Friday, March 27, 2009

Las Vegas







My Trip to Vegas!


Hi bio-students! I have just returned from my farthest west trip with Alexandra. We went to Las Vegas for a soccer college showcase and had just a great time. The plane ride was pretty long, but the touch screen televisions made the ride seem a lot shorter than it actually was. Also, flying over the Colorado mountains was beautiful. Finally we saw the strip from the plane and I knew we were there!


We stayed at the Venetian on the strip. The rooms were defiantly fancy! It was a really, really nice hotel. One of the funniest experiences I’ve had on the trip was walking out of the hotel in the morning and seeing people sleeping at the slot machines or people so drunk that they were making circles around the casino and stumbling around! It was quite funny.


I even met Pete Rose, the famous baseball player who got thrown out of baseball for gambling!










The Las Vegas College Showcase is a great place to get recognized by soccer college coaches. I had a first hand experience going to one of the top level soccer tournaments in the country! It was very competitive! One thing that surprised me was how the role of players on one team relates to a nitch in an ecosystem. For example, two girls must compete for one spot on a team the way two different species must compete for one nitch in an ecosystem. The girls must enhance their skills, attitude, speed, and speed of play in order20to beat out their opponent and take the position on the team. It is like the way species go through natural selection to beat out their opponent.

This was the moving Statue!

This weekend I learned about what bananas, soccer, and biology have in common from Coach Ash. He enforced that all his players have a couple of bananas before each of our games this weekend. The reason, he said, was because bananas are a leading source of potassium, or K. When you play soccer you loose potassium and salt, but you generally do not have a lack of salt in your system because it is in most everything the way you lack potassium after a game. Potassium and salt work as an oil for your mussels, and without that oil your mussels do not function smoothly. So we ate plenty of bananas during the weekend!



Walking the strip was a new experience as well. I did not enjoy the huge crowds, but I did enjoy going to a whole bunch of different hotels. There are plenty of pictures for you to see of me at the Mirage, Venetian, Treasure Island, and more! One day we stopped at Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar and Grill for lunch at the Harrah’s. There I got my picture taken with some Las Vegas “Hotties.” Another funny experience was walking around and seeing trucks advertising “Hot Babes to you, 24 hours a day, They are girls that want to meet you.” So Las Vegas! One of the days when I was walking around Caesar’s Palace I met Pete Rose! Pete Rose was a famous=2 0baseball player that got suspended for gambling. I got a good picture with him! During one of our outings we also stopped outside the Wax Museum and got some good pictures with famous people’s wax statues! Overall, walking the strip was really fun!













Monday, March 16, 2009

University of Michigan- Ann Arbor




Hey everybody!! Last weekend, I had the opportunity to tour the University of Michigan- Ann Arbor! First I went to an informational session followed by an hour long walking tour. I really liked the atmosphere of the campus. Rumor has it that if you step on the big M outside of the Graduate Library you'll fail your first Blue book exam. My favorite building was the Ross School of Business because of its use of eco-friendly materials and its sleek modern design. The Ross School of Business was recently donated to U of M by Stephen Ross (owner of Miami Dolphins and University of Michigan grad) by a generous 100 million dollar donation (biggest donation in history of the University of Michigan). I was wandering around campus after my tour, and I happened to stumble upon the University of Michigan Biological Station table!! The U of M Biological Station is a program that takes biology to the outdoors- in its natural habitat. The Biological Station is a small village along South Fishtail Bay on Douglas Lake. There are about 150 buildings that include all teaching rooms, housing, dining, recreation, and maintenance. The UMBS offers many classes and courses for college-aged students majoring in Biology. One of the experiments that is going on now at UMBS is climatology. Climatology is the study of climate, or weather. There is also ongoing aquatic and terrestrial research happening at UMBS. Students will work in a variety of environments including water, woods, and fields. There are so many great opportunities for research and experiments at University of Michigan! I hope that I can go back to University of Michigan again to enrich my studies! TTYL