Schiermonnikoog

Nope. Still not pronouncing it right, even after being on it for a week and asking every Dutch person in the field station to say it for me. Multiple times. I swear they all said it differently! And when asked what it actually means, I learned that monnik means monk and oog means eye... That was as far as the explanation ever got.

Oh well! The island with the above unpronounceable name is beautiful. It is located in the Wadden Sea, which is a tidal area running from the Netherlands across Germany to Denmark. Schiermonnikoog is conveniently located an hour bus ride and 45 minute ferry ride from Groningen.

We arrived Monday afternoon and immediately rented bikes to begin our island tour. Monday was, we would later learn, the only sunny day all week. But that allowed the island to make a great first impression! The island has one village and some associated farms, but the rest of it is a national park. The inhabited part of the island is surrounded by a high dyke to keep the sea out. Sheep are often put to graze on the dyke, which is of course quite picturesque. I didn't manage to get any sheep pictures (the whole biking with no hands thing just hasn't come to me yet) but here is the general idea of the bike paths around the island.

Those are the salt marshes to the right and the dyke to the left. Nice, right?

We spent a lot of Monday afternoon riding around getting bird and plant lectures from the professors. We also visited the village, in which several of the oldest houses had their year of construction on the front in wrought iron numbers. Oldest one? 1724. Impressive. It's a cute village with lots of outdoor restaurants. Would be very nice for a weekend getaway.

From Tuesday through Thursday, each day revolved around a mini project. Morning was data collection, afternoon/evening was for analysis, and the late evening was for a research presentation of the project. Tuesday we worked on the mud flats (a large enough system that you can walk to the mainland, 12 km away, at low tide!), Wednesday was in the marsh looking at cattle-induced vegetative patchiness, and Thursday was plant physiology in several different places on the island. None of the projects spoke to me, but I really enjoyed the work, even though most days were rainy, windy, and cold. I particularly liked the mud flat work, which was by far the messiest. Water is definitely my element. My classmates could tell I was really happy just being on the ferry heading to the island!

The projects were tough. It was particularly hard to get the data analyzed fast enough to make a coherent presentation that same evening!

We had fun though. After the presentation we usually had a few beers and then crashed into bed. The last night, we had some champagne that a classmate had been given by the program coordinator in apology for the horrible way they had handled her application (apparently several times telling her that she had both gotten and not gotten the scholarship)! The champagne was a great way to end a tough week.

We're now back in Groningen and most of the class is sick. I believe I've avoided the bug, but I have to say that a weekend of catching up on my sleep was fantastic!