mostly I talk about food
I provide you all with highlights describing my first week at the Wasatch-Uinta Field Camp in Park City, Utah. If I've sent you an email then some of this will be redundant.
- We have to pee outside. I actually "popped a squat"
- I am eating a lot more potato than usual.
- We're staying at this ski lodge type place called the Chateau Apres which is an awesome name.
- Park City, which has blown up as a tourist area especially since the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake (which is about thirty minutes away) is full out outdoor supply shops and everyday I see tons of people biking and at least one mountain biking (which I think it scary) and a lot of people have second homes out here so it is a very different type of city than I'm used to.
- There is ice cream for desert every night.
- We have lots of homework that we pretty much have to work on from time we get in to the time we go to bed. I did laundry the other day and had to scramble to get my work in on time.
- I also eat a lot of tuna sandwiches.
- I'm 85% certain that field work is not my thing. I'll give it another week or two but right now I long for that freezing room with the finicky SEM. Why didn't anyone ever tell me that only outdoorsy people major in geology. These are people who shop at REI and want Keen hiking sandals and want to go hiking and visit national parks on their days off and love camping and aren't attached to flush toilets. Enh, I'm overgeneralizing I know but it is a bit like being in another world for me.
- One guy here is riling up all the vegetarians and vegans because the menu here provides them with salad (lettuce), various frozen and canned vegetables, and bread or potatoes. I don't know much about nutrition for vegetarians but that doesn't seem very balanced to me. He is very intense militant and also highly odd so sadly not the best leader for their cause. I do hope something will be done though.
- Utah has all sorts of drinking laws which I never knew about before which make it harder and more expensive for the kids here to get drunk. I'm glad this doesn't affect me.
- I have to finish off my half gallon of soy milk really soon or it will go bad. I'll be peeing all afternoon! It was really funny this morning when I reached out the window and pulled in a carton of Silk. I should explain, we have permission to use the fridge so I bought some but the kitchen is locked when the owners are gone. Isn't too much soy bad for you?
- I haven't been keeping up with qwantz.
- Oh a few days ago I uncovered a scorpion. They look kind of gross up close. We also come across a lot of dead animals, mostly deer, in various states of decay. Two people already have skulls one one guy (the intense weird one who, I should add, is quite nice and can be interesting to talk to) is collected veterbrae and jaws and shells (from mountain snails which I've never heard of) to make dream catchers). However, my best animal encounter is yesterday when I was really upset in the field (it was all very embarrassing) and Marshak made me sit down-- three feet away from a bush that was shading a rattlesnake. It rattled and curled up into attack position (okay I don't know what rattlesnake attack position is but I thought it was menacing) and looked at us and we had to slowly back away and I wasn't even scared because I was already upset so the threat of a snakebite didn't bother me. I would say that it the one thing that has happened that I actually think is cool even though it was unpleasant and dangerous at the time. The best part is that for the rest of the day whenever the wind blew through scrub or the grasshoppers chirped (is that what you call it, chirping?) I thought it was rattling.
Well, I guess that's all until next Saturday which I believe is our next day off or earlier if I get my work done and borrow someone's computer or walk to the library (which is only across the street!).