During the last week of semester 1 (which arrived quicker than anticipated), we went on our group 4 IB science trip, the main goal of this trip was to “Participate in interdisciplinary science that contributes to a citizen science initiative in a restored pine plantation in Sinharaja” and “to understand the idea of ecological restoration through active fieldwork.”

This trip was a new experience for me as I had never gone on a trip solely for collecting data and doing fieldwork, despite having gone on many trips with OSC.

After a 3-and-a-half-hour bus ride, we finally arrived at Martin’s Lodge which is located inside the Sinharaja forest. Our grade was staying in two different places, the ESS kids stayed at Martin’s Lodge, and the rest of us who took physics, biology, or chemistry stayed at the Blue Magpie Lodge. As soon as we arrived at Martin’s lodge, I was starving (I’m always hungry), so Ansel and I shared a peanut butter and jam bagel (which tasted amazing). After having our lunch, the professors who were going to be helping us throughout the trip were introduced to us, and we were told about our groups. My group consisted of Sofia, Darius, Aniq, Maelle, and myself. After the formalities were done, we went to a small site in the forest to get used to recording data and handling all the equipment. I enjoyed this as I had never built quadrats before, so it was a completely new experience for me. Darius and I started by finding a nice plot to build our quadrat on. After doing so, we started placing the sticks to make a 2m x 2m quadrat which was going to be used to collect our data. After finishing building our quadrat, we started counting the organisms inside the plot we built. Sofia measured the height and girth of the plants and other organisms inside the plot, while Aniq told us the different names of the plants by asking the guide.
Meanwhile, Darius was recording all this data on his phone and adding it to the survey which was later contributed to a global database. Sadly we had to end our experiment early as it started raining. Many leech bites later we arrived at Blue Magpie Lodge which was where the rest of us were staying. After choosing our roommates (my roommate was Luka) we put all our things in the room. However, we were bored and it was raining outside, so Darius, Akhil, Luka, and I started tackling each other in the rain which was loads of fun and honestly might be one of my favorite moments from the trip.

On the second day we did our data collection (but for real this time), Mr.LeBlanc woke me up at 7 in the morning which was way too early for me (I need my sleep) and so after eating breakfast we walked to Martin’s Lodge to meet the ESS kids and to assemble into our groups. Once we assembled into our groups we went to a different part of the forest to collect data and set up 3 different plots in 3 different areas, while finding the PH and temperature of the soil and the number of organisms in the quadrat. We took the soil from the two different areas where we set up the plots and they both had a PH of 7 which is neutral the soil was always room temperature although sometimes it went a degree or two below perfectly normal room temperature. After doing 2 plots we added all our data into the survey. I enjoyed this as it gave me a good perspective of how the data we look at in our textbooks is collected, and it also gave me an insight into the difficulties of collecting data and how various variables can influence data such as weather conditions, etc. Unfortunately, we only managed to do 2 plots as it started raining (again) and so we had to rush back to Martin’s lodge where we had to process the data we collected. After processing the data the weather started to clear up and so all of the bio kids (which was me unfortunately), Mr.Haji, and one of the professors took us to show us the different species of plants that are situated in the forest, I thought it was a very important learning experience as it was our only chance t0 experience things we read on a textbook in real life. I learned many things from that experience as the professor who was showing us the different plants used a lot of terminology that we use in our bio class and so it made it much easier for me to understand what he was talking about through the knowledge gained in the classroom. I thought it was particularly interesting about the roles the different plants play in an ecosystem and how certain plants can only grow in certain conditions.

 

 

Once we got back to the Blue Magpie Lodge I took a long hot shower which felt so good, and we ate lunch which consisted of fried eggplant, dahl, rice, and pappadam, believe me eating that food after a long hike was the best feeling ever, the food tasted a 100x better for some reason and I went back for thirds! After we ate our delectable lunch we were all quite bored and we didn’t have anything to do so we decided to play Werewolf (similar to Mafia) although we didn’t have cards since we played the game so many times we knew what most of the roles did and so we just assigned people different roles (used our creative thinking skills), it was so much fun that we had played for 4 HOURS!! The time had gone by so fast and soon it was dinner. After eating dinner it was a regular night. Luka and I were talking about life and various things till 10:30 pm and after that, we went to bed.

The next morning was an early morning, Mr.LeBlanc had woken me up at 6:30 am and I am NOT a morning person so you could imagine how grumpy I was in the morning. After breakfast, I was all good and I was excited for the hike we were about to do, I love hiking so I was quite excited for this trip. Once we reached the Sinharaja forest we met up with the ESS kids and it was so nice to see them again and go on a hike with them. We hiked up a mountain and it was truly a fun experience.

What had happened during this hike was that Ansel, Liam, and I were walking at the very end behind our whole class and so our class had gone ahead of us by a kilometer or more, and so whilst we were taking our time and climbed halfway up the mountain we saw Aniq on a rock panting heavily as he forgot his inhaler (he has asthma) and so Ansel, Liam and I walked him back down to the gate and handed him to Mr.Echols. By this time the rest of our class had probably made it to the top of the mountain whilst the three of us were right where we started, but that didn’t prevent us from completing the hike, we were determined to complete the hike and so we asked our guide if he knew a shortcut to get to the top of the mountain as we had to get there as fast as possible, and so we followed our guide. He was taking us through a very odd path as it was much further from where we started before but we decided to be open-minded and go with the flow. As the guide was walking a bit slow (he was old) he told us to go ahead of him and so he led us to the path and said “When you cross the stream, keep going straight”. The three of us had underestimated how long this hike was, as we started sprinting the first 10 minutes thinking we would make it if we ran fast enough but it was a much further hike than we thought we had used up all our energy in the first 10-15 minutes of the hike and we were dying. But we had to keep going so we gave each other roles, I was the pacesetter which meant that everyone matched the pace I was going at, Ansel and Liam were our motivators and they motivated us throughout the hike to keep morale up. After walking for 10 minutes or so we saw the stream that our guide was talking about and we crossed the stream just like he said. We thought we were so close as we started seeing the top but it was just our imagination.

We had stopped at least 7 times but we kept going it seemed like the hike was never-ending, and so we started doubting the path we took, halfway through we were wondering whether we were going to the right mountain but just as soon as we were going to stop for the 8th time we heard Ben’s voice from a distance and that’s when we knew we were close. It was an indescribable feeling, it was like hearing his voice gave us a sudden adrenaline rush and we started sprinting again and that’s when we saw the viewpoint (for real this time) and it was amazing, I felt so cool our whole class started clapping for us as we made it, and Ansel, Liam and I were exhausted but the view made it a whole lot better. This hike was my favourite moment from this whole trip as I got to connect with Liam and Ansel much more on the hike and I loved the bonding experience we shared as a group

 

Overall this trip was loads of fun and I was glad I got to contribute to citizen science and that I got the opportunity to experience how data that we analyze in the classroom is collected. I am also very happy that we did the hike as it gave me a good bonding experience with Liam and Ansel which brought me closer to them.