it!! Two points for Adrienne the marine biologist in training!  Also because it was rainy there were rainbows everywhere and I saw a humpback breach AT THE END OF A RAINBOW. Literally. It was out of a movie. And on our way back we were in a pod of finbacks with about five on either side of the boat. We didn't even know which way to look. After a rainy way back there was a gorgeous sunset in North Head harbor.

Grand Manan, you are beautiful.

Tuesday was my day off and I went in the ocean for the first time! It was freezing but I walked down the stairs behind camp to Seal Cove beach and jumped in...it was great.

My backyard

Wednesday I drove to Bangor and dropped off a staff member leaving and picked up someone else. Basically a long day of driving...which wasn't so bad because I had good company.

Thursday....I had the morning off and then taught a lesson and Friday it was raining OF COURSE and I went to the Indiana Jones hike with the kids staying the next week. It literally has rained every single Friday except for one. And its the one day that we need to be outside almost all day. SO FUN! And I saw awesome things such as luna moths and mushrooms.

This weekend we went on a night hike and I learned to use my night vision! So cool! So here's how. Sit in the darkness at night. Cover your right eye with your hand so no light can get in and leave your left eye open while looking towards a light or flashlight for about 3 minutes...you don't have to stare directly into it but just expose your eye to a bit of light while the other one is in complete darkness. After about 3 minutes, turn the light off so it's completely dark and open both eyes, moving your hand from your left to right eye. You will see that your right eye has built up a chemical that allows it to see better at night (I forget what its called.) and its mind-blowing. Coolest part of my weekend. You should do it.

This week I am going on a whale watch tomorrow, then teaching lotsa lessons and shtuff. Second to last week! Crazy! I can't wait to have a few days with the staff and NO kids after next week....it'll be really great great great. Ok thats all for now. P.S. my mom's coming this week!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh just the best whale watch ever. PLUS video.

So today we went on the best whale watch ever. Here's a video of the very playful calf, and its momma pops up a little bit later in the video. The calf is flipper slapping and just goofing around while mom feeds farther down (the calf can't hold its breath as long). At the end both fluke and then dive under the boat. ENJOY!

week six nonsense

HELLO! It is week six and I had my day off today finally. I traveled this weekend to Bangor to drop off and pickup new campers which was exhausting as usual. But we always get Indian food for lunch and Domino's for dinner...so that was amazing. Another plus is that I get to sleep in a nice hotel bed and shower in a nice bathroom! So that went pretty smoothly....no vans broke down. No children were harmed.

What have I done since I last posted.....OH Mike left...so sad. We are now without our fearless leader. And where will we get our banjo playing knee slapping dish cleaning music now? MIKEEE!!!!

I went to Pettes Cove three separate times last week. THREE! So much sea glass, so many cool rocks. I am really glad I don't have to fly home because all my bags would be overweight. We also went to do a salt marsh lesson for the first time this summer! It was really fun mucking around and finding plants that live there and demonstrating how it acts as a filter for fresh and salt water. I worked a lot in salt marshes last summer with the North and South Rivers Watershed Association so it was good to be back. Got to sample some sea pickle, which is a succulent found in the marsh. Never have I ever eaten so many plants straight out of the ground or the ocean before...and its awesome.

Sea Pickle

Plant species for the kids to identify

Today was my day off...and I haven't had one in almost two weeks, so it was much needed. I slept in, then went for a run and showered and started the ol' job hunt. Luckily I got interrupted by our lovely cook Sandra who needed my help in the kitchen for lunches, so I cut up some celery and made some PB and J sandwiches...very skilled cooking going on. Afterwards I spent about two hours applying to jobs and whatnot...actually found some cool research assistant positions around the DC area and hoping to get something interesting for the fall! Yay!

Around 3 we went to get tea and scones in Harrington Cove and it was lovely as usual. Then I took a long nap and then had a staff meeting. So eventful.

Tomorrow I am teaching forestry, bog and marine mammal behavior. Should be pretty easy. Excited for a whale watch on Wednesday!! I haven't been out on the whale boats since week 4 so I am itching to see some cetacean action.

Four more weeks here--so crazy. So many places left to go! So many things to see!
P.s. the Red Phalaropes are here...which means the RIGHT WHALES are coming. There are only about 450 North Atlantic Right Whales alive in the world....to see one would be amazing. They were hunted to near extinction but are now slowly coming back thanks to banning commercial whaling and shipping lane shifts.  Crossing my fingers I get to see some....

