I didn't get around to writing a post yesterday because
1. I was too busy working on my AWESOME JINS paper
2. I listened to a lecture on ESL in our FABULOUS ENVS class
3. I participated in our FANTASTIC Bio Lab
4. I attended the STUPENDOUS potluck at Chad's house
(I am using lots of adjective here because I am not supposed to use in the VERY FIRST LAB REPORT I HAVE EVER WRITTEN that I will be writing soon/eventually.)(Also I am hyper because I didn't get a lot of sleep last night so I am trying to keep myself awake.)(And I do not use caffeine so I cannot rely on that to help me stay awake.)
Yesterday is pretty much outlined in the list above, but those who would like more detail keep reading.
1. My JINS paper is not that good. But I did work on it because I am an overachiever and I work ahead like that.
2. Dr. Sally Cook came to talk to our class about the challenges of ESL (english as a second language) teaching. I was surprised about how little Spanish she said we would need to know in order to interact with the kids at the school. Even though they don't know a lot (if any) English at this point, if they know that we know Spanish, they will use it as a crutch and not learn as much. Looking back at my experience learning Spanish, I can understand how that would happen. She also talked about how after a couple of weeks working with a student, we may notice a backslide in their learning. She said that is normal, and I think that is something that should be told to high school Spanish teachers...
3. Lab was way more fun yesterday then it was the first time we did it. The procedure was similar (read exactly the same) as last time so we all knew what we were doing. Since we all knew what was going on, we were able to talk a lot more which was fun because I got to know the people in that class a lot better. We shared stories about high school, college and mutual acquaintances. I enjoy Bio Lab and Lecture more than the other classes because it is so small (we have 5 people). It makes group work really easy, and everything is laid back.
4. We had a potluck last night so we could get to know everyone better. Fantastic idea. It was so much fun, and it was great to interact with people outside of the classroom. The conversations varied from coolest places we have been (which included Italy, Spain, Ireland, Israel etc.), pop culture (Avatar, South Park, blogging and facebook) to ants mating (apparently all ants mate while flying. Betcha didn't know that. Unless you are Will Petry.) We also tried to guess Marc and Chad's ages. Someone guessed 55 for Marc and Chad just laughed, so I'm pretty sure they were wrong. (I checked facebook and he graduated from high school in 1980, which makes him about 47. (Chad is 37, if I remember correctly, if anyone wanted to know.) Eventually numbers dwindled down until there were about 10 of us left. Then Chad started to tell us about times he was bitten by things like black widow spiders and 14 ft. long snakes. Yep, definitely an interesting evening.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
So I could be working on an Essay...
Or I could update my blog.
Yesterday, Angie and I met with Marc to finalize our idea for our project and iron out details of asking for permission to work on the dig/use images from the Archeological Park etc. It was a productive meeting, and I feel like I have a much better idea of what our project actually is and who will benefit. I had been a little confused about the logistics of who controlled what at the site where we are working. Apparently at this park there is a museum and an already excavated site that are open for the public. Over to the side of the park, there is a NatGeo funded dig. NatGeo is extremely jealous of the information it gathers so the finds from the dig are going to be pretty hush-hush until they are ready to publish. The pamphlet that Angie and I are putting together will only include information from the museum.
That evening I met with my Bio class (all five of us) to design a lab for Wednesday. We are comparing tyrosinase and DOPA reaction rates in Apples, Bananas and Avocados at room temperature and kept cool. Yep. That will be lab...
Bio lecture was pretty interesting this morning. We learned about cowbirds, an invasive species of bird that takes over the nests of other birds, knocks the original eggs out of the nest and replaces them with their eggs. Then the other bird parents end up raising the cowbirds young as their own. The study we were looking at involved warblers, I want to say. They were 1/2 the size of the cowbirds, so they were not able to keep up with the nutrient demand of the cowbird and their own health. There population was declining so some biologist did some biological stuff and fixed the problem (if you want technical details, let me know, and I will get those to you).
In History/JINS we finished up the discipline presentations. Again, it was cool to see what other people are studying, why and how. We also managed to waste quite a bit of time talking about our blogs and finals. I think there's a possibility we're going to try to publish a book about this trip as a class, but I don't know if that was actually decided. We'll see...
In other news, I got a very early (2 weeks early) birthday present today. My friend Tony sent me a Yale shoot glass :). I was pretty excited because I bought him a Truman shot glass for his 21st birthday in September and then realized I didn't actually own a shot glass myself. But now I do, and it is prestigious. Also, we are having a potluck tomorrow to get to know each other a little better. That will be fun.
