Airport arrival changes!

Parents and guardians meeting students at the airport: the flight from Pittsburgh, PA to Newark, NJ was delayed. Students will be arriving in Germany approximately one hour later than expected. The plane is arriving from MUNICH instead of Newark due to the flight changes.

We are hopeful that Lufthansa, and the students themselves, will contact parents and guardians to let them know of this change in arrival!

Day 11- Nine Mile Run

Today we went to Nine Mile Run and met with Lisa Brown. She told us all about the watershed, which she has worked on restoring. We learned how what happens on the land in this watershed affects water. The Nine Mile Run watershed is part of the larger Gulf of Mexico watershed. We walked around Frick Park and saw different areas. We saw wetlands, which the US government protects. Wetlands are important because they purify water. We also saw a sewage drainage spot. It smelled disgusting! The sewage overflows into the river when rain is received and the system is overpowered. Lisa Brown also told us about the results of restoration. Fish have come back and there are many species of birds. Then we picked up trash. We got quite a bit of trash. After picking up trash, we headed to Primanti Bros. for lunch. The sandwiches were huge and had coleslaw and french fries on. Some people really liked them, while others disliked them. After that, we headed back to campus. We went to Barnes and Nobles, a bookstore that also contains the campus store. People purchased various books and Duquesne University attire. Then we went over to the science building to look at the results of our Petri plates we did on Friday. We swabbed four different Petri plates each with water samples we collected last week. The different Petri dishes had different mediums that selectively allowed different types of bacteria to grow. We saw many types of bacteria. We had E. Coli, which was a glowing green color. Other bacteria were purple, clear, and various other colors. It was neat to see the results of what bacteria were present in our water samples. Today was a fun day.

Day 10- Shopping and Pool Party

We started off the day with breakfast at the dorms. Then we headed off to Ross Park Mall where we had time to shop. There were lots of shops. For the German students it was cool because they could go to shops not available in Germany. It was nice to have a day off. After the mall, we headed to Chris' house for dinner and a pool party. It was a delicious dinner! We enjoyed time swimming and talking. It was a fun day.

Day 9 – Falling Water and Ohipyle

Day 9 – Falling Water and Ohipyle

Our ninth day started really relaxed with breakfast at the dorm at 8:30. After breakfast we went to the cars and the two hour journey to falling water began. We had to wait some time in the beautiful visitor center after our arrival, and because of that the majority of us visited the museum shop and a small art gallery with some decent art for very indecent prices. My first impression of Falling Water was, that it looks much bigger when you see it from a large distance as when you’re standing in front of it. Our tour guide had a bunch of really interesting facts about the house. It was a weekend residence for a rich family from Pittsburgh, the Kaufmann family. Now it is managed by the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, which also bought a big part of the forest around the house to preserve the landscape. The house itself is beautiful; Frank Loyd Wright had very good ideas and made some fine details. The house is built with only four materials, stone, steel, wood and glass. Most of the rooms are rectangular shaped and the height of them varies. It is very impressive which effects he made with some architectural techniques.

After our visit to Falling Water we went to the Ohiopyle State Park and enjoyed a two hour bike tour through the forest. The bikes were good and we reached nice speeds. When we brought our bikes back, we drunk the most of our drinks and started the journey back to the dorms. It turned out, that it will become a real journey, when the road which Megan wanted to take was closed. So we had to take a big detour and reached Eat’n’Park at nine. Luckily it were only six miles from there to the dorms, and it was quiet and dark at our floor at 11:30.