Whales...duh

BONJOUR from Canada. I just got back from travel day (when we bring last weeks campers back to Bangor, Maine and pick up some new kids) and I'm exhausted. But I'm happy! It went really well and even there were some hitches, none of them were my fault so YAHOO. Also we had an awesome dinner of roast beef and mashed potatoes and gravy so I was so happy. And of course we washed dishes to the tune of many a bluegrass song with Mike. Which is even better than dinner, really.

BUT rewind.
Last week I went on the best best best whale watch of my life on the Day's Catch. It was choppy water but we saw a baby and momma humpback and a few other pairs, and the baby was breaching and fluking and lobtailing and just so playful!!! It was amazing. Once he breached right next to the boat, like actually right next to it. SO amazing. I took an awful video of the fluke, but hopefully you will enjoy it anyways!!

Hmmmm...what else. Nothing really compares to that.  Thursday I went kayaking out of seal cove and we saw the salmon pens up close (where salmon are farmed offshore) and a really cool sea cave. It was so sunny FINALLY and everyone was enjoying the weather and being on the water, it was very nice. We took the kids tidepooling afterwards and found some awesome critters.

That night all of the staff was off, so we got fresh lobster and cheese and crackers and beers and fresh baked bread (by Mike) and had an amazing dinner. It was really fun to hang out with everyone (all 8 of us) because we never really get to see the dorm counselors during the day when we're on lessons. Twas lovely.

The bugs.

Friday we took the kids shopping and did closing activities (mostly reflection stuff) and then had campfire that night. We do this thing where we pass around a talking stick, and everyone can say whats on their mind or how they're feeling, and its amazing how many kids really open up during it. They all say how they've gone to tons of other camps that didn't even compare to whale camp, and talk about how accepting and close-knit the entire group is. Its really cool to listen to kids who have found out how to be themselves, or become more outgoing, or realize its okay to be weird. Makes me feel like I'm doing a good job! yay me.

other thoughts:

-i've slept 10 hours and driven 6 hours in the past two days.
-the new campers seem REALLY awesome, like the best group i've had so far
-we're all constantly on the hunt for purple sea glass and licking rocks to find pretty ones
-camp is over in 5 weeks...what!
-we blast this song while washing dishes...you should listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKMBpyZlZ_I
-Mike is leaving this weekend. WHAT WILL WE DO WITHOUT HIM.


Seriously.

Ohmygosh its week four.

OK so its been a while since I've written, but lots has been happening. Lets see.

plankton from a plankton tow on the boat

i found a heart shaped rock

twilight tidepool panorama

went to tea in Harrington Cove!

Week 3 was.....good! Lots of good whale watching--its only gotten better as time goes on! Last week I saw my FIRST humpback whales of the summer and boy let me tell you they were AMAZING! There were 3 of them that we were following for almost the entire whale watch, and they had been previously identified (by the white patterns on the bottom of their tail). Their names were Touchdown, Cornucopia and Foggy. We saw them logging (napping on the surface), fluking (raising their tails when they dive down from the surface) and just surfacing. They were incredibly beautiful and breathtaking and it was the best. Although finback whales (the 2nd largest animal in the world) are amazing to look at and watch, they are negatively buoyant and therefore don't show their tails (FLUKE) when diving. Humpbacks are positively buoyant, which makes it harder for them to dive, and they really gotta put their backs into it resulting in exposing their gorgeous flukes. WOOT. They went right under our boat at one point. AMAZING. Also...spending all this time on the boats with the captains and the crew makes me want to just work on a boat for the rest of my life and see amazing things. And learn knots. And brave the sea. BUT...we'll see.

I honestly can't remember much else..except that for the Friday night campfire all the staff learned the whole dance to Thriller and performed as zombies. Lots of fun. Long night of youtube videos and ridiculousness.

Week 4 is starting now and today I went on the puffin boat in the morning. I got to go ONTO Machias Seal Island this time, which is where the puffins, razorbills and common murres nest. Only 15 Americans and 15 Canadians PER DAY can legally go onto this island, and I got my chance today! We went into bird blinds--these little huts with little windows to lift up and see out of without disturbing the birds and their babies. They were so cute! And very uncoordinated. So cool to watch. After puffin-ing, we went to the bog and learned about some cool carnivorous plants and creepy bog sacrifice stories. Lots of fun--bog is one of my favorite lessons to teach. wooowoooooo.

PUFFINS!

Tomorrow I'm going on another whale watch in the afternoon on the Day's Catch--hoping to see some BREACHING!!!!!! And in the morning I am teaching a new lesson we just came up with, Modern Fisheries. Should be fun!


Other thoughts.

