The gathering of team three.......

Sunday - July 29th, 2007

At the appointed hour of 3:00 pm, I wheeled my huge red canvas duffle bag down the corridor at the Halifax International airport, pushing it toward the Arrivals section, where I was meet up with the rest of the Earthwatch team and the project PI’s. Over the next half hour or so total strangers from all over the world gathered around a makeshift “Mammals of Nova Scotia” sign that Chris Newman held chest high.

There was Paul and Susann, a married couple from Espoo, Finland; Andrew, a 3rd year college student from Brooklyn, New York; Hannah, a recent high school graduate from Manchester, England; Julie, a kindergarten teacher from Mill Valley in California; Jessica, an elementary school teacher from Rocky Hill, New Jersey; Yukihiro, a school teacher from Aichi, Japan; Kumiko, another elementary school teacher from Tokyo, Japan; and me, from Rolling Meadows, Illinois. Absent from this initial meeting were John, a high school teacher from New York City, and Patti who was a school nurse in Somerset, New Jersey – they had both elected to drive to Nova Scotia, and would be meeting us in Cherry Hill, our base of operations for the next two weeks.

In addition to Chris Newman and Christina Buesching, Eric Knightly a recent graduate of The Ohio State University, would be working with us as a project assistant, plant botanist, and resident blues musician. Since our party was too large to all fit into Chris’s white Ford van, Jessica, Yuki and I drove with Eric in his car for the two hour drive to Cherry Hill. For the most part it was an uneventful ride, the conversations covering a wide range of topics, while a Bob Dylan CD played in the background, and we took in the view of the Nova Scotia countryside.

There are two houses in Cherry Hill that we will be using over the course of our two weeks here, the green house where the women and Paul would stay, and the yellow house where all the men would sleep. The green house will be our base of operations - all meals, meetings and lectures will take place there. I chose to share a room with Yuki, hoping that he wasn’t prone to snoring, as had been the case with my last Earthwatch roommate. After unpacking my bag and arranging my gear, Eric, Yuki, Andrew and I walked 2 blocks down the road to get our first view of Little Harbor, and the Atlantic Ocean.

Soon it was time to go back to the green house for dinner, a meeting to go over the projects scope, and a safety briefing. By the time we were through with the safety briefing it was getting late, so it was decided to hold off on personal introductions until tomorrow morning. I wasn’t ready to go to sleep, so I took a mile walk with Eric and Yuki down to a pond that had a beaver lodge, hoping we might spot them, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case so we walked back to the house and went to bed.