Thanksgiving part 2

Lauren and i were successful in our thanksgiving dinner preperatetion! we made a delicous dinner and it was wonderful!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

turkey? check
mashed potatoes? check
stuffing? check
green beans? check
gravey? check

thanksgiving dinner was a sucessus!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

I'm working 7-4 today since animals don't know that its Thanksgiving and they still need to eat. (gosh, they are so needy haha.) But that's ok, the day shouldn't be too bad. We are getting Thanksgiving lunch at work, and then when I get home, Lauren and I are going to attempt to cook Thanksgiving! So I'll get Thanksgiving food twice today! I'm sad that I won't be with my family today, but I guess that's growing up.

Anyways, Happy Thanksgiving everyone! :)

Art by Calvin!

Ever wish you had a picture painted by a dolphin? Well, I've got one!!! :D One of the trainers Leslie trained Calvin how to paint as an enrichment activity, and we got to do this the other day at work! When Calvin paints, he holds a paintbrush that is stuck into a pool noodle in his mouth and basically just moves his head around like a crazy dolphin! It was quite amusing to watch. I picked out the three colors I wanted in my painting, and then I let Calvin go to town on the canvas! :) It was pretty fun cause he got paint everywhere, and somehow I even got some blue paint in my hair! (But luckily it was water soluble paint, so it came out easily haha.)

Check out Calvin's gorgeous artwork! Kind of looks like an ocean scape or something. haha I'm definitely getting this framed!

Clearwater Marine Aquarium!

Today I went with a fellow intern Dan, a trainer Barb, and a former intern and his wife to the Clearwater Marine Aquarium! This facility is primarily a rescue, rehab and release facility for stranded animals, but they do have a few dolphins that are unreleasable. Their most famous resident is Winter, a 5 year old dolphin who is missing her tail and has a special prosthetic tail! She was so adorable! :) Since she doesn't have a tail, she can't swim by moving her tail up and down in the water, so she has to move her peduncle from side to side. It makes her look like she is squiggling around in the water, but she is adorable. They also have an old female named Panama, who is deaf. Since most dolphins respond to a whistle as a bridge (see former posts hahaha), but Panama can't hear, they have to try to use other signals to let her know she did correct behaviors. It really is pretty interesting! The two males they have, Nicholas and Indy, are around 8 years old and they were also rescued. We got to watch one of their training sessions, and both of them were so fun! They did such fancy and elaborate jumps, with lots of twirls and tail moving! :) The aquarium also had a few river otters and we watched one of their sessions as well. Even though they are so cute, apparently otters are quite mean! hahaha One of the otters was named Cooper and his back legs were paralyzed. He was precious.

I wasn't able to take any pictures because right now they are filming a movie about Winter called Dolphins Tale! Today they were only filming scenes with extras, so I didn't get to see any of the famous people in the movie (Morgan Freeman, Ashley Judd, Harry Connick Jr), bummer. It was cool though because the aquarium was closed to the public, so we got shown around the pools and sets by one of the head trainers. Everyone that worked there seemed really cool! After spending the day there, I kind of want to go into the part the the marine mammal field that involves rescuing and rehabbing injured animals. Even though it seems like it would be difficult, I feel like it would be really rewarding!

Winter without her prosthetic tail!



And here she is with her tail! So adorable. <3



P.S. Today was the first time I'd ever seen the Gulf of Mexico!

Mmmbop!!!

So this week I was super excited to see Hanson at the Food and Wine Festival! They were my favorite band when I was 9, and I figured I couldn't miss them! My very first CD was actually the Hanson Christmas CD Snowed In! I got two copies for Christmas one year, and so I exchanged one for the regular Hanson CD Middle of Nowhere! So I thought it only fitting I saw them in concert! We waited in line and managed to get the front row, which was lucky because there were some crazzyyyy fans there! I didn't even realize Hanson still had fans, but they do and they are intense! hahaha They played a lot of songs I didn't recognize, but they were actually pretty good! And thank god they played Mmmbop! Even after 15 years I still love that song! hahaha

Zac was always my favorite because he was closet to my age. haha



But now he's getting beaten by Taylor, whose the best looking. Though he does have like 12 kids. haha



And lastly, Issac, the boring old one. hahaha

The life of a marine mammal intern!

Hello everyone! Since my family came and visited last week, I actually have some pictures of myself at work now, and I thought I might share with all of you what I do during the day!