-The washing machine in the staff house makes the entire house shake like theres an earthquake.
- I'm slowly weaning myself off of sea-sickness medicine so that I can be a real sailor on the rough seas. Arrrr!
-It was really hot and sunny today! I got a tan line from my hiking socks.
-Anything can be fun if you participate in it and are open to it. As exemplified by my amazing campers who have the most fun playing silly games even though they're in high school.
-I put coffee in the fridge for iced coffee tomorrow morning. Yes.
-Thursday night the staff has the night off and we're getting lobster for dinner. DOUBLE YESSSS.
- After this summer I am planting myself somewhere amazing for at least a month without traveling by car, plane, train, or ferry. I have traveled way too much in the last month.

Week 2! whales, seaglass, and rain.

Hello! I am extremely tired as I write this but also very excited about everything that has happened.
OK so starting with travel day. Basically four of us staff people drove the fifteen-passenger vans full of 1-week campers and their luggage back to Bangor. This included a 20 minute drive to the ferry at 6am, a 1.5 hour ferry ride to Blacks Harbor, NB, and then a 2ish hour drive into Bangor (crossing the border). When we got there, we dropped the kids off at the airport where they either were met by parents in cars or got on planes to other parts of the country. We left two staff there and then me and Heather went to the hotel. This is where we check in kids and then entertain them until the next morning. Up again at 6am to drive all the way back to Blacks Harbor and catch the ferry with new campers. All in all EXHAUSTING.

The new kids are really awesome. There are 10 year olds and 18 year olds but they are all getting along and I think its cool. There are only 16 of them total at camp this week--such a small group. But we get to know all of them well and they all make really close connections with each other.

Monday we did the sensory hike and tides with the ORDs and then in the PM we went on a Whales and Sails adventure!!! Me and another ESI took the kids on the Elsie Menota, a sailboat complete with captain, crew, and marine biologist. We went out a little towards the northern part of the island because the fog was bad and we couldn't go down to the southern end. The tide rips at peak flood (exactly between high and low tide) at the tip of Grand Manan and creates upwelling, attracting fishies and whales alike. Within 10 minutes of being on the boat we saw our first whale--a minke!!! For the whole time we were sighting minkes all around us, mostly far off but some right up close! They seemed to be just surfacing to breathe but it was AWESOME. My first whale of whale camp!!!!!! Minkes are about 30 foot long baleen whales with white spots on their pectoral fins (MINKE MITTENS). For comparison, finbacks (the 2nd largest animal in the world, which also live in the Bay of Fundy) get to be around 80 feet long, so the whales we were seeing weren't huge, but still amazing. I've heard that the whale watches just get better as the summer goes on, so I can't wait for my next one! We also saw 3 bald eagles on shore, lots of harbor porpoises, grey seals, and black guillemots!! And no one got sea sick, yay!

Dorsal fin of a minke!

Today was a rainy cold windy mess outside. Just awful weather this week. Anyways, we had a lot of things scheduled that got moved around or cancelled due to the weather. I was supposed to be on the Day's Catch going to Machias Island to see PUFFINS this morning, but it was actually down-pouring so it got cancelled. Instead I tagged along on the culture and fisheries lesson and learned all about the old smoked herring industry on the island, the modern salmon fishery and lots more. FUN! Except all the kids were wet and chilled. SO at lunch we decided to nix the geology hike at Flock of Sheep for fear that we would all get hypothermia. We went to the Grand Manan Museum instead and learned about history, boats, geology, and birds! The kids enjoyed it and were so glad to be indoors. For the last 2 hours of the day we went to Pettes Cove and did an abbreviated geo lesson. Pettes Cove has some of the BEST rocks and seaglass on the island and so we just let the kids do a lot of exploring for part of the lesson. I found so much amazing seaglass including TWO purple pieces, three ice-blue pieces, and lots of brown green and clear. The seaglass gods were certainly smiling upon me today. I also found some really great rocks and so did the kids. It was a great note to end on after all the rain and unpleasantness.

In the museum we learned that this is what a lighthouse light really looks like!! So COOL

Old wooden buoys in the museum

Gifts from the sea to me :)

SO upcoming this week is possibly a puffin trip, possibly another whale trip, a bog lesson, a tidepooling lesson, and then going to spend the weekend with Jake and his family in the Adirondacks!! So excited so excited.

I need to go to bed for travel day. Sorry for the poor writing quality!

