First Day with the Navy Marine Mammal Program!

I haven't been doing a very good job of keeping this updated since I left Florida, so here's a quick overview of my past two weeks! I spent about a week at my parents house in Northern California, which was nice because I hadn't really spent a lot of time with them in the past year. Yoav came up for a few days to hang out and then drive down to San Diego with me! On our way down, we stopped at my grandparents' house in Nipomo for like an hour to see them and my great Aunt Mary. We also stopped in Santa Barbara to spend a night with Nicole, which was nice because I hadn't seen her in a long time!


For the duration of this internship, I am staying with an aunt and uncle and their kids, which is really helpful for me since the internship is unpaid. In exchange, I will be a junior soccer mom, and help pick the kids up from school and drive them to sports practices and such as necessary. :)

So today was my first day at my new internship! We started at 8 am, and did a variety of "first day" things such as get our security badges, tour the facility, paperwork and meetings. Not too exciting, but definitely neat to see where we will be working!!! The place is soooo cool, and I'm excited to get going! This whole week we still have orientations, but we are also learning our jobs for when we start our rotations next week! Starting tomorrow, I will be starting work at 6 am, meaning I will be leaving my apartment at 5 am!!! Yikes, early! So I'll need to start getting in the habit of going to bed much earlier if I'm going to be waking up at 4:30 every morning!!!

I can't take any pictures at work (since its a naval base with classified stuff and all haha) so during this internship I'll be pulling pictures off the navy marine mammal website to make my blog more festive. haha

This is an aerial view of the base where the navy marine mammal program is located! You can see all the ocean pens and the piers!



A group of young dolphins lined up and ready to work! I get to work with the youngsters for my third rotation! :)



A California sea lion on a stand for training! I am working with the sea lions for my second rotation in Feb and March! :)



It's only been one day, but I can already tell it's going to be awesome! :)