Have you ever loved a day that was ordinary, where not one single spectacular event happened, yet, you for some reason dreaded to see the sun disappear? Today is that day for me.
I woke up around 6 am an hour after the Muslim prayers slowly drifted into my dreams from a projected speaker in the city. I don't mind the prayers, they make me feel at ease and they are beautiful to listen to. The lyrical songs are projected 4 times a day and during that time most people stop what they are doing, turn off their music and listen. After which they act as if nothing even happened, conversations are continued, songs are turned up and its back to everyday life.
After my first semi- okay attempt at making Turkish coffee (forgot to boil in the sugar= too weird tasting), one sunny-side up egg, baby zucchini and toast, I quickly scurried to the Bee Behavioral and Pollination Lab (@ 15min, uphill ).
When I arrived we assessed the health of the bees that the other group caught for us yesterday. Unfortunately, since they were not accustomed to this task most to our animals died or were sickly and out of the 60 only 9 were usable. Huge set back! So, we learned that collecting the bees is something that our team of three needs to do on our own. Since all 60 insects were to be split between the both of us and only 9 were usable we decided to split our duties for the day. Maria and Rich worked on collecting and feeding the bees while I worked on an experimental bee vibration conditioning project.
The project went well and I was able to get some interesting data. Tomorrow I'll be working on an idea that I came up with using black light (which has UV light that bugs can see) and seeing if we can use black light as a conditioning stimulus and if so what the learning threshold might be.
Now I'm laying on my bed and looking out my window at the gorgeous backdrop of pine trees,the blue sky and white puffy clouds leisurely drifting by. And even though I am so far from home, I feel at home here for the first time.
View from my Room at Rabia Riza Bicen. The C makes a "ch" sound so we like to call it Bitchen' but the real pronunciation is more like Beeshin. Oops.
I woke up around 6 am an hour after the Muslim prayers slowly drifted into my dreams from a projected speaker in the city. I don't mind the prayers, they make me feel at ease and they are beautiful to listen to. The lyrical songs are projected 4 times a day and during that time most people stop what they are doing, turn off their music and listen. After which they act as if nothing even happened, conversations are continued, songs are turned up and its back to everyday life.
After my first semi- okay attempt at making Turkish coffee (forgot to boil in the sugar= too weird tasting), one sunny-side up egg, baby zucchini and toast, I quickly scurried to the Bee Behavioral and Pollination Lab (@ 15min, uphill ).
When I arrived we assessed the health of the bees that the other group caught for us yesterday. Unfortunately, since they were not accustomed to this task most to our animals died or were sickly and out of the 60 only 9 were usable. Huge set back! So, we learned that collecting the bees is something that our team of three needs to do on our own. Since all 60 insects were to be split between the both of us and only 9 were usable we decided to split our duties for the day. Maria and Rich worked on collecting and feeding the bees while I worked on an experimental bee vibration conditioning project.
The project went well and I was able to get some interesting data. Tomorrow I'll be working on an idea that I came up with using black light (which has UV light that bugs can see) and seeing if we can use black light as a conditioning stimulus and if so what the learning threshold might be.
Now I'm laying on my bed and looking out my window at the gorgeous backdrop of pine trees,the blue sky and white puffy clouds leisurely drifting by. And even though I am so far from home, I feel at home here for the first time.
View from my Room at Rabia Riza Bicen. The C makes a "ch" sound so we like to call it Bitchen' but the real pronunciation is more like Beeshin. Oops.
<3 M
No comments:
Post a Comment