Okay, so I'm blogging my posts in a seemingly random fashion. What happened to the posts from Charlotte, Singapore and Berkeley you say (don't even mention East Africa)? That's what you get when I can only blog in between rotavapping sponge extracts.
So last month, shortly after Spring Break, my lab headed to Atlanta, Georgia for the 36th Benthic Ecology Meeting. I was pretty excited as it was my first national conference, plus imagine meeting a whole bunch of scientists who are psyched about various spineless creatures! Try telling a dolphin researcher why you find boring sponges so interesting! I jest, dolphin researchers are actually very nice people :). We managed to loan a vehicle from UNCW to drive to Atlanta, and I picked Steve up early in the morning to go pick up the MPV. When we got to the holding area, lo and behold, someone had snuck in at 6am and taken our vehicle! Fortunately, there was another MPV available and we didn't have to squeeze in a sedan with all our luggage. 6 hours and 2 Sudoku puzzles later, we reached downtown Atlanta. We were supposed to stay at the Holiday Inn Express, but couldn't seem to find it, and even ventured into the shadier parts of town...hmmmm.... After tracking the street numbers, we found out that the hotel's name had been changed to the Midtown Inn, and we had passed it twice while driving up and down the street. Quite an exciting start to the trip eh? The lobby was being renovated, but our rooms were pretty posh! It's nice to travel on conference :) 
That's Susanna's and my room! Doesn't it look posh?
View from the room
Our conference was held at Georgia Tech, just across our hotel. The campus is HUGE though, we had to walk 15min just to reach the conference venue! Our conference venue was the Ford Environmental Science Building. Really posh huh, with all the giant glass panes.
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