Blast, I am now out of stuff to say so it is off to work on my scintillating essay.
Yesterday, Angie and I met with Marc to finalize our idea for our project and iron out details of asking for permission to work on the dig/use images from the Archeological Park etc. It was a productive meeting, and I feel like I have a much better idea of what our project actually is and who will benefit. I had been a little confused about the logistics of who controlled what at the site where we are working. Apparently at this park there is a museum and an already excavated site that are open for the public. Over to the side of the park, there is a NatGeo funded dig. NatGeo is extremely jealous of the information it gathers so the finds from the dig are going to be pretty hush-hush until they are ready to publish. The pamphlet that Angie and I are putting together will only include information from the museum.
That evening I met with my Bio class (all five of us) to design a lab for Wednesday. We are comparing tyrosinase and DOPA reaction rates in Apples, Bananas and Avocados at room temperature and kept cool. Yep. That will be lab...
Bio lecture was pretty interesting this morning. We learned about cowbirds, an invasive species of bird that takes over the nests of other birds, knocks the original eggs out of the nest and replaces them with their eggs. Then the other bird parents end up raising the cowbirds young as their own. The study we were looking at involved warblers, I want to say. They were 1/2 the size of the cowbirds, so they were not able to keep up with the nutrient demand of the cowbird and their own health. There population was declining so some biologist did some biological stuff and fixed the problem (if you want technical details, let me know, and I will get those to you).
In History/JINS we finished up the discipline presentations. Again, it was cool to see what other people are studying, why and how. We also managed to waste quite a bit of time talking about our blogs and finals. I think there's a possibility we're going to try to publish a book about this trip as a class, but I don't know if that was actually decided. We'll see...
In other news, I got a very early (2 weeks early) birthday present today. My friend Tony sent me a Yale shoot glass :). I was pretty excited because I bought him a Truman shot glass for his 21st birthday in September and then realized I didn't actually own a shot glass myself. But now I do, and it is prestigious. Also, we are having a potluck tomorrow to get to know each other a little better. That will be fun.
Blast, I am now out of stuff to say so it is off to work on my scintillating essay.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Sunday, January 24, 2010
I love four day weekends
So, I had another 4 day weekend this week. It was lovely. It is so nice not to stress about stuff on Sunday night. On the other hand, I have never hated Tuesday mornings this much before.
This weekend was pretty productive. Not as much as I would have hoped, but that is life. Friday, Angie and I met with my friend Megan to see how University Publications could help us with our projects. They gave us some really good tips about asking for permission about using images. Really important and not something I would have thought of. My plan for Saturday was to read the articles for JINS, but I could not motivate myself to do that so I worked on my Portfolio for graduation instead. Hopefully, I will get around to reading tomorrow…
I’ve been thinking about this trip a lot recently, more specifically how this trip is going to have such a different focus from other trips I have been on. Most of the time when I travel, there is a religious aspect to the trip somewhere. My travel in the U.S. has been with my youth group as we participate in service work camps. When I went to Costa Rica I was with a group of people from a Catholic high school. And when I was in Israel, well it was Israel. Religion is kinda big there. And everyone in our group except one was a Christian. This trip will definitely have a different flavor since religion is not really a focus.
Haha, I feel a little silly for even writing a post like this. I am not really sure why I think this is important. Perhaps because I realize this trip is going to change me more than I can possibly imagine right now. It is a watershed event in my life you could say. Also, since religion has been such a huge part of my life right now, it is something I am highly conscious of. My view of the world is about to change astronomically, and I have no idea where my views on religion are going to land. My faith has always been important to me, but lately it has been harder and harder to hold on to, and I don’t want to lose it completely. Being out of the country on a trip with a secular focus, especially during Lent, will be challenging and formative. But then, that is what this trip is about :).
