day: 6

the first saturday. slept in til 10 am, showered, ate banana bread, an apple, and orange juice for breakfast. YUMM-O! then studied tree identification until around 3 pm, when one of the girls and i went on a nature walk! we saw lots of snow and had fun trying to identify the trees we saw! there's something so strange about itasca--as cool as it is: actually SEEING the wildlife is an extremely rare occurrence. i see more deer at home, and MANY more birds. i've only seen (maybe) 5 birds the entire time i've been here. the only indicators of life in this park: poop and tracks. our professor found wolf poop outside his cabin! he put it in the lab freezer. he also found a dead grouse...he put that in his cabin freezer (UGH, SICK! GROSS! things that DON'T belong in a home freezer!). anyway, then we came back and had pizza with the girls and one of the guys--the other guys took a day trip farther north to go ice fishing (one of the guys has a car and another guy has a relative whose house they are taking over for the night). then i studied some more, worked on the zooplankton research proposal (i'm still stuck on how to preserve the zooplankton. i can't use a formalin/glucose solution because apparently formalin is a carcinogen...hmm...), watched 'snow white' while i studied tree identifications, read the three letters i got (thanks mom! thanks chrispy! thanks michael!), drank some water, and organized my stuff. tomorrow we're hiking to bohall lake (not everyone has skis, so i'll probably wear snowshoes)--it's about 4 miles there, 4 miles back. so...intense. apparently it's gorgeous, though! yup. that's it. sleep time! ps: thanks for posting a comment, mom and dad! AND gramma! i hope scrabble slam was awesome! OH! and thanks to mandi and mrs. easterling, too :) love you!!