i've always liked steinbeck and those old men whistling

wow. monterey is incredible! i mean the literal meaning of the word: unable to conceive or believe! i'm having so much fun! today was only our first day, but already it feels like so much has happened. this morning we met stuart, our professor; joel, our ethicist; and mike our chef. his food in amazing! stuart is very cool - he's laid back and interesting. while this class is called "natural history, marine biology, and research" the title is a "hoax" according to him. the research part and marine biology is really up to us, and the natural history is basically everything we observe around here. his goal for us is to try/learn something new. we have a research project due at the end of our two weeks, but it can be anything. anything we discover we can present in any way we want. he just wants to make sure we enjoy our time here and get something out of it. for their projects, one of our leaders told a story he'd written about his experiences here; the other did intrepretive yoga about the nature of monterey bay. this is so cool!

i don't know what i'm going to do yet, but i have some ideas. i'd really like to study some ecology, especially with the resources that are here. thursday we are getting a behind the scenes tour of the aquarium. there i will get to meet some neat aqaurists, and stuart said he could arrange for me to study with them if i want to. as part of this program we get free access to the aquarium any time we want! amazing!

tomorrow we will hike up the "elevator" a steep trail that trapses through every type of habitat from the coast up into the mountains. it should be fascinating and fun. i think that's kind of the theme for this seminar.

today after breakfast we toured the hopkins marine station. it has some beautiful views. i don't think i would get much studying done in the library overlooking the shore... then we ate lunch at our little cafe. it reminded me of lynn's paradise cafe in louisville. not quirky, but the food was similiar. next we had some free time to rest or explore. i wandered around cannary row. it was fun to look at the bay. while there i found a dip n dots shop! i didn't think they actually had stores, but there is one less than 10 minutes from my appartment!

my appartment is wonderful. it's a cute blue victorian house that has been renovated into four separate appartments. i lucked into the group of three and ended up with my own room! i love it! it's nice to have some privacy - even more than i got at home!

after the break we met with stuart to talk about our research projects, and he explained the details of doing anything we choose. mike fixed a delicious dinner. i got caught up talking to him about vegetarianism and food in general. it was a fun conversation, and i was glad to get on his good side (very important from what i have heard). earlier, during the break, i my roommates mentioned that we were going to here a guy talk about "play" so they were trying to figure out exactly what that was. it reminded me of a national geographic article bruce from the bee-sex seminar gave me when i was writing my pwr paper on comparing human and non-human animal behavior. it was fascinating. i tried to look up the article to show them, but i couldn't find a full version on line. i met our guest at dinner, only to discover that HE WROTE THAT ARTICLE! stanford is amazing. turns out he's a good friend of stuart's and he came to talk to us about the science of play. he gave a little talk after dinner and we discussed. it was fascinating. exactly the kind of thing i want to study. turned out to be a pretty amazing night.

after this incredible day, i must get some sleep to prepare for another one tomorrow. it feels like i have been here doing fun stuff and getting to know these people much more than a day. i'm glad i still have two and a half weeks of this to enjoy!

i'll be updated pictures pretty frequently on my facebook album: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2087172&l=cf6c8&id=220245