July 4, 2017 - Another good day. I woke up somewhere in the 6 o'clock hour, unintentionally, and tried to get back to sleep. I think I was somewhat successful, and finally got up around 7:20. Breakfast started at 7am and I could hear a couple people there. Breakfast was not nearly as impressive as dinner - some white bread, lot of spreads, boiled eggs. Not bad, but not exciting. But the plans for the day made up for it. Everyone but Olivier decided to go to Ile aux Cocos - Coconut Island - today, and we were leaving at 8:45. Olivier had already been, and was leaving to start his journey home today. He has a pick-up truck, though, and offered us a lift, which was great. We drove there through Port Mathurin, the capital, ... read more

July 2, 2017 - Another day of adventure. Originally I had planned to do a hike of Le Morne Brabant, a mountain in the south that has a sad history. It was a place where runaway slaves lived while in hiding, and when slavery was abolished here, police came to tell them they were free. But seeing the police, the ex-slaves thought they would be caught and were determined not to live like that again. Rather than being caught, they jumped off the cliffs and killed themselves. A sad story. So, my original goal was to go there, but my guide book said you need to go with a guide. I wrote to a guide company last week, but got no response. I decided to just let it go. But yesterday, I was chatting online with ... read more

June 30 - Where even are you, Jenn? Right. Remember the dodos? The big goofy birds that went extinct when we ate them all by 1681? I'm on that island where they used to live. It's off the east coast of Madagascar, which is off the east coast of Africa. I decided I would get moving and back to my normal travel self today. No more lying around on the beach. I got up at 7am and was ready to leave by 8:15. I saw Bernard and he said the technician would be in to fix the tv and when I got home, the tv worked. Magic. I walked over to the bus stop and waited for a bus going to Port Louis (Louie), the capital. I waited 5-10 minutes and then I was on my ... read more

Thursday April 13, 2017 - Today I head out to Toolik Field Station to work with a research team trying to understand the specific details behind hibernation in the Arctic ground squirrel. After three years of applying, this year I was accepted as a PolarTREC teacher to get current real-world research experience in the polar regions. My site is in the north of Alaska. I will be keeping a journal on their website, and since we will be limited with internet and time, I hope you can follow along on their site rather than here this time. Follow along with my adventure at https://www.polartrec.com/expeditions/arctic-ground-squirrel-studies-2017, where you can also sign up to receive emails when I release an update. I will also do two live presentations to talk about the research and show off a squirrel. Please ... read more

Wednesday March 8 – Today was our earliest day, with a 6:15am pickup and then transfer to a minibus that would drive us four hours to get to the Musandam peninsula in Oman. I’d been wanting to go to Oman for a while, and this part of the country was relatively close to Dubai, and separated from the rest of Oman by the UAE. On the ride I chatted most of the way with Janis, a Scottish woman living in the Isle of Man, an island near England. We had to stop at the border to have our passports stamped out of UAE, then stop again to pay the exit tax to leave, then stop again to get stamped into Oman. Once through the border, we were treated to lovely views of the coast until we ... read more