Day 2

Today the food bell rang at 7. Because there are basically not walls between our rooms, I woke up to every. single. alarm that people had set beforehand. It's going to be a bit of an adjustment from waking up at 11 every day, but I'm looking forward to it. Maybe I'll even start waking up earlier than everyone so that I don't have to be woken up over and over. Genius, right?

Breakfast this morning was biscuits and gravy. It's going to be nice to not have to worry about making food for a while. And it's all already paid for! One less thing to be concerned about. We eat with the U of O students that are here (there's about 20). Apparently the groups are being a lot friendlier with each other this year than they were last year. I'm glad we're all buddies, but it's kinda a culture shock to be around that kind of language and that amount of piercings again.

At 8 a.m. lecture starts, and it goes till noon. The chairs are hard and uncomfortable, the classroom is cold, and Dr. B is fantastic. It's great to have a class without Annoying Guy (if you don't know about him, don't worry, you don't want to), and I think the class is slowly learning how to participate in lecture. I'm crazy excited for the journal that we're making for the Ecology class - I totally bought some marine life scrapbooking stickers at Walmart on my run there today. Also, in lecture, I learned my new address(es). So, for whoever cares:

Angela Despain
C/O Dr. Braithwaite
Oregon Institute of Marine Biology
P.O. Box 5389
Charleston, OR

^^For any letters / mail

For PACKAGES [in case someone wants to send me cookies ;)], things need to be sent to:

Angela Despain
C/O Dr. Braithwaite
Oregon Institute of Marine Biology
63466 Boat Basin Road
Charleston, OR 97420

That's also the actual physical address of the place I'm staying, if anyone wants to swing by.

However, and this is important ALL MAIL TO ME NEEDS TO BE SENT BY THE FIRST WEEK OF JUNE. If you're mailing me after that, please do so to my home in Mosier, or else I won't get the mail, as I'm leaving here on June 16th:

Angela Despain
P.O. Box 460
Mosier, OR 97040

Alright, now that that's out of the way....

After lecture we had lunch (chicken noodle soup and sandwiches) and then moved on to our afternoon block. Lecture goes from 8-12, then we have a lab/more active learning block from 1-5. 8 hours a day, 6 days a week. I don't know how we're going to manage to fill all that time, but I'm excited to find out.

Today we were assigned our hip boots.
As I'm sure you can tell, they're called hip boots because they are so hip.

We also took a tour of the campus, and the woods behind it. It's your typical Oregon rainforest.
I love it. It smells great, like Camp Arrowhead or the backwoods of Vancouver. I live in an Eden. There's also a creek running through campus and into the woods, full of poisonous newts. The best part of the tour, though, was by far the library.


Check it out! Books about NOTHING but marine mammals! Also, the "Periodic Table of Fish". It's this whole building full of books about marine life and nothing but! I plan to spend lots of time in there this semester. There's journals and research and just tome after tome of FANTASTIC stuff! AAAAaaaaaahhh!!!!

We stopped by Dr. B's cottage (one of a group of small houses on campus reserved for the professors) on the way back, and met Sister B. She's making an effort to get to know everyone's names, and she's really down to earth and helpful, which balances out her husband's slightly off-in-the-clouds disposition. They're great together.

I think we're going to head to the beach and play soccer now. Hasta luego!