In Portland

Hello everyone!

I'm in Portland at the Ecological Society of America conference. My flights went well. No issues getting from Botswana to South Africa. The flight was also pretty smooth from South Africa to Atlanta. I sat next to a girl who was from LSU (I definitely had to proclaim Go Gators! to that) but she was nice and was coming back from a missions trip in South Africa so we got along fine. There were long lines but overall things went fine in the Atlanta airport. It was pretty tough being a 45 minute flight from Chelsea and instead getting on a 5 hour flight in the opposite direction, but I did it. That flight went well too, but when I got to Portland my bag wasn't there. It turned out ok, it was put on the next flight so I only had to wait at the airport about an hour extra and I talked with another conference attendee who was coming in from Brazil.

I've been staying with our friends Nick and Tara from UC Davis. They're living here now and have been very hospitable to me. My friend Amy and her friend Jude were also there for the first two days of my stay so it's been fun times seeing old friends. We've gotten to do lots of neat things like visiting a HUGE bookstore (something like 6 floors spanning an entire city block with tens of thousands of books), eating at a Morrocan place where you sit on cushions and eat your 5 course meal entirely with your hands, and watching Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter in a movie theater/pub where you can get burgers, pizza, cookies, or beverages served to you while you watch.

In addition to this I've been very busy at the conference. It's the largest ecology conference in the US and there are something like 4000 attendees. The program is over 200 pages for this one week conference. I presented a poster last night on the data I collected last year in Botswana and it was well received. A teammate of mine also did a presentation on the project we've been working on for the last year for my IGERT fellowship and that got some good interest and feedback also. I've gone to a number of interesting talks that will help inform my research as well as some workshops that should help me be a better teacher and improve my job applications in the future.

One of the neatest things, however, was a social Monday night for Christian ecologists. I wasn't sure what it would be like but when I walked in people were sitting in groups discussing how we can best reflect Christ in our careers, what it means to "give up our lives for Christ" in our chosen fields, and the connections between our Christian faith and the conference theme of Preserving, Utilizing, and Sustaining our Ecosystems. There were probably around 30 people there and it was really neat to be reminded that even though it may feel like it, we are not alone in this field. There are other Christians who are successful ecologists and professors and yet also love the Lord and want to serve Him through what they do. I was definitely encouraged by this. At the end we all prayed together that we might be a light this week and as we go back to our various universities. Very cool!

It is finished!

Well...the work is never really finished...but the fieldwork for 2012 is. Yesterday we finished sampling in the Chobe Enclave. It was harder to find places to sample than we expected and we only got 15 samples but hopefully that'll be fine. We also dipped back down into the park to collect 4 more samples in an area that had high MSDI values but which we only had 2 points in. Hopefully now we can get a better sense of what's going on.

I leave tomorrow afternoon to head straight to Portland for the Ecological Society of America conference. I'm excited for this new conference but it's a bummer that it keeps me from seeing Chelsea for another week. Oh well, it'll work out.

I appreciate you all following along with my adventures this summer. I'll try to give an update once I'm back but just in case I don't get the chance, thank you for your thoughts and prayers!

Tim