Down to the Seas: Thar She Blows

The past couple of days have been full of classes, an ice cream social last night, being cozy in Das Boat, which my house did last night while everyone else was being social (see picture below), going for runs in the area, making delicious meals, and that sort of thing. Chocolate chip pancakes for dinner tonight! Last night we made nachos which we ate in the boat while watching youtube videos. We continue to go through massive amounts of tea and coffee; such is the nature of winter, especially when the sun sets so early. Friday morning we woke up at 6:30 to run to the beach and watch the sunset, but it was too cloudy to see the sun so we all slept in for another 2 hours. Hopefully this week we will be able to watch the sunrise. We don't get out of class early enough to watch the sunset; perhaps some weekend. It's very warm here, so I haven't had the chance to experience a New England winter. I wish it would snow...

Went for a bike ride on the Shining Sea bike path into Woods Hole this morning. We borrowed bikes from SEA and as they all look alike, one of the locals commented that we looked like we were all in a gang. A gang with turquoise bikes, no less. Part of the path runs along the beach on Nantucket Sound and of course we checked that out. Aunt Jill, my trained eye immediately started looking for petoskey stones and instead I found seaweed and shells. I'm not used to beaches with shells. The smell of the ocean is wonderful. After biking, our class went to New Bedford to the whaling museum there. Such a pretty city with cobblestone streets and a lot of historic buildings. The Celtic coffee shop there had an oar hanging on the wall from some regatta years ago with all the rower's names on it which was neat. A marathon reading of Moby Dick was taking place, so we listened to some of that in the Seaman's Bethel, the original church where mariners and their families attended. The walls are full of plaques for men lost at sea. One of our professors, Keitapu, is from Tahiti and he did a part of the reading. Another of our professors, Jan, is from Finland, so we have quite a diversity of faculty.

Some Photographs: