Weekend Adventures and the Start of MicroTrop

Thankfully this past weekend had a few interesting adventures! On Saturday I FINALLY got to sleep in compared to waking up at 6:30 every morning, so that was a blast.  That evening I also got to meet up with Danielle, another alum from St. Olaf who has been living in Senegal for the past 3 years now.  We ended up going to a bar to watch the France-Spain soccer match, have some beers and dinner, and meet up with a handful of Peace Corps Volunteers who are living in the area.  It was great to get to sit around speaking some English and to get away from JUST the area where my lab is.  

On Sunday I was picked up from the guest house at the IRD lab campus where I have been staying (also where there was no running water or internet for the whole weekend...) by Lydie, one of the scientists at the IRD lab I work in, and the director of the MicroTrop Workshop I am not participating in for the next month.  We traveled to the campus housing everyone was staying in last night and I got to meet people as they trickled in from the airport, which was fantastic.  There are about 20 participants here for this month, which will make for a great time and hopefully some lasting collaborations and networks.  Everyone seems great so far and there are a diversity of specialties, even within the already narrow scope of microbial ecology, so I will get to learn a lot here.  Today we had an opening conference and traveled from Dakar to Mbour, where I will be for the next 10 days or so as we run experiments and have lectures here!  Should be a very exciting few weeks!