P.S. There is a lot more thought behind this post then I could put in right now. This topic will mostly likely be an ongoing theme throughout the semester as I learn to further appreciate the diversity in our world, and that I my way of viewing the world isn't always the best and may not even be right. (The last point is one of those things that I know, but don't really believe. This semester is going to be one huge reality check. A much need one ;))
This weekend was pretty productive. Not as much as I would have hoped, but that is life. Friday, Angie and I met with my friend Megan to see how University Publications could help us with our projects. They gave us some really good tips about asking for permission about using images. Really important and not something I would have thought of. My plan for Saturday was to read the articles for JINS, but I could not motivate myself to do that so I worked on my Portfolio for graduation instead. Hopefully, I will get around to reading tomorrow…
I’ve been thinking about this trip a lot recently, more specifically how this trip is going to have such a different focus from other trips I have been on. Most of the time when I travel, there is a religious aspect to the trip somewhere. My travel in the U.S. has been with my youth group as we participate in service work camps. When I went to Costa Rica I was with a group of people from a Catholic high school. And when I was in Israel, well it was Israel. Religion is kinda big there. And everyone in our group except one was a Christian. This trip will definitely have a different flavor since religion is not really a focus.
Haha, I feel a little silly for even writing a post like this. I am not really sure why I think this is important. Perhaps because I realize this trip is going to change me more than I can possibly imagine right now. It is a watershed event in my life you could say. Also, since religion has been such a huge part of my life right now, it is something I am highly conscious of. My view of the world is about to change astronomically, and I have no idea where my views on religion are going to land. My faith has always been important to me, but lately it has been harder and harder to hold on to, and I don’t want to lose it completely. Being out of the country on a trip with a secular focus, especially during Lent, will be challenging and formative. But then, that is what this trip is about :).
P.S. There is a lot more thought behind this post then I could put in right now. This topic will mostly likely be an ongoing theme throughout the semester as I learn to further appreciate the diversity in our world, and that I my way of viewing the world isn't always the best and may not even be right. (The last point is one of those things that I know, but don't really believe. This semester is going to be one huge reality check. A much need one ;))
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010
And now for something completely different
AN ISRAEL POST! This was a busy day...
June 6
I got up early to watch the sun rise over the lake that day. It was beautiful. I wish I had had/taken more opportunities to do that. There was a dog that followed me down the beach. I was under the impression he wanted food. I had no food to give him.
Dog and sunrise.
This was an intense day. We saw everything. And hiked Gamla. Crazy. First we went to a place called Jacob’s Ford. There was a crusader fortress which had been built by Baldwin against Saladin. Saladin had offered to pay Baldwin to stop building it, but he refused. Saladin attacked the fortress with great success. He sent sappers in to weaken the walls of the fortress and attacked from both the Northeast and West. He was able to conquer the fortress in less than 5 days – had he taken longer than that, reinforcements would have appeared. This was the place where Kate, one of the archeologists working on our dig, had done work for her Ph.D. It was a treasure trove for bodies apparently. They found many human skeletons and at least 4 horse skeletons. One of the human’s had a cache of 160 coins! That was a really big find.
One of the biggest problems archeologists face is funding. This particular site had an interesting patron for its first couple of years. One of the geological organization (I don’t know exactly which one) funded it for the first few seasons because this site provided important information about the tectonic shifts occurring in Israel. There are two plates in this area (the Jordan River is on the fault line if I recall correctly). The eastern plate is moving to the north while the western plate is staying still. This means that Israel has large earthquakes every 100 years or so (unless it was 300 years or so – not sure). In any case, they are waiting for another big one. This fort is important in studies done about that because it was built along the fault line so there is a crack in the building that indicates how far the plates have moved. Since we know the exact date the fort was built (at least someone does. I am not that someone), we can figure out exactly how far the plates have moved in that given time period. We had to walk through prickly weeds to see the crack. That was an adventure.
The crack caused by the fault line.
Jacob's Ford - this is me trying to avoid getting pricked by the weeds.
Our next stop was supposed to be Qatzrim, but it was closed for Shabbat. It was important for something or other. I don’t remember what.
Next we went to Gamla. Probably one of my favorite spots despite the large amount of walking we did. We walked the ancient trail; the one most tourists DON’T do. It was rocky and steep. We climbed down and then up and then some of us climbed down further to see an extra area. That turned out to be a bad idea on my part. I almost did not make it to the top. I had to stop and pause for a while because my heart rate got a little too high. It was not comfortable, and I did not want to pass out. The view was really pretty when I did finally get there though. (We made the mistake of putting Justin in the front while we were climbing this thing. We didn’t know then how fast he walked…)
The historical significance of Gamla is pretty interesting. It was a place where Jewish people lived to stay away from the Romans. It has great natural defenses (would work well against Zombies), but the Romans were able to overcome them. When the Romans came, the citizens of Gamla ran to the highest point and then threw themselves off the cliff rather than become slaves to the Romans. (Not the choice I would have made, but whatever. I’m not being chased by Romans.) On the way back, we took a break, and I asked Nate read the Hebrew prayer for seeing the beauty of nature. That was pretty cool.
