Field day

Today was our big day of field research.  My group got to work around 8:45am and finished five 1 m² survey plots before lunch.  At each plot we counted all of the plants present, keeping a sample of each unique species for later identification, and took a soil sample.  After lunch we had to move our luggage into the cottage that we are now sharing with four more girls.  The hotel-type lodging was in high demand, so we had to relocate to the cottages.  In a way it is nice because we have a living room now, but we don’t have any internet and the bathrooms don’t have shower curtains.  There are three bedrooms, one with just a double bed, one with two twin beds, and one with two twins and a double.  My team (Janet, Angela, Rebecca and I) is in the latter.  The stairs in this cottage are crazy.  The steps are at least a foot tall, and what’s worse, is that there is a really shallow step about two feet from the top of the stairs that is really tough to see, so I’ve almost died on it twice.  In the afternoon we surveyed three more plots and walked further into the forest in two places to take control soil samples.  We finished all of the surveying that we needed to do, so tomorrow we just have to work on the pH tests and analyzing the data.  Before dinner, the botanist, Dr. Chang, helped us to identify all of the species we had collected, 26 in all.