Merry Christmas!

...goes a long way

So to catch you up, it's Tuesday and I leave Toolik Saturday morning on the "Dalton Express". Apparently though, it's not so express. Hopefully I'll make it to Fairbanks in time for my red-eye flight south towards Vegas! Lately we've just been doing more lake sampling and yesterday I got to work on my project at a lake called GTH 153. I've been helping my professor sample the outlets and when I get back to Greensboro and get the data from my samples back I will be interpreting data and putting together a paper and presentation on the nitrogen marker 15N and it's retention in beaded pools. I'm pretty excited and it will be a nice leeway into my another project that I will come up with later on with my professor. I've really been enjoying freshwater ecology and I'm thinking I'll take a look into seeing what interests me in that field...we'll see! This past Sunday I went on a hike with Jake, a naturalist here at camp. We went birding, saw a lot of loons, gulls, and other birds I can't remember and even marmots (huge ground squirrels in the mountain we climbed. We didn't climb to the top but got mostly there. Here are some pictures of my weekend and the amazing scenery.
All of these can be seen on the webalbum too! My time here is winding down, but there's a lot to do still. The work load has kind of gotten easier and the nights are full of fun things to do. Last night I played soccer for the second time since being here and I forgot how much fun that sport is! Tonight is a girls only sauna night with facials and chocolate. And on Friday we are celebrating Christmas in July with a secret santa gift swap.

A little bit of pictures

At Toolik Field Station some nights we get together and have a music overflow session with banjos, mandolins, saws, violins, flutes, guitars, and drums...and whatever else you want to play. I went to a music night one night and this is just one of the pictures from that night (there are 2 videos of songs on my Picasa webalbum, click the left hand link!) I think it's so cool how music unites people and even up here in Alaska music is being sung and people can connect no matter who they are or where they come from.
This is a shot from my hike to Jade mountain. It was such a gorgeous day and the lakes and hills here are amazing. How great are the works of the Lord's hand!
A cheesy tourist shot on top of Jade with a breath taking view!