Gamla
After we hiked, we at lunch there and Lauren and I talked with the bus driver. He was a Palestinian Christian (I felt like all the Palestinians I met were Christians. I wonder how that was skewing our vision of what was happening.) Lauren launched into a string of questions about the issues between the Israelis and the Palestinians which he did his best to answer. His children were in private school, a goal most parents seemed to have for their children.
After Gamla, when we were all very tired, we went to two more places that had lots of rocks, Banias and Tel Dan. They are the locations for the streams that feed the Jordan River. Banias is also known as Caesarea Philippi. There were lots of rocks, and Nate got scolded for something or other. I was really tired and hot. That is what I remember most from these places. And we just kept walking. We went to see the waterfall. That was cool except there were more rocks and more stairs, and I had a splinter.
After that we went to Tel Dan. That got to be a bit of a problem because we were on a tight schedule and some of us didn’t get started right away. We had a bit of a communication gap going on during this trip. I was hot, tired and in general had kind of a bad attitude. (I would like to state that everything we did at Tel Dan was completely legal and did not involve sneaking over boarders or Lebanon.) We also went to a scenic lookout via Syrian bunker. That was also pretty cool. THEN, we got to leave. Nate and I booked it out of there whilst everyone else took their time.
Tel Dan - notice the rocks...
After that we got back, and it was time for dinner. I finally met Haley (a girl who had come on Wednesday, but I didn’t get a change to meet until Saturday.) She is really cool. She went to a small, Christian college in Indiana and studied to be a worship leader (kind of like a DCE it sounds like). Pretty much doing what I thought I wanted to do at one point. She had been granted a fellowship to come dig and then she was spending sometime in Jerusalem and then her dad was coming up to visit. (I found out later her mom had died about 5 weeks before she left on this trip.)
That night was probably the best night I spent at the Kibbutz. We went down to the Sea as usual for drinks and conversation. Eventually a group of us ended up sitting in the Sea (on chairs with our feet in the water.) We started out listing our favorite memories from the first week of digging (Elizabeth and Nic were popular answers). Then we decided to have a bible study in which we went around the circle, said what our favorite bible passages were and why. Eventually it dwindled down to Nick, Tony, Nic, Lauren and I in the water and Johnny and Justin on the beach. Later still Nick, Johnny and Justin left. Then the real fun began.
Definitely the best conversation of my life. We talked about so many important things. We shared our struggles and our faith stories. I talked about things I haven’t shared with people all year. Mom’s surgery, all the people who died this year, the time God locked me into my dorm room. It was a liberating and healing experience to talk about God and his faithfulness with these people. I was absolutely not being judged nor was I judging. I was finally comfortable enough to embrace the vulnerability idea that the LSF girls had been harping on. I think being on the “Ocean of Freaken Galilee” with a full moon helped. It was so wonderful to see where these other people were on their faith journey. Tony had come with no expectations faith-wise. He was there as an academic. (This conversation was a pleasant surprise for him.) Nic, on the other hand, is about as far away from academics as you can get. He was there because he heard about the trip from Elizabeth during a Bible Study and “got the bug.” He sold his horse and his dog to get there (though he kept saying he was going to sell them anyway. He was thinking about moving to New Mexico so he may have been telling the truth. He was super humble though; hated talking about himself.) I don’t know what Lauren was expecting, but I know she took away a lot as well.
It was just an intense, overwhelming, but peaceful and calming, beautiful and wonderful time. We sang songs: worship songs, Christmas songs, children’s songs. It was awesome. There was a couple from Germany down there as well and we talked to time for a few minutes before leaving.
The conversation wasn’t completely serious. Nic did give Lauren tips for peeing outside. She actually did. I waited until we were in Jordan to make use of that information…
It was over all really cool. We were out until 1 a.m. and we had to be on the bus by 7 the next day. Yep.
June 6
I got up early to watch the sun rise over the lake that day. It was beautiful. I wish I had had/taken more opportunities to do that. There was a dog that followed me down the beach. I was under the impression he wanted food. I had no food to give him.
Dog and sunrise.
