By Viban Gonzales ’20

We’ve been in Hawaii for a few days now and have settled into an evening routine. At the start of the trip, we all signed up for nights to cook dinner for all of the students. Two to three people cook and two people clean up. 

I cooked with Janice Shiu ‘20 and Peter Duff ‘20. We made udon in a mushroom broth with an egg and slices of spam. Spam is very popular in Hawaii. It’s even sold as a side in McDonald’s!

Everyone else gets to relax after a day of fieldwork. Some people look over their data, some people play games, some people do crosswords, some people nap. 

The TAs usually do some more work to tie up loose ends in preparation for the next day’s work and analyze their data. 

After dinner, the students, TAs, and professors all have a science meeting where we talk about what we did in the morning, problems we faced with our work, our data analysis, and plans for tomorrow. 

Afterwards, we all get ready for bed.