Playing catch up again

Time to catch up again from the past week! It's been pretty busy with end of the trip school work and trips. I continued to study ants on the mountain side to see what bait they preferred (Overall it was sugar water) We had Monday off, instead we went to volunteer and walk dogs at the only animal shelter on Santorini. The dogs get adopted out to people in Europe mostly. The city doesn't actually want to the shelter there though and its operating illegally because they won't give them a license. It was really interesting. Along with dogs of all sizes and walks of life, they had a few donkeys and mules and one horse. My dog was named Nevada and I wanted to bring her home. She had the brightest blue eyes I have ever seen on a dog. She also enjoyed swimming in the ocean.

After we finished the ant bait experiment, we went and tested soil at a winery. It was very hot and long work. At one point, testing the temperature at the soil surface, it read 114 degrees. Just a little sweltering outside I'd say. But after we finished, we got to have a wine tasting at the winery, which was much needed after digging in the dirt for three hours. 

I even saw a sow and her piglets. They were adorable and very curious about me.

Another big trip I had was on Wednesday, when my ecology group plus a few other people who hadn't gotten to go yet, went to a pottery place and threw a piece of pottery ourselves. The old man who taught us was hilarious, despite not knowing much English, and it is one of my favorite parts of the trip so far.

I made a little pitcher. I'm not sure what I'll use it for, but it's really cool. They're going to fire our pottery for us and give it to us before we leave.

On Thursday, we had out longest hike yet to the tallest spot on Santorini. It was exhausting but the view was amazing.

You can see the whole island from the top.

Then Yesterday, a group of 19 of us went to a neighboring island, Ios. We spent the night at a little hotel, of which there were goats outside of. Which made me very happy.

The beaches were beautiful and the waves were big enough to go body surfing in. (Not in this picture, which it from a different beach then the one we swam in) Needless to say, I spent a lot of time swimming the huge waves and getting bowled over by them. 

Then this afternoon, we took a ferry back to Santorini. We got a slow ferry this time and the boat was huge.

I must say that I really enjoy traveling by boat. If only I could get around Moorhead by boat! 

By this time next week, I will be back in Moorhead. It's a sad though because I'm not ready to leave yet. I have one lab report to write and a final test to take and then I'll be all done with class. On Thursday we're going to the volcano and having a bbq on it as our last feast. Then Friday we're packing up to leave Saturday morning.

Time to catch up for the past few days

What a busy past few days! We traveled all over the place, feasted, danced and swam a lot. I mean a lot. It started to get into typical Santorini heat here and it's been terrible For our past experiment, we have been looking at species diversity on large and small plants of the same size.

We would watch a plant and record the amount of bugs visiting it and then cut almost all of the flowers off of the big plant and out them on the small plants to see if that affected the amount of pollinators that visited. We even saw a turtle the second time we went up to record. 

Yurtle the turtle! And then we went on a terrifying hike up the mountain to visit an abandoned church. I had to become a goat to get up there. The paths were just big enough for a one person to walk at a time, often not even enough room for that.

Here's the side of the church we climbed to.

Conquered the mountain!

While we were there, we climbed into an old, dry cistern. It was huge. 

And Levi and I found a hallway clinging to the side of the cliff and decided to climb into that. It was really cool, with a beautiful view and little rooms off to the side. I even managed to get a giant thorn stuck under my finger nail while I was there.

On Friday, we had a field trip to a couple different archaeological sites, such as Ancient Thira. The buildings were still in great shape, some of them even went through a volcano.

These are from the first site that is on the mountain right behind our hotel. It was very cold and windy though and I forgot to bring my hoodie up with me. The second place got buried by ash and is kept in a building. 

The weekend consisted of feasting, dancing and swimming. And reading 160 pages of Darwin in one sitting. Over all a good weekend. Then yesterday my professor decided it was snorkeling day because it was so hot, so for two hours, I swam with the fishies. Today is data analysis and writing our second lab report! Not so fun. 

How many pictures of raindrops can you take?

Today was rainy almost all afternoon, which meant that I was finally spared from hiking up and down mountains for a day. Instead we discussed theories and talked about future homework. First lab report due Friday! When we breaked early after a downpour, I discovered that our door shutters were covered in raindrops, which made for perfect pictures. So, have some pictures!

Americans in Greece eating Chinese food.

Yesterday marked the beginning of our regular schedule for classes. We start out with Greek lessons and break for half an hour then my class has discussion and data checking, then an hour break for lunch. I decided to make pasta for lunch. It was really delicious actually. And I cooked in the smallest kitchen ever.

But it all worked out! and I had a wonderful lunch on the terrace. Then we went out into the field again to do the same experiment as the day before. This time, thankfully, we got a gentler slope that was full of grass and flowers, not thorns. 