This was an intense day. We saw everything. And hiked Gamla. Crazy. First we went to a place called Jacob’s Ford. There was a crusader fortress which had been built by Baldwin against Saladin. Saladin had offered to pay Baldwin to stop building it, but he refused. Saladin attacked the fortress with great success. He sent sappers in to weaken the walls of the fortress and attacked from both the Northeast and West. He was able to conquer the fortress in less than 5 days – had he taken longer than that, reinforcements would have appeared. This was the place where Kate, one of the archeologists working on our dig, had done work for her Ph.D. It was a treasure trove for bodies apparently. They found many human skeletons and at least 4 horse skeletons. One of the human’s had a cache of 160 coins! That was a really big find.
One of the biggest problems archeologists face is funding. This particular site had an interesting patron for its first couple of years. One of the geological organization (I don’t know exactly which one) funded it for the first few seasons because this site provided important information about the tectonic shifts occurring in Israel. There are two plates in this area (the Jordan River is on the fault line if I recall correctly). The eastern plate is moving to the north while the western plate is staying still. This means that Israel has large earthquakes every 100 years or so (unless it was 300 years or so – not sure). In any case, they are waiting for another big one. This fort is important in studies done about that because it was built along the fault line so there is a crack in the building that indicates how far the plates have moved. Since we know the exact date the fort was built (at least someone does. I am not that someone), we can figure out exactly how far the plates have moved in that given time period. We had to walk through prickly weeds to see the crack. That was an adventure.
The crack caused by the fault line.
Jacob's Ford - this is me trying to avoid getting pricked by the weeds.
Our next stop was supposed to be Qatzrim, but it was closed for Shabbat. It was important for something or other. I don’t remember what.
Next we went to Gamla. Probably one of my favorite spots despite the large amount of walking we did. We walked the ancient trail; the one most tourists DON’T do. It was rocky and steep. We climbed down and then up and then some of us climbed down further to see an extra area. That turned out to be a bad idea on my part. I almost did not make it to the top. I had to stop and pause for a while because my heart rate got a little too high. It was not comfortable, and I did not want to pass out. The view was really pretty when I did finally get there though. (We made the mistake of putting Justin in the front while we were climbing this thing. We didn’t know then how fast he walked…)
The historical significance of Gamla is pretty interesting. It was a place where Jewish people lived to stay away from the Romans. It has great natural defenses (would work well against Zombies), but the Romans were able to overcome them. When the Romans came, the citizens of Gamla ran to the highest point and then threw themselves off the cliff rather than become slaves to the Romans. (Not the choice I would have made, but whatever. I’m not being chased by Romans.) On the way back, we took a break, and I asked Nate read the Hebrew prayer for seeing the beauty of nature. That was pretty cool.
Gamla
After we hiked, we at lunch there and Lauren and I talked with the bus driver. He was a Palestinian Christian (I felt like all the Palestinians I met were Christians. I wonder how that was skewing our vision of what was happening.) Lauren launched into a string of questions about the issues between the Israelis and the Palestinians which he did his best to answer. His children were in private school, a goal most parents seemed to have for their children.
After Gamla, when we were all very tired, we went to two more places that had lots of rocks, Banias and Tel Dan. They are the locations for the streams that feed the Jordan River. Banias is also known as Caesarea Philippi. There were lots of rocks, and Nate got scolded for something or other. I was really tired and hot. That is what I remember most from these places. And we just kept walking. We went to see the waterfall. That was cool except there were more rocks and more stairs, and I had a splinter.
After that we went to Tel Dan. That got to be a bit of a problem because we were on a tight schedule and some of us didn’t get started right away. We had a bit of a communication gap going on during this trip. I was hot, tired and in general had kind of a bad attitude. (I would like to state that everything we did at Tel Dan was completely legal and did not involve sneaking over boarders or Lebanon.) We also went to a scenic lookout via Syrian bunker. That was also pretty cool. THEN, we got to leave. Nate and I booked it out of there whilst everyone else took their time.
Tel Dan - notice the rocks...
After that we got back, and it was time for dinner. I finally met Haley (a girl who had come on Wednesday, but I didn’t get a change to meet until Saturday.) She is really cool. She went to a small, Christian college in Indiana and studied to be a worship leader (kind of like a DCE it sounds like). Pretty much doing what I thought I wanted to do at one point. She had been granted a fellowship to come dig and then she was spending sometime in Jerusalem and then her dad was coming up to visit. (I found out later her mom had died about 5 weeks before she left on this trip.)