Day 8- Lab Day

Today we had a lab day. We went to the lab of Duqusne University. There we met Dr. Stols. Then we got in four groups. Two of the groups worked on the water samples from Murphy's Bottom and the other two worked on the water samples we got from the Kiski River on Wednesday. We were meant to do two experiments. For the first one we had to put some of the water onto four different petri dishes. They all had different chemical substances in them. After some days of waiting bacteria will have grown on the chemical substances. Then we can look which type of bacteria grows best on each of the petri dishes. One of the petri dishes was covered with a substance called LB. LB has got lots of glucose in it. So this chemical substance is especially good for heterotrophs. After that experiment we did another experiment. We wanted to extract the DNA from some of the microbes we found in the Kiski River and at Murphy's Bottom. We had to spin our samples a lot of times and we had to add different substances like lysis buffer or ethanol several times. In the end we had separated the DNA. In between we also listened to three presentations dealing with Climate Change and our Carbon footprint. After listening to the three presentations we calculated our individual carbon footprint. The average of the students would need four worlds if everyone continued to live the way the students live now. After finishing our lab day we had dinner at the University. Then we went to the dorms and blogged. It was another very interesting day.

Day 7- Murphy's Muddy Bottom

Today we headed down to Murphy's Bottom with Dr. Porter. We started out the day looking for salamanders in the creek. We had to turn over lots of rocks to look for them. We ended up finding 4 different species of salamanders out of a total of 9 species that have been found there. Dr. Porter said the previous night's rain may have made our searching difficult. Salamanders are an indicator of good water quality because they can only live in non-polluted areas of water. We also saw numerous fossils that were millions of years old. Some of the fossils were made from water washing over the rock and the item remaining instead of going away, which left the fossil. We also saw toads (American toad), crawfish, slugs, millipedes, and centipedes. We also learned a lot about plants, especially what poison ivy looks like. We learned about native plants. We learned that invasive species can come into an area and completely take over the land because they do not have any natural predators. This can make it nearly impossible for the native plants to survive. Dr. Porter explained how they are trying to restore native plants and are trying to eliminate some of the invasive species using various techniques such as herbicides. Sometimes, invasive species can be helpful. For example, one of the plants has berries in the fall that attract wildlife, such as black bears, to the area. There were also plants with interesting scents. The spice bush smelled like lemon and another one smelled nutty, kind of like peanut butter or Cheerios.

After lunch, we headed down to a lake that is only separated from the Allegheny River by a small band of trees. This lake should be connected to the Allegheny River within the next two years. This lake was made after gravel was removed to be used in products such as concrete. The place we stood would have been 35 feet underground before all this sediment was removed. We headed into the extremely muddy lake. Because it would be a huge, nearly impossible project to count all the plants found in the lake, we used quadrants to count the plants and get a representative sample of the plants found in the lake. We took two different samples from different locations. First, we roped off the area where we were going to count. Then, we picked all the plants in this area. Then we sorted the plants and put them in bags. We also took the core sample to get a sample of the mud. Under the water lilies, more nyas was growing because it requires less sunlight. The spread of plants illustrates a struggle for life that occurs within the 20-acre in diameter lake. The phosphate and nitrate cycles play an important role in the lake. We will work with these samples tomorrow in the lab.

The goal of connecting the lake to the river is to introduce new species into the lake. For example, the paddlefish was extirpated from Pennsylvania and could possibly be reintroduced. This would be an example of restoring a native species.

We all got extremely muddy today. We sunk in the mud. Some people got stuck in mud up to their hips. There were holes all over!

Day 6- Canoeing and Ice Cream

Today was our long canoe trip along the Kisky River. A professor from Duquesne University accompanied us and instructed us throughout the trip. We rode in a van down to the river and got in our canoes. We had to carry our lunches and other items in our canoe. We stopped periodically to collect samples of water, catch fish, and examine other plants and wildlife. The river seemed clean based on what we learned yesterday. We will use the samples in the laboratory this Friday. An interesting part of the trip was looking at the runoff from a mine compared to the water in an area without runoff. The runoff area was an orange color. We used seines to collect fish. Then we counted the number of each species we found and let the fish go. We saved some of the fish in a preservative. Most of the fish were small. They had various distinct features between the species. We also saw crawfish, various macro invertebrates, and salamanders. The rocks under the water were slippery and many people slipped into the water. Megan G. and Jen’s canoe tipped over, but unfortunately we did not see this happen, we only heard the laughs. The place where we stopped for lunch had a very steep shore and lots of people fell getting the canoes to shore. After our canoe trip, we dried off and headed over to Glen’s for ice cream. It was delicious! Today was a great day.