Carnivale in Tilburg!?!

Carnivale in Tilburg is some serious stuff.. Honestly both Perry and I aren't big Carnivale's fans but we wanted to give it a try and we went taking a look.
Lemme tell you.. This carnivale (or Luna Park as we call it in Italy) is huge.. all the city center is completely full and there're so many people around! We kept our opinion at the end.. this is nothing for us.. so we went back home watching ''don't come knocking'' a movie by Wim Wenders.
This weekend I'm just gonna relax and work out in the morning cuz on Monday we've the last field work. We're gonna take 45 cores!!! crazy! :-) It's going to be tough but what you want me to say.. I dig science.

Just another week spent @ the Nioo-center

This has been another week full of hard field work. We went back to the field again to sample additional 6 cores of sediment for 13C analysis. It was really sad to find out that some of our plots were fully covered of large seaweeds; also all around in the area most of the macrofauna (i.e. arenicola, small shrimps, etc..) was dead.. Something really wrong in the seawater around Zeeland -we think.
But this has been also the week of the barbecue in the back yard, the discover of the famous Yerseke Beach and the Thai dinner with Francesca, Arnon and Tae Hee.

I've arrived a bit late at the barbecue and most of the people ate already.. guess I haven't miss that much since there aren't so many vegetarians at the guesthouse but there was still some Thai vegan salad; by the way it's been kinda nice and we talked and had a lot of fun. Then there's Tetsuro. Tetsuro is a Japanese guy working at the Nioo-center living in Yerseke with his wife and missing Japanese food. This guy is one of the funniest I've ever met in my life and I feel so lucky to know him. Lots of the guys were asking him the meaning of their name in Japanese when suddenly this guy asks and Tetsuro jumps up and stands in the middle of the yard "Do you wanna know the meaning of your name in Japanese? I'm gonna tell ya: it means BIG DICK.. THICK DICK".. that was so funny and everybody couldn't stop laughing and *you made my day man!*. I gotta tell: you need Tetsuro at the Nioo-center. Unfortunately he and other 5 guys will leave tomorrow for some courses in Denmark for three weeks. It's gonna be a whole different story. I'm not stayin' at the guesthouse no more.. I rather travel back and forth cuz it's just one-hour-trip and I can spend more time with Perry.

Yerseke Beach. I've heard a lot about it so during the break, yesterday, I asked Tae Hee if she wanted to take a look. So we went and we talked a lot and it was actually really nice. The beach is kinda legendary because it's actually the only beach in Yerseke.. I mean you can just dive from the side road but there ain't a proper beach. So here we are. There were a lot of families and low tide but we had a relaxing time which I really needed.

Finally yesterday night Arnon was so kind to prepare for Tae Hee, Francesca and me some great Thai Curry. I would love to share the secret but I'm just gonna show up for some future dinners. Hehe..
I can say that it was very spicy and there was tofu cooked in coconut milk.. delicious.. thanx Arnon!

Some more field work

Today we got back to the field to sample again in 6 plots for a total of 12 cores of sediment. We manipulated the composition of infaunal assemblages and we want to measure how the ecosystem changes to environmental stress (here: organic enrichment).
Hopefully everything in this project will work out fine.

Now I'm just in my afternoon break and this evening at 9:00 we all gotta come back to the lab for some extra measurements.. So I'm going back to the guesthouse to rest a bit and cooking something for dinner!
And if I'm lucky I'm gonna steal some more cooking secrets from Arnon, the Thai guy who's also working at the center and he's living at the guesthouse. I love Thai food.
See you along the sea!

Start!

Hey everyone! Today I'm gonna start my *blog*.. sweet.
I'm Italian but I live in the Netherlands now, since last January and until November, because my boyfriend Perry is Dutch. I've been vegan for 1/4 of my life and I'm going to be until my last day. I've never been so healthy and my heart is full of love for all the animals. In Italy I live with Susie a beautiful cat who gives me so much joy and I miss her very much now that I'm in Holland.. my mom is taking a very good care of her anyway, so I feel better.
I'm currently working in a project at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology, investigating the consequences of biodiversity loss on ecosystems functioning; in particular we're investigating the implications of macrofauna diversity for the capacity of ecosystems to buffer external inputs of organic matter.
**heavy stuff**
I'm just getting everything ready to leave and reach the center and my friends there.
Talk to you later..