A series of minor mishaps yesterday and overnight, including a rebuild of a hydraulic line on the drilling rig at the start of night shift. But, at 2:22 AM, the first cores were received on deck. Gonna be exciting to see how everything looks today in the lab! (TDP on facebook) From Chris: While most of the senior members of the project have been transfixed on barge construction, drilling logistics, and machine repair, some of the students have had the opportunity to go out on Lake Towuti to take surface sediment samples. This has provided us the invaluable experience of traversing a fair bit of the lake- taking note of the surface sediment, but also the layout, inflows/outflow, composition of the surrounding forest, and natural beauty of Towuti. Sometimes as scientists studying past climate states, we simply receive sediment in the mail and are divorced from physically experiencing the geography and modern climate and vegetation regime of the locale. It has been totally fulfilling to get a sense for the lake and its environs, in the here and now, as we set our sights on drilling the longest continuous record of hydroclimate change in southeast Asia. Depending on the daily weather (quite volatile), the lake surface can be significantly stormy, or so quiescent as to reflect the blue sky perfectly. In the case of the picture shown, the day had seen both extremes. As we made our way back to port at the village Timampu, we were left with exquisite lighting, as rays shone down through patchy clouds against the backdrop of a mountainous sunset. From Tika: This project is my first experience doing sampling in a lake, including both the surface sediment sample, core sediment samples as well as sample measurements by using Geotek MSCL. I was very fortunate to be able to join early with the geoscience team as I can learn how to sample the surface sediment of the lake and use various tools for measuring core samples. The geology of the research area is important to study before sampling and I got that very well after two days of geological survey field work. Moreover, I can share and exchange ideas with Chris, Marina and Ascelina when we are in the field as well as in discussions in our research house. From Marina: Well, for most people the sight of rain will make them run for shelter, but I have to say, here on Sulawesi at 2°S, this is a pleasant sight. And it's also the reason why we are here we want to take a closer look into the history of rainfall and temperature over the past 600.000 years! With the coring starting off, the time of preparations is now over and we are waiting for the first cores to arrive at the lab. The picture also shows one of the boats, which serve as my alarm clock every morning when they start their engines hearing protection is a good choice when taking one of those boats out for surface sediment sampling as we did in the past couple of days. Other than that there is one very important part of my Indonesian experience missing in the picture: rice! But we're all getting used to that, and actually there is great variety of tastes in the Indonesian cuisine. So we are all settled here in Sorowako we've probably visited each of the many tiny shops in town at least three times (especially the ones which sell cookies) and I'm very much looking forward to welcoming the first sediment cores in the research lab! (TDP on facebook) From Ascelina Hasberg: Three weeks ago we most of the foreign scientists arrived in Jakarta Indonesia. After a week of permitting, getting used to a really interesting Indonesian food world (everyone should try a Durian and Jackfruit, get your own experience), and an off-day with a snorkeling tour we arrived in our final destination Sorowako. The following days were quite exciting: getting the research house ready, check our equipment for pre-drilling-sampling, built a frame for a scientist poster as a team-building-during-strong-rain, getting used to the warm and really humid climate , getting along in the city by car and without a map, learn where to buy special tools and daily goodies, and where to get the best fried egg and cake in Sorowako. In the end of the second week we started surface sampling on Lake Towuti, a really successful and important campaign for data about the different kinds of catchments and transport conditions influenced by several inlets within the N/E/S/W lake basin. We managed it to sample almost the whole lake within four days! During the barge assemblage our sampling boat was used so we did some bedrock and soil sampling for data about the catchment and surrounding of Lake Towuti. The third week ended yesterday with the best part: First nightshift with more than 20 m core recovery! After 6 hours of technical delay due to rig problems we finally hit the lake surface and started coring. It was very exciting to label and cut the first cores. This is the base of all further data analyses about the climate and rainfall change. Hopefully, coring will be successful and we will get a lot of meters for the first regional lacrustrine, sedimentological analyses about past conditions! (TDP on facebook)