Hello from the Outer Banks!
As the temperature is dropping, our workload is rising here in Manteo. With internship presentations coming up, a Community Advisory Board to impress, capstone research to complete, and birthdays to celebrate – there has been no time to waste! Even though we’ve been super busy, we were all still looking forward to our Ocracoke retreat…but it got canceled! (hopefully rescheduled) The weather is to blame here – and that completes the hat trick of altered retreats due to weather! Regardless of that bittersweet reality, there’s still much to report.
Monday was an exciting day at my internship at the Dare County Arts Council. We got three new teachers signed up to teach Power of Art classes in 2018, I opened up some awesome new fused glass supplies, and I helped finish hanging a new exhibit in the gallery! The artist’s name is Marcia Cline, and she paints beautiful scenes from around the Outer Banks.
Monday was also Emily Pierce’s birthday. We welcomed her into the early-twenties club with Brett’s surprise saxophone solo (it was also national saxophone day) to the tune of happy birthday, a sizable cookie-brownie cake, and a resourceful movie-watching area for her favorite movie ever: Mamma Mia! (we all still have ABBA stuck in our heads).
Tuesday brought the unfortunate news of the Ocracoke Retreat’s cancellation, but Steve Trowell from the NC Division of Coastal Management helped us through it with a fresh take on Living Shorelines. He elaborated on the intricacies of, advances in, and future goals for streamlining the permitting process for living shorelines in North Carolina.
Wednesday became a field collection day (instead of an Ocracoke day) and everyone dispersed to various capstone gas sample collection sites. It was a cold and rainy day, but most groups found sampling success…most. Paris, Tara and Mark drove all the way to Hatteras only to find that the sample sites were flooded, so they came home empty handed 🙁 On the other hand, we devised an efficient system to process core samples, and it’s been going well!
On Thursday we started working on a group code-book to use in analyzing our interviews for the human-dimension aspect of our capstone work. The code-book wasn’t finished that same day, but since everyone had worked really hard, we went out for a well-deserved night of group bowling!
On Friday, a few of us wrestled to the finish line and completed the code-book in a stressful but productive two hours.
It’s always an exciting time here with the OBXFS2017 crew – tune back in next week and see what we’re up to then…thanks for reading!