Monday we moved out of our cozy cabin in the woods at the Forestry Center and into our dorms in Minneapolis. I found it kind of sad, us leaving our temporary homes for new ones, but I really do like our digs in the city. We have access to a lot more here, like Dinky Town and such. Ricky, Jesse and I walked into Dinky and had a late lunch then went back to our rooms. I’m looking forward to our last week when we get to spend time with the other teams and do some fun stuff together. 

Chad’s cabin was the hot spot for power point presentation set up. We present on Thursday and need to have everything put together and rehearsed by then. 

 Picture 1: Slide prepared for Perch Power point. 

Another task driven day in the lab. Jesse and I finished our diatom counts and put them into a spread sheet. Emilia made some more oil immersion slides to use for their own diatom count tomorrow. Then in the evening we had an AMAZING dinner of Corn soup and fry bread made by Ma’Ko’Quah on her birthday and a pretty damn good cake made by me. Overall it was a nice day and an even better evening.

First picture is of a microscope view. The large oblong pieces are diatoms.

Second Picture is Emilia grossly immersed in the drying process of oil immersion slides.

Just another day in the lab today in search of phytoliths. Amy came up here and have a presentation about many of the lakes in Minnesota, their water contents, and the effects of mining. After Amy’s presentation we were given time to work on our science papers.

Team Zaagi’igan worked in the Lac Core lab for the first time today. We took our core samples from Big Sandy lake and cut them length wise in half using a super awesome saw. One side we kept to examine and make slides from and the other side was processed and put into permanent cold storage. Once the Sandy cores were given to Ma’Ko’Quah and Ida to examine, the cores from Perch and Mud lake were brought out of cold storage to be identified and so that smear slides could be made for later use.

First Picture:Super Awesome Saw

Second Picture: Halved Perch Lake cores

Third Picture: Incomplete diagram of what processes have to be done before we can get to the Phytolith analysis stage.