TWO MORE DAYS!

I can hardly contain my excitement, we leave in TWO MORE DAYS! I've packed, unpacked, and repacked about 10 times now. I obsess constantly about the 40-pound weight limit for all my personal gear. I have no idea how I'm going to get everything on the packing list into my little bag and be sure it doesn't weigh more than 40 pounds. I'm sure I'm going to forget something really important, and there's nowhere on Andros to just pick up something that I've left. I've even started having dreams about forgetting certain vital undergarments and spending the whole week, well, without them. My husband is just about ready to give me the swirly of death.

I'm also a bit of a mess about leaving my family for a whole week. I used to work for a company that had yearly conferences, so they aren't really fazed about me being gone for a week. And since I've started school, I'm not quite as pivotal to the running of the household as I used to be. My hubby, John, has really taken over a lot of the responsibilities that I've carried. He shops for groceries, organizes the kids' chores, and does laundry! And all this in addition to working a very demanding full-time job.

Dr. Ballenger brought a couple of baskets that she purchased on Andros to class yesterday. They are really pretty, and I look forward to being able to watch the locals make them, and maybe buy one too! Here's a picture of the baskets:

The fabric that is on the sides is batik, and it is made on the island at a factory. Dr. Ballenger says we are going to tour the factory while we are there.

Today we were divided into groups for the projects we are going to do while we are on the island. We will all gather data for all projects, but then each group will be responsible for an individual project and analyzing the data. We are doing four projects: a fish project, a plant project, an invertebrate project, and a service project. The service project will be done by everyone. I am on the plant project team. Everyone was really eager to be on the invertebrate project because it involves hermit crabs. Then the next most popular project was the fish project. I didn't mind being on the plant team because it seemed like plants would hold still and be studied. I didn't want the team leaders of the plant team to feel like no one wanted to be on their team, and I feel like I know the least about plants and flowers, so I wanted to learn something new.

Our project involves the red mangroves on Andros. The guides have said that the red mangrove deals with the high salt content of the water that they grow in by sequestering all of the salt into one leaf and then sacrificing that leaf so that the rest of the plant has fresh water. This leaf turns yellow and then falls off. A mangrove tree will have one or two yellow leaves, so our project is about discovering whether this statement is true. Dr. Ballenger says that if the yellow leaf contains all of the salt that the plant extrudes, it should taste salty. When she broke a yellow leaf open and tasted it (yeah really!), it did not taste salty. So she thinks that it's possible that the roots of the mangrove have a high sugar content, higher than the salinity in the water that causes the water to move into the roots by osmosis, and exclude the salt from entering into the roots altogether. We won't be getting into the root system on this project, but we will be measuring the salinity of the yellow leaves of the mangrove and comparing it with green leaves immediately around it and some opposite. We did some trials today with some local plants to see if we could extract enough sap from the leaves of a similar plant to examine it with a refractrometer. The hope is that we will be familiar enough with the materials that we will be proficient once we get to the island. Here's a picture of our efforts from today:

We also did a little walkabout on the campus today to test our understanding of leaf configuration and also to be able to identify poison ivy. We found the offending vine snaking up a tree near LeNoir Hall, and everyone made sure they got a good look at it without touching it. We looked at different vines and trees and identified whether the leaf was simple or compound, and whether the arrangement was opposite or alternate. I haven't had a lot of experience with plants, I'm not a very outdoorsy-type. So all of this is new to me. But I am learning a lot. Here's some pictures from our walkabout:

 I am getting so excited about this trip! I only have to pick up a few more things to pack, and I think I might be able to stay under the 40 pound limit. Tomorrow is our last class before we leave!