Said it once, will say it again: Blogger.com can be annoyingly unreliable. As when it eats a post that you’ve just spent the last 20 minutes typing. Let me try once more, in short form.


What I really want now more than anything is to spend the next seven weeks as restfully as I possibly can. I realize that in Bermuda I was far more galvanized than usual in terms of going out and doing things, but now I think I could happily spend the time till graduation reading, doing some writing, studying occasionally and watching illegally downloaded movies. My working hypothesis places the blame for this ennui firmly on the fact that I’m back in mainland United States, the great melting point of whatever, although it could be the fact that the people who have joined us are hillbillies (and one sarcastic Belgian).

Whatever the case, we spent yesterday being oriented (does anyone else intensely dislike verbifying the word “orientation”?) and introduced to our professors. I have Kirby-Smith for Marine Ecology, Lisa Campbell for International Conservation and Development, and someone Cohen for a seminar titled “Light and Life” (which sends “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” muzak buzzing through my head every time it is spoken). Everyone on the staff here is mildly eccentric, having contracted what I suppose is the island’s version of cabin fever. Dan Rittschoff, in particular, is quite mad – he does part of his research in Singapore and teaches a lab class: Sensory Physiology of Marine Animals. I sat in on his lecture today and was amused by the fact that he brought along three bottles of Newater from his latest excursion (never thought I’d see one of those in Beaufort, NC). He shared it around (mild ‘coconutty’ aftertaste!) and we had our little moment of amusement before he explained the joke and launched into a highly entertaining discussion of steroid chemistry and water filtration in Singapore’s water processing plants. What this had to do with marine animals -- no idea. They have just gone out to watch the mating behavior of gastropods on Carrot Beach.