We’ve officially settled into life at the Outer Banks. We all know our go-to coffee shops and favorite beach accesses. We have chosen our unofficial parking spots at the guest house, and we know where to find most people at any given time. But just as we were getting comfortable, the mundanity of our routines was thrown off by Labor Day and real classes starting!
Labor Day weekend was paired with a Wellness day this year, giving us four consecutive days off school to do whatever we pleased. Some people went home, some enjoyed their time off at the beach, and others (myself included), hosted friends over the break! I had two friends from UNC come visit for the weekend. We managed to pack just about every touristy activity possible into their trip.
Here I am with my friends at the Downtown Market on the Manteo Waterfront!
The most exciting thing we did was visit the NC Aquarium on Roanoke Island. It was amazing how much there was to see and learn! I highly recommend visiting the aquarium and be sure to find the sea otters when you go! It’s a good thing I enjoyed being there so much because the aquarium is actually where my internship is!
After saying goodbye to our friends and our free time, we students jumped right into our respective internships on Wednesday. As I mentioned, my internship is with the NC Aquarium in the horticulture department. More specifically, I am collecting data for a couple of different projects. My favorite is the monarch larval monitoring project. This involves looking for monarch larvae on the milkweed plants in the Pollinator Garden at the aquarium and tracking which instar they are in. This data will then get sent off to the Monarch Larva Monitoring Project to ultimately aid in monarch conservation through understanding where they live/breed.
The photo on the left shows a monarch larva in instar 1, while the photo on the right shows the larva in instar 4. Monarch larvae grow so much!
The guest house was buzzing with talk of internships the evening following our first day. Every student had stories to tell, pictures to show off, and a lot to look forward to in their internships! Some people spent their whole day in office chairs, while others were outside sweating in the sun all day. I feel pretty fortunate that my day was a healthy mix of both.
This week ended with our first couple days of real classes. Between Thursday and Friday, we had our first Coastal Law and Policy, Ecology, and Coastal Management classes, with Capstone work and a Lunch-and-Learn thrown in there. To wrap up our week, we had a guest presentation by Tony Parisi, the president of Network for Endangered Sea Turtles, or NEST. It was so interesting to learn about sea turtle conservation efforts and how volunteers run the whole program.
The most surprising thing about living at the Outer Banks so far is how normal it’s becoming to live so close to the beach. I’m afraid I’m starting to take it for granted. I figured I would wrap up this blog post with a little collage of beach pictures I’ve taken this week to make sure I’m giving the beautiful view enough appreciation! I’m looking forward to more sandy days at the beach and diving into our courses in the coming weeks.