I got back from my trip last Friday! It was much fun, although I was surrounded by Warnell grad students for the most part. The people on this trip were all much older than me but some of them acted so immature. Seriously many of their attitudes were horrible...but that was the only negative to this trip. My instructors were great and Ichuaway( the place I went to) is so incredibly beautiful and isolated. Everything I did was something completely new. We did prescribed burning( 170 acres of longleaf pine ecosystem that we set on fiiiire!), set traps, did random scoping of gopher tortoise burrows and woodpecker cavities. Sedated and took blood samples from racoons. Went to this really cool bat cave and mist netted for them.Mucked through this wetland looking for frogs and ran into a gator(hopefully there will be a picture of me holding it soon!). I did a necropsy on a bobcat all by myself! I also rode a few tractors, used a chainsaw, shot a few guns(including a blow gun and a dart gun)! I'm not a city girl anymore! Hahaha. But, anyways it sort of made me appreciate the ecology major, though. The attitude and perspective of the Forestry/Management is so different from the idea of conservation ecologically. Thank god I'm an ecologist.

But I'm back in Athens now! YAY! My first day of work today was really nice. Its nice to have the independence(I'm doing a project in the Altizer Lab). And Athens is nice and quiet, and I'm looking forward to the rest of the summer. Sorry there are no pics, but when I get some, I'll post for sure!

Love love,

And congratulations Amazing Student Brian Watts!