It's all about Poop!

Three of us arrived in Halifax at the bright and early on Sunday morning from Boston. David and I recognized each other from Earthwatch, and we had some time, so we decided to hop the bus ($16 one-way) to Halifax. The day was sunny, breezy and warm, quite a lovely day to be walking along the water front. David even commented, "it feels like vacation!" as we ate lunch at a waterfront cafe. A stop at the map store yielded plenty of old maps to look at, and a peak in the Rum Cake Factory found David sampling different types of Rum delicacies (the chocolate rum cake was the best, he claimed). I found out that the sales clerk was also gluten-intolerant and immediately decided it was much worse for her than me - at least at my work there are only goodies some of the time!

We left the waterfront and hiked uphill to the city gardens, which were in full bloom: tulips, daffodils, grape hyacinths, all manner of bulbs were radiating color on all sides. Sadly we didn't have enough time to fully explore and we hoofed it back to the hotel to catch the shuttle back. Unfortunately although we arrived in time, it took us 10 minutes to realize that we were at the wrong hotel! Ooops, the shuttle only stops at the Harborview hotel when requested, and it stops at the Oceanfront hotel at 2:25. Little did we know. All we knew was that the hotel we had been dropped off at was called the Marriot. Where the harbourview/harbourfront bit on the schedule came in was a bit of a mystery to us. So we had to suck up the $55 cab ride back to the airport. However, it did give us a chuckle when the cab driver complained about how crazy the traffic was at the airport as we waited for two cars to move in front of us. I hope he never decides to become a cabbie in Boston!

We met half of the team in the airport and drove through the relatively flat land towards Cherry Hill. Michael sat in front with our intrepid PI, Chris, who only later told us about his propensity for setting vehicles on fire. This is Michael's 14th Earthwatch Expedition. Behind me in the 15-passenger van was Alice, from Scotland, who we are hoping will protect us from bears with her newly acquired TaeKwonDo skills. And in the back seat were Matthew and David, sharing stories and discussing life.

Passing beautiful scenery along the coast we cruised into the small town of Cherry Hill, where we were shown to our "cottages" which in reality are full-blown houses that could hold 12 volunteers, both PIs and a very large husky/shepard mix. Paul and his dad, RD (for Real Deal), who had driven up from New Jersey were already there. Tea and cookies were served in true British style by our PIs fresh off of their 6 years of leading teams in Wytham Woods in Oxford, England. Conversation spilled from climate change to automobiles. We were soon joined by Bruce, a writer for Backpacker Magazine, who joined us with notepad and pen in hand.

Dinner of pizza, salad and Super-8 cola was finished off my ice cream and frozen yogurt, the merits of each carefully considered.

A slideshow explaining all the possible risks (with photos of the most incredible poison ivy rash I've ever seen), which really didn't differ from what most of us encounter in everyday life - including: "please don't bump your head on the stairs" and "don't trip on uneven ground". Then we went over the carefully crafted schedule and learned that, really, everything has to do with poop. We'll be counting poop, looking for microbes in poop, watching poop decompose and even building a shelter to house a field pooper! Luckily, poop does not scare this group, especially innocuous herbivore poop, which is really nothing more than repackaged grasses.

They decided that it would be an early night, which worried me as it was already 10 PM, and, well, on a normal night, my roommate is already in bed and I'm feeling like I should be!

Matthew’s highlights of the day: conversation before dinner, talking with people who have similar interests, being in a group of 8-10 people who don’t know each other and having an involved conversation about global warming and seeing how our ideas are kinda aligned.