And the view, of course, is wonderful.

Along the way we worked on our plant identification. So far I've been pretty god with my knowledge of plants, And I'm pretty confident that I can now live if stranded on a Greek island. We then had about a 45 minutes break before hiking, which meant sitting around the pool and listening to music. 

We hiked for about three hours to a church on the other side of the mountain, which meant walking all the way around the mountain. But it  was totally worth it.

The way down had plenty of places for pictures, Which meant that the walk back too quite awhile because we stopped so many times to take pictures.

 

The cats are all super sweet here too and I get the best picture of them. When my one roommate, Katie, and I got back, we found out Mandie had found a praying mantis in our room and trapped it under a wine glass until we could all see it. It was just a little fellow and once we got pictures, it was set free.

Katie and I decided to mix up our dinner and went out to one of the three Chinese places in Kamari. The little old lady was adorable and I decided that I really just want to be an old Asian lady. My hat makes me feel like a little Asian lady which makes me feel happy. Apparently we had a thunderstorm last night that I didn't even know about. Class wears me out so much every day. Today, we will hopefully get done early since we don't have hiking and then I'll be able to go swimming again while it's still warm.

Nothing like the beaches here!

e

Today was another tiring day. We started late because it's Sunday but we once again hiking up the sides of mountains. This time we were measuring biodiversity along a 30 meter tape. But that also meant getting the tape straight up the slope to measure... Which to say the least was very painful. The boys in our group volunteered to climb the slope of death and count the plants. Needless to say, they were very scratched up. Us girls also managed to get pretty scratched up just walking to the site. But since the boys had it worse, we decided to buy them ice cream in thanks. 

After we finished, it was time to relax on the beach with our ice cream. Nothing like sitting on the black sand beaches of Santorini!

It's Katie's birthday so later tonight we went out with her. Our whole group decided to throw her a surprise birthday party at a bar and it was wonderful. She never even knew what was happening. Tomorrow? More hiking and more beach! I'm beginning to see a pattern here...

In which I run into a rock and and almost a jellyfish

So started the first day of classes. Our morning started out with Greek lessons with Peter at the cliff jumping site for an hour. We learned how to say hello, thank you, your welcome, and help! Where is the toilet? Among other things. Then we broke off into our separate classes. Ecology class started off with selecting a spot and then recording everything in it in our field notebooks and coming up with questions about it. I found this wonderful weevil resting in a thistles in my section among other smaller bugs. We broke for lunch for an hour, which Kayla and I managed to get a jump off the cliff to cool off before class started again. This time, we climbed up old terraces that used to be gardens to halfway up the mountain it seemed. We were even walking on a path that was thousands of years old! Along the way, Laura, our professor, introduced us to many plants. I found out that I can get free food from the cliffs, such as leeks, thyme, and rosemary. I will be taking advantage of that later on. I also found out that almost every native Greek species of plant is terrifying. They are all covered in thorns, or their leaves are hard and thorn like. 

Needless to say, I got pretty scratched up on the walk. I also managed to run into a rock while grabbing a Caper bush flower and got a couple nice cuts on my leg. So far all my cuts and scratches are on one leg. Kinda odd. We finally made it to this special bush that really only grows on this section of the mountain an no where else. It's also very poisonous. We scrambled down the mountain side to go on another hike. Kayla and Jamie and I all went off road down the mountain.

We managed not to go rolling down the steep cliffs and prepared to hike back up a mountain. This time, we were headed to a church tucked in by a cave system. The stairs were terribly steep. Sure got my work out for the day in. but the little church was beautiful.

In the back of the cave was a little spring, which is probably fed from a pocket of water in the rock, not an actual fresh spring. There actually aren't any natural fresh springs on Santorini. The walk back down was just as hard as the walk up because you had to keep from stumbling down the mountain. 

After that, it was time to cool off and relax for a bit, which meant cliff jumping!

You can get a sense of just how clear the water is here. It's stunning. 

After I jumped a couple times, I decided to look at fish again. There were even more then the first day and the water was a little warmer as well. I was exploring under a rock and started to come back up, and to my great surprise and fright, I almost came up into a jellyfish! Thankfully I had looked up quick enough to avoid it. It was small and pinkish, rose in color with long stinger. And it was swimming where people had been jumping earlier, I can't believe no one hit it. Definitely was not expecting to see it! On the top of the cliff, because the water is so clear I was able to see it, and got a picture, though it's very hard to see it.

You can just make it out on the right side of the pictures. It's so crazy I almost swam into one. After supper, I was so tired I managed to pass out at nine thirty. Well, what to expect when I've been hiking up and down mountains all day?