Wageningen Day 7 Sam

What did you do over the weekend?

We went out the city of Utrecht, which is much bigger than Wageningen and it has streets and streets of stores. It was very crowded due to the huge open markets they have on Saturday and it reminded me of New York City markets and shopping in a sense. On Sunday, we spent all day at the Apenhaul Monkey Reserve.

What did you experience over the weekend that you found especially interesting? Why was it interesting?

I found the monkey reserve especially interesting because I have never been to another facility like it. Apenhaul had over 20 different types of monkeys, most free roaming throughout a huge park. So as you walked, you could look up and see monkey’s hanging out above your head or within an arm’s reach, I really enjoyed it. It gave the monkeys a ton of space and with very few fences or cages, it felt like it was a much more humane approach to keeping monkeys.

What did you experience over the weekend that you found especially negative? Why was it negative?

We found that a few towns over might be longer bus rides than we could have imagined. We probably spent a good 8 hours in transit between Saturday and Sunday on buses to and from what seemed to be ‘close towns.’ Many times the bus drivers did not speak English, therefore there was a bit of a language barrier and we may have lost some money on bus fares over it. Yet, we are learning the bus system as we go.

What have your learned to date about the work you will be doing while there?

We know we are signed up for a 4 week Animal Behavior course that runs throughout June. I am very excited for this course, we will pick our preferred select animals to study soon and find out which animal we get when the course starts to complete the project on. I will be helping with PhD thesis work before and after this class begins and ends. I am excited to be learning about Miriam Schutter’s thesis, which is based on the influence of abiotic factors on growth and morphology of scleractinian corals in aquarium systems.