HELLO! It is 11:12 PM and I have to get up in about 6 hours to start travel day. OH THE JOY. Me and 3 other staff members are driving our 15-passenger vans across the ferry, across the border, and 3 hours into BANGOR, MAINE tomorrow to drop off the week 1 kids and pick up new ones! It is going to be an extremely long day but hopefully it will be fun and exciting. I'll atleast be back in the US for a few hours! We stay overnight in a hotel with the kids, then get up super early the next morning and drive back, cross the border, and ferry on over to Grand Manan to start week 2. It will be really really really tiring but then we get the next day off. So as long as I can make it til then, it'll be grand!

I'm not scheduled to be on any whale boats again this week, but hopefully things switch around so that I can finally see one! or four! At the campfire tonight all that the kids were talking about was how life-changing and awe-inspiring the breaching humpbacks were...and I sat in the corner and stewed in my jealousy. BUT. Eventually it will happen. I mean...its Whale Camp.

Rewind. Ok so after Tuesday was Wednesday. In the morning I taught my TIDEPOOL ECOLOGY lesson! It was amazing! We walked down to Red Point Beach and brought buckets and identification guides and just got to tidepool for about an hour. After that, we did my activity that I came up with during curriculum developement the day before called TidepoolOlypmics!! It. Was. Great. Basically each of the kids got to be one of the creatures in the tidepools, ex starfish or barnacle. There were four challenges, and in each one they either had an advantage or disadvantage that related to how they survived in the intertidal zone. It was really fun and basically taught them about how different animals have different adaptations to the zones they live in-- high, mid or low intertidal. Plus all of the staff that was with me said it was really great...so hurray! Anyways after that we talked about more sciency stuff like classification and zonation and got to look through their buckets to see what they found. It was awesome. After that I had another afternoon of curriculum development and basically spent it reading about whales. Highly enjoyable.

Thursday was my day off. I slept in and did not go to breakfast at 8AM. It was great. Then I took a journey on my own to the little bakeries and gift shops around the island and got an amazing chocolate croissant, a cinnamon sugar bagel, and a really cute Grand Manan shirt. I got back for lunch and then hung out with the ORDs (who are off in the day-time while kids are out on trips with the other ESIs). We went to Thrifty's, the island thrift store, where I got Levi's denim shorts and two awesome t-shirts for $3. What a steal. We also made our galaxy tank tops that we bought last week. Basically its a black tank top with bleach sprayed on...they were awesome. The day was a lot of fun and I got to explore and hang out with staff and buy some funky things.

AHH ok so today we had a staff meeting to talk about travel day and then took the 2-weekers on a trip to White Head Island and did the Indiana Jones hike with them. It was cold and rainy but not til the end, so it was pretty fun and they all seemed to have a good time. Then tonight was a campfire--indoors style because it had been raining all day. The staff did this amazing skit called Occupations, which was basically like "Proud to Be" that we used to do at Calumet campfires, and it was so funny I had such a great time. At the end, we passed around the "talking stick" and each of the kids said what was on their minds--we got so many kids who had changed while they were there or gotten so much more than they expected. One kid talked about how he is bullied at school and how he loved that everyone was so nice here. It was amazing. CAMP IS THE BEST. CAMPPPPP!!!!

Ok--need to go to bed now so I don't die on the road tomorrow. PICTURES LATERRR

First week of program!

AH! So the kids are here, they got here Sunday afternoon, and they are pretty awesome. There is a school group here from DC as well as 11 other campers. Only one of them is a returner, so most of them have never been here which is so cool.

Sunday afternoon we gave them the orientation at Swallowtail lighthouse and they had a bunch of fun even though it was frigid and windy. Then they came back to camp with us and got a site orientation, dinner, and pretty much unpacked and went to bed. It was very weird for me though, because at Calumet I was on from the second the kids got there to the second they fell asleep. Here, I barely did anything and it was all on the ORDs. Not complaining. More free time for me!

Monday we all got up nice and early for a whale watch aboard the Day's Catch!! I was so excited. SOOOOO excited. I took half a dramamine before going and THANK GOD because about 45 minutes into the boat ride, half of the people onboard were throwing up over the side. It was really foggy, and apparently the lack of a horizon line makes you really sick on boats. I was feeling a tiny bit weird, but literally WILLED myself to feel good because I wanted to see whales so bad. We saw two harbor seals and a harbor porpoise, but NO WHALES. I was pretty sad. It was the first boat trip of the season, though, so no one knew where the whales were yet. Ohhhh well. I will go again next week. The group is going out again tomorrow and Thursday whale watching, but I will be on campus doing curriculum development and having my day off. But I'm keeping my hopes high for next week! Hundreds of whales. I just know it. Anyways, after we got back to land everyone was so happy to be back on solid ground that it didn't really matter. Later in the day I taught my first lesson!!! It was about tides and the Bay of Fundy and why they are so extreme here (up to 54 vertical feet between low and high tide!!) which went pretty well. After dinner the ESIs are off of program, have a meeting as a staff, and then plan for tomorrow and go to bed. So different from the "camp" that I'm used to, but in a great way.