That night was probably the best night I spent at the Kibbutz. We went down to the Sea as usual for drinks and conversation. Eventually a group of us ended up sitting in the Sea (on chairs with our feet in the water.) We started out listing our favorite memories from the first week of digging (Elizabeth and Nic were popular answers). Then we decided to have a bible study in which we went around the circle, said what our favorite bible passages were and why. Eventually it dwindled down to Nick, Tony, Nic, Lauren and I in the water and Johnny and Justin on the beach. Later still Nick, Johnny and Justin left. Then the real fun began.
Definitely the best conversation of my life. We talked about so many important things. We shared our struggles and our faith stories. I talked about things I haven’t shared with people all year. Mom’s surgery, all the people who died this year, the time God locked me into my dorm room. It was a liberating and healing experience to talk about God and his faithfulness with these people. I was absolutely not being judged nor was I judging. I was finally comfortable enough to embrace the vulnerability idea that the LSF girls had been harping on. I think being on the “Ocean of Freaken Galilee” with a full moon helped. It was so wonderful to see where these other people were on their faith journey. Tony had come with no expectations faith-wise. He was there as an academic. (This conversation was a pleasant surprise for him.) Nic, on the other hand, is about as far away from academics as you can get. He was there because he heard about the trip from Elizabeth during a Bible Study and “got the bug.” He sold his horse and his dog to get there (though he kept saying he was going to sell them anyway. He was thinking about moving to New Mexico so he may have been telling the truth. He was super humble though; hated talking about himself.) I don’t know what Lauren was expecting, but I know she took away a lot as well.
It was just an intense, overwhelming, but peaceful and calming, beautiful and wonderful time. We sang songs: worship songs, Christmas songs, children’s songs. It was awesome. There was a couple from Germany down there as well and we talked to time for a few minutes before leaving.
The conversation wasn’t completely serious. Nic did give Lauren tips for peeing outside. She actually did. I waited until we were in Jordan to make use of that information…
It was over all really cool. We were out until 1 a.m. and we had to be on the bus by 7 the next day. Yep.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Confessions of a Chronic Overachiever
So I am a huge overachiever, which in this case is resulting in daily blog updates and lots of extra reading for those who are following it. I highly doubt the daily updating will continue too much longer...
But for now you will have to suffer through it. Anyway, today in class we finally got to start going over the academic discipline powerpoints that we created a week ago. We got through 3 out of 7 and I have really enjoyed them so far. My group (history) went first. We tried to connect it to science, which we did by comparing writing a paper to using the scientific method (thanks sciencebuddies.org) to do an experiment. I loved the questions people asked us at the end; it indicated to me that everyone got what we were saying and could relate to what people in our field do. Two biology groups went after that, and again, it became really apparent that everyone going on this trip has the same outlook on learning and how to go about studying the world. The subjects, obviously are different, but each is fueled by desire to know what the world is like and why it is that way. We're all doing the same thing. We make an observation, we question it, test it, answer our question, and then move on to a new question/observation. I AM SO EXCITED TO GO TO PANAMA WITH THIS GROUP OF PEOPLE! Everyone seems so passionate about learning.
Some other observations I made from the biology presentations about how it is similar to history are: it was hard for people to pick one particular aspect of their field that was their 'favorite,' biology majors are as clueless about their futures/future occupations as history majors and stereotypes are as prevalent about that subject as about history. It was exciting to see other people's perspectives, and I am looking forward to the rest of the presentations.
But for now you will have to suffer through it. Anyway, today in class we finally got to start going over the academic discipline powerpoints that we created a week ago. We got through 3 out of 7 and I have really enjoyed them so far. My group (history) went first. We tried to connect it to science, which we did by comparing writing a paper to using the scientific method (thanks sciencebuddies.org) to do an experiment. I loved the questions people asked us at the end; it indicated to me that everyone got what we were saying and could relate to what people in our field do. Two biology groups went after that, and again, it became really apparent that everyone going on this trip has the same outlook on learning and how to go about studying the world. The subjects, obviously are different, but each is fueled by desire to know what the world is like and why it is that way. We're all doing the same thing. We make an observation, we question it, test it, answer our question, and then move on to a new question/observation. I AM SO EXCITED TO GO TO PANAMA WITH THIS GROUP OF PEOPLE! Everyone seems so passionate about learning.
Some other observations I made from the biology presentations about how it is similar to history are: it was hard for people to pick one particular aspect of their field that was their 'favorite,' biology majors are as clueless about their futures/future occupations as history majors and stereotypes are as prevalent about that subject as about history. It was exciting to see other people's perspectives, and I am looking forward to the rest of the presentations.
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