The End

Hawaii? Nope. I got to breathe tropical air for about thirty minutes before hopping right back on a plane. Turns out I'm needed, in the Swiss Alps, of all places. So here I am, in the same place I've been for the past four days- in that weird in-between neither-here-nor-there world of airplanes.
I guess someone saw this blog, because now a new magazine wants me to write a piece on plate tectonics, focusing on the Alps. So, although I'd love to be in Hawaii right now, at least something good came out of this.

Switzerland! Who knew. This is better than Hawaii. I just got back from hiking in the mountains and need to start working on my article soon, but I thought I'd do one last little paragraph on plate tectonics before I leave this blog for good because I ACTUALLY HAVE A DECENT JOB!
So the Alps are part of what's called a convergent collision boundary. It's similar to a convergent subduction boundary except that instead of one plate moving under the other one, the plates just collide, as you can probably tell from the name. When the plates collide, they push up the rocks in between them and form mountain ranges along the plate boundaries, like this one:

So this is probably the last time I'll write on this blog. Even though I didn't get to go to Hawaii, I'd say it was worth it. Who knows, maybe I'll pop up in a magazine at some point in the near future.

Until then, thanks for reading!

Uuuuuuuugh/San Andreas Fault Line

You'd think after all this everything would finally work out, right? Apparently not. It turns out I got on the wrong plane, which I only realized after we had reached 30,000 feet. Now I'm sitting in the airport in Santa Maria, California. Not exactly where I planned on being, but there is a bright side- I'm just a car ride away from the San Andreas fault line, a transform boundary that formed a huge crack in the earth:

Transform boundaries occur when two plates slide in opposite directions, creating a rift in the earth like the one above. Transform boundaries don't have dramatic effects like earthquakes and volcanos, but one interesting fact is that because of the San Andreas boundary, in around ten million years, LA will have slowly moved right next to San Francisco! 

Now I'm on yet another plane to go to LA in order to transfer to Hawaii. It's about 10:00 here, and I'm in for a long night, so I'm going to try to fall asleep. Try being the keyword there. I'll update later, when I'll hopefully be drinking pina coladas by the pool.

First Stop- Hawaii (not)

I was hoping to be looking at volcanoes in Hawaii by now, but instead I'm sitting in an airport lounge drinking horrible coffee while obscure banjo music serenades us in the background. I've been on the phone for the last hour trying to figure out what's going on- first my ticket got messed up and I couldn't get on my flight, and now the one I'm supposed to catch is hours late, with the expected arrival time getting pushed further and further back. So since I can't observe any foreign places for this first blog post, I decided to talk about what's here, in Seattle.
Along the Pacific Coast, we are in what's called a subduction zone. On a destructive plate boundary or a convergent boundary, two tectonic plates move towards each other and one of them is forced under the other. Unfortunately for us living here, that means that earthquakes are frequent here. Another thing that happens as a result of subduction is the movement of trapped lava, ash and other substances up towards the surface; when a plate sinks below another plate, it goes far into the asthenosphere, shown in the picture below, where it heats up, releasing water, gas and lava.

Update:

I'm on the plane! Hawaii, here I come! 

Introduction

Hi! I’m Felicia Harmon, a fact-checker for financial journal. Correction: a bored fact-checker for a financial journal. So while I’m waiting for a promotion, this blog is my outlet for my true passion- plate tectonics. 

No one else seems to see the beauty in them that I do. First of all, we can’t usually see them. What is more exciting than something invisible? And they can wreak havoc and completely change the planet, but their one of the things in this world that we humans can’t control, no matter how hard they try.

So thus, I embark on my mission: to inform the world about plate tectonics through my own personal findings, in hopes that they will discover the beauty in them like I have already.

(Everything written in this blog is completely fictitious)