Today I taught a stream & pond lesson with two other ESIs down at Dark Harbor. The stream is really great for walking along and we had a lot of fun. We did some water quality tests with the kids, explained what a watershed is, had some boat races and the kids just explored. I've been in a group with the non-school group all week and they are sooo much fun. After we finished our lesson and ate lunch at the Anchorage, everyone went on the puffin boat and I came back here to do curriculum development. I came up with a Tide Pool Olympics activity that is pretty cool, and I'm teaching it tomorrow with my boss! Yay me! We're also collecting a bunch of tidal creatures and bringing them back to the camp and setting up an aquarium. I am so excited. I loooove stuff like that. I could literally spend all day finding thing at the tide pools.  YAHOO!


Other random facts:
My seaglass collection (and rock collection) is growing. There are beautiful lupines everywhere. Pheasants live outside and sound like roosters doing a half-crow. Coffee is now a twice a day essential.

i sure do.

Dark Harbor Stream

I LOVE BUGS. go go iphone camera.

Staff Training

Well. I've been here on Grand Manan Island in New Brunswick for three full days now. Can that be right? We have done so much in these past few days and I've learned so many new things that it feels like a week atleast. The kids come tomorrow afternoon so then the real fun starts--but here's what I've done so far!

Wednesday night I finally arrived around 11pm after a 6 hour red-eye flight, 7 hour drive, and 1.5 hour ferry. Kindof surprised I made it, actually. Anyways, I stopped into the office and met two of our staff trainers who welcomed me and directed me to the staff house. When I walked in I found all of the staff (all 6 of them) waiting up to meet me, which was really sweet. They were all really excited to meet me and helped me get all my stuff into the house. The 5 environmental science instructors (ESIs) live in the staff house, which is basically this cute little old cottage that's kindof leaning to one side. Its very cozy and filled to the brim with books on marine mammals, insects, birds, plants, and any other natural thing you can find on the island. The two dorm instructors (ORDs) live in the girls and boys dorm buildings right next door. SOOO after getting in, I unpacked a little bit and fell asleep.

Each day that I hadn't been at staff training, the instructors had been taking turns giving full lesson plans to the rest of us (who played the role of campers). Today, two ESIs were teaching us about the bog environment, so after breakfast we piled in one of the three 15-passenger vans and drove to the bog. I learned so much I never knew about bogs--like how the tannins from the roots of the plants leach out and make the water in them acidic, which doesn't allow for decomposition. Layers just keep piling on top of the old plants and this is how the bog grows. Dead bodies from thousands of years ago that had been sacrificed to the bogs in Europe (for spiritual / mythical reasons) had actually been preserved by the acidic environment and found recently. Pretty crazy. Also saw some cool carnivorous plants like the pitcher plant and sundew. Who knew bogs were actually interesting?

After that lesson, we did a geology lesson at Flock of Sheep where, long story short, we saw some really cool columnar basalt, learned how the island was formed, and brushed up on our knowledge of the rock cycle. YEAH GEOLOGY.

columnar basalt. woah.

That night we all watched a horror movie called Bleeders...filmed and set in Grand Manan about flesh-eating inbreds that inhabit underground tunnels on the island. Actually more like a comedy. It was awesome.

Friday we set out on the ferry to White Head Island (named for its sparkling quartz cliffs), about a 30 minute ferry ride from GMI. We did a forest lesson to start off, ate lunch at Pebble Beach (where I found some really cool conglomerate rocks and seaglass) and headed to the Indiana Jones hike!! It was a really neat hike between canyon-like rock formations. Beautiful plants everywhere and a very fun hike (which is saying something. I don't hike.) To end the day, we watched the sunset at Southwest Head lighthouse. It was most beautiful place I had seen yet...the cliffs were breathtaking and we were having fun taking pictures. There's a jumping picture of all of us that I need to get my hands on...

Indiana Jones hike on White Head.

View from Southwest Head.

Anyways, today we were basically just prepping for the kids to come tomorrow. I have so much left to learn and feel a little unprepared, but I think it'll be fine. MY FIRST WHALE WATCH IS MONDAY MORNING. I am so excited. Bring on the humpbacks baby.