mmmmm mud

at the beginning of the week we finished up mapping the trail we were working on last week, but we were hindered some by torrential downpours... it feels like its been grey and rainy forever. but! now its actually starting to clear up and hopefully it'll stay that way for awhile. the night after the big rain, it actually cleared up and you could see the incredibly snowy tops of mauna kea and mauna loa, snowier than we've ever seen them because of all the precipitation.


for the end of the week, we had some of our biogeochemistry class with our professor Lou. we worked more on taking soil gas measurements on a different transect than before, and took a bunch of soil and water samples. instead of everybody going everyday, only half of us went at a time, and worked on different areas of the transect. we took the highest elevation forest part, and it was bascially like being in jurassic park (i mean actually jurassic park was filmed in kauai so its not too farfetched) the big tree ferns make you feel like you're in a time zone way long ago. it's pretty rainy up there so basically the 'trail' was all mud and peat, up to the middle of our shins.



during our digging of soil pits, there was some inevitable mud throwing. i'm pretty sure i have a sign on my head that says 'target' because i always end up the muddiest, but everybody else got their share too. when i leaned into the very peaty soil pit to take a look, i actually ended up in the pit because lou and suzanne picked up my legs and threw me in. needless to say, it took about a half hour to wash it all off when we got home :)



over the weekend, we headed down into waipio valley, one of the valleys on the northeastern coast of the island. the northern part of the island's the oldest part, so its the most weathered and green. down in the valley, traditional hawaiian farming practices are still used, as in with taro. we spent the two days working in taro patches, weeding and preparing new patches, and since taro is grown in about 8 in of water, we got muddy yet again. it was great though because we got to wash off in the river. at night, we took spears and went out to the river to find ourselves some prawn. we came back with some pretty nice catches, as well as some pretty sweet bruises and cuts. it's seriiously like an entirely different world down there. because its such a deep valley, its very wet and its much like a jungle environment. many waterfalls run down the valley's sides, and there's a black sand beach at the end of the valley. it was incredibly beautiful and so refreshing to work down there. since we only have 2 four wheel drive cars, all of us students got to walk everywhere in the valley, and walk back up the wonderful 25% grade to the top.



right now, we're just chilling out on our free day and planning out what to get at the grocery store for the week. it's pretty sweet because we're no longer eating at a huge 15 person group , and we've split into groups of four to eat. my group cooks iin the cottage, which is great because we dont have to fight for space in the house kitchen. and we get to eat what we want. and somehow, we do a lot better with the food we get for our budget. brownie sundaes included. mmmm