A good portion of my day is spent on the manatee stage. I answer questions and give little 5 minute spiels about manatees every half hour. Here I am talking about Lou and Jasper, who are currently snoozing on the bottom of the tank. :)



We also spiel for the dolphin research sessions throughout the day. Basically we stand in the corner of the window and narrate what happens while the trainers work the dolphin in the session. Check out my sweet Madonna style microphone! (And yes, I know, my outfit is quite stylish.)



In the past week, we have been learning how to do the window spiels! What that means is that we give a spiel about dolphins, their anatomy and conservation. While talking, we also work the dolphin at the window, and have him to various behaviors like pec waves, smiles, bubbles, etc. It is really awesome!!! Unfortunately, I hadn't quite finished all the training when my family was here, so they only got to see me learning to work the dolphin at the window, but we were all still pretty excited! I've now done my whole spiel (talking, dolphins, everything) three times, and it is so fun!!! Hopefully I'll get a video of it eventually so everyone can see it! :) Here's a picture my sister got of me asking Khyber to smile for the crowd!





Lastly, my family managed to catch me in the main tank scrubbing coral! We spend a LOT of time in our wetsuits, between vacuuming manatee, hull scrubbing the pool floors, scrubbing back pools, scrubbing coral and cleaning windows. I was glad they were able to see me scuba diving at work! (This is a pretty goofy picture of me and Nicole. haha)



Well, those are all the fun things I do onstage at The Seas!!! :)

Fun times with the fam!

Well, my family headed home yesterday, bringing my mini vacation to an end. It was pretty sad to see them leave, but we only have 2 more months here, so I'll be back in California soon! It is hard to believe though that we have been here for over 4 months already! Time sure has flown! Ok well back to what I did with the family!

My parents got here on Tuesday night and we went out to dinner. On Wednesday morning, Nicole got in after taking the red eye to Orlando. She was a bit tired, so we let her nap and then we all headed to the Magic Kingdom! None of them had ever been to Disney World before, so it was pretty exciting, but they weren't too jazzed since Magic Kingdom is basically like Disneyland. (How rude.) I was able to get them into the parks for free while they were here because they give employees a certain number of free tickets, and I can always get in free, so it was nice (for my parents) not to have to pay for anyone to go to the parks.



On Thursday, we headed to Animal Kindgom first thing in the morning! They liked this park since it is pretty different than anything we have in California. We went on most of the rides, and on the various animal treks. I think their favorite ride was the Kilimanjaro Safaris, since we went on that twice. They were the most legit safaris I had ever been on because there were soooo many animals out! The baby elephant, baby giraffe, baby rhino, a lion standing up and being regal, and a baby gorilla!







After Animal Kingdom we met up with my Uncle Chris who drove up from West Palm Beach. We headed over to The Seas at Epcot! My parents, sister and uncle had a meet and greet with one of our dolphins Khyber which was really fun, and I got to show them some stuff that I have learned! :) Afterwords, we did the Dive Quest program, where you get to scuba dive in the main tank at the Seas! I hadn't been in the main area since the first week of work, so I thought it was fun. Everyone else had a blast too since you can get right up close to sharks, sea turtles and rays!



I had to work on Friday, so I let my family into Epcot again and they wandered around doing random stuff and stopped by to see me doing my thing at work. I had to work on Saturday too, so my sister just around my apt while my parents headed to my uncle's house. On Sunday, Nicole and I woke up early and headed over to Islands of Adventure so that she could go to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter! It was waaaayyy more crowded than the last time I went, but still fun. We managed to do all the major Harry Potter rides right around 9am, so we barely had to wait in any lines for those rides. We even hit up all the other islands and rides, and were basically done and ready to go home by 3 pm!



After we left Islands of Adventure, we went to go check in at the Animal Kingdom Lodge! I really wanted to stay at one of the fancy Disney resorts while I was here, so I managed to convince my dad to stay at the Lodge for the last night of their trip! I got a 50% employee discount, but it was still very pricey, but totally worth it! The room overlooked the savanna, and there were animals right outside of our room! It was a really fun way to conclude the family vacation! :)





Well, now I better go get ready for work! Working the 10-7 shift today (ick).

Family!!!!!!!

My parents are coming tonight and my sister is getting here at the crack of dawn tomorrow! Yaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyy! :)