All packed up and ready to go home!

Proving that I can in fact fit inside my laundry bag.

How do I express my love: Bring laundry to the mommy!

Presenting.

As you can see, things have been very busy the past couple of days. Presentations went really well. I rushed through the first one because I was a little nervous, but the second one went really well aside from a minor spitting accident. Things have been a little less tense since we finished presentations and final exams. Last night there was an attempted BBQ that ended in a few of us stranded under a pavilion in a lightning storm. We all made it back to the building safely with the help of professor Echols. The BBQ resumed after midnight and I heard the food was great. Finals were a little tough, but they're over now. I feel like the hydrologic cycle will forever be burned into my memory. I've got a few more meetings tonight and tomorrow and then I'm on the road! I can't wait to get home and sleep in my own bed. I also can't wait to do a little relaxing before school starts. I'm really glad I decided to come participate in this internship, I've met so many great people and done so many awesome things. I'm definitely going to recommend this program to the other environmental science students at my school, there's so much to gain from this. I hope everyone else enjoyed themselves as much as I did and has a safe trip home. Mommy, get ready for some laundry! See you soon!

The SRS Ecology Lab

This morning we headed over to the Savannah River Site for the last time. We visited the University of Georgia's onsite ecology lab. We got to see and hold, bull frogs, turtles, snakes, a gopher tortoise, baby alligators, and a legless lizard (yes, he's supposed to be legless). We also got up close and personal with a snapping turtle, a bigger baby alligator and some venomous snakes. We later went outside to the turtle and alligator ponds. The yellow bellied sliders were being quarantined because they had been exposed to industrial pollutants. And then there was the big gator. Their biggest male gator is 13 feet long and weighs over 600 pounds. They feed him whole opossums...pretty gross to watch. It was a really fun way to wrap up our time at SRS. I think we should've spent more time at the ecology lab over the course of the internship.

Beware: Steaming piles of poop ahead!

First and foremost, please check out my video diary that summarizes my time spent at the Savannah River Site. I hope you all can enjoy my video half as much as I have enjoyed this internship. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8xBBRwjAwQ

On another note, today we visited the Riverbanks Zoo, and IT. WAS. AWESOME! We weren't really there for the animals...more for the feces, and we saw a lot of feces. Brittany and I are considering suggesting a name change for the program, something that focuses more on the amount of waste matter we've seen. All jokes aside, the compoost zoo is actually very well managed and saving the park a lot of money. More importantly, perfectly good poop is no longer going to waste. We also got to go in the elephant barn so we could "see where it comes from," as if we didn't already know. Anyone that knows me, knows that I love elephants, and I got to stand 10 feet from one! It was the highlight of the day. Back to the poop: the ideal temperature for compoosting is between 120 and 160 degrees. Our guide was proud to inform us that his compoost was a steaming 140. Just to be sure, we all dug in, and it was hot!

For those of you that aren't as excited about the temperature of fecal matter, I've also included a picture of a baby flamingo. I don't think he had mastered the art of standing just yet, but he was a talker. Can't wait to come home at the end of the week!

Exams, DHEC, and Congaree!

Like my goggles? I did!

As you can probably tell by my pictures, I much prefer canoeing in the great outdoors than working in a chemistry lab. This week has been busy, hence the Sunday blog posting. On top of a couple exams in the past few days, I've visited the Department of Health and Environmental Control and the Congaree National Park. DHEC was a learning experience for me, I got to see how South Carolina manages air pollution. It was a pretty interesting process, and we learned how to collect specific types (and sizes) of particulate matter from the air.

And then there was Congaree! I don't know if I posted it or not, but the other day the heat index was 118 here. Yesterday it was only 109...but still very hot. Once we arrived, my half of the group took a guided canoe tour up the canal that leads to the actual Congaree river. We never made it to the river, but we did see a lot of wildlife. In the picture, you'll see my partner Kwame and me, we were pretty good considering it was Kwame's first time in a canoe. After all the sweating, we headed back to the visitor's center for lunch and a break. Later, we headed out for a 2.5 mile hike (which took several hours). This was my first visit to an old growth forest, and I was excited. The trees were HUGE! We saw Loblolly Pines that were 140 ft tall and cypress knees as tall as me! After more sweating, we met back up with the other half of our group and drove home. All in all I'm really glad we made the trip out there.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Incinerate, Landfill

Today we visited the 3 Rivers Solid Waste Authority. This landfill is a class 3 lined facility that serves 9 counties. There's a lot of trash to be buried, and it seems like they have a pretty good system. They even sell their methane gas to Kimberly Clark for fuel! One of the best improvements to the facility will be opening sometime around December, 3 Rivers is opening a new recycling building where household garbage will be hand sorted for recyclables. Obviously, it's cheaper and easier for everyone to use the recycling service in their neighborhood, but only 6% of all recycling is post consumer. Now, when people throw away a plastic bottle for convenience, someone will be at 3 Rivers to pull it out and put it in its rightful place. Good job, 3 Rivers. Although our tour guide seemed less than thrilled to see us and answer our questions, I think it's great to see people making an effort to do the right thing.

My First Nuclear Power Plant!

As previously stated, today I traveled to Vogtle Electric Energy Plant. We learned about the entire process of producing nuclear energy. Just one tiny pellet of uranium can provide as much energy as 149 gallons of oil, one ton of coal, or 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas. Nuclear power (despite how scary it may seem) is actually a smart option for energy production. The US currently has about 104 nuclear reactors, Vogtle runs 2 of those. They are in the process of building 2 new reactors which would make them the first plant to have 4 functioning reactors. I think one of the highlights of our visit was getting to go to the cooling towers. Not only are they amazingly large, but they also provide a nice mist on a hot afternoon. We took a pretty in-depth tour of the plant, and then went down to the Savannah River to do some water sampling. All in all, it was a long day full of steamy excitement.

Welcome to My World

Yesterday we had our first exam for Environmental Science. It went really well...except for the part where I didn't remember to study how the Wastewater Treatment Plant works. Having Dr. CK for both of my classes can get a little confusing, and all of the days seem to be running together. Needless to say, I mixed up my field trips and classes. Nonetheless, I think I'm still going to pass. I've been spending a lot of my time writing my papers. I challenged myself to write everything correctly the first time, and have all of my sources lined up and cited correctly the first time. This makes it feel like I just spent 3 days writing the introduction, but in reality, the paper is almost complete.

Today we were lectured by Dr. Weirda. Dr. Weirda worked with Bald Eagles in Michigan, measuring their accumulation of DDT and PCBs. It seemed like really interesting work, and definitely the type of work that gets you outside...and in trees. Basically, toxins like Mercury, DDT and PCBs build up in top predators due to bioaccumulation. Eaglets are a great subject for this kind of study because not only are they being fed by their parents (which are the top predator), but the adult eagles are only eating fish and only from a certain area. The idea is, you test the babies that are eating the same stuff as the adults, which are accumulating the same amount of the toxins as the humans that eat the fish. As previously stated, his worked seemed great, and little eaglets are pretty cute in their own special way.