Environmental Shifts and Hostel Madness.

Alrighty here's a brief update for all of you.

Yesterday while I was at work, we had 12 archeology students move into the hostel. Twelve. A dozen. 8 girls and 4 guys- plus an assortment of teacher's assistants, etc. So every bed in the girls' room is full, and I'm not completely sure how I feel about it yet. They're not very quiet in the mornings, so when I come back you may find me sleeping like a rock! On the plus side, most of them seem really nice- so hopefully that keeps up for the next 5 weeks. Also, the professor (Dr. Brown) said that we could eat with them at nights if we want to, which would be amazing. So there's no complaining on that end of the spectrum. It will be interesting to see how I deal with no longer having a place to be by myself though. However, our bedroom last night was like a tomb- everyone was on their laptops or reading and I felt terrified to even make a sniffling noise. We'll see how that goes.

Anyways, yesterday at work was awesome! The first part of the day went as normal, so a lot of cleaning and helping the trainers suit up guests, etc. I fed Challenger again. He's growing on me quite a bit. Soon I'll be able to do the turtle talk to guests- which is intimidating as all heck! But right at the end of the day myself and Chelsea and Annie (two other interns) were watching the trainers do a session and they told us to grab masks and come down to the docks. I was SO excited because I hadn't done a swim session with the dolphins yet. So we got to get in the water and swim to a wall to help Bailey and Marley practice their serpentine swim behavior. Basically that means guests swim forward and they serpentine in the water in front of the guests so that they can watch them swim. We did that across the pool 4 times, and that was awesome. Then after, they gated the dolphins out and we got to dive in again and swim around in the front pool. After we climbed out, the trainers asked us to do an environmental shift. Essentially what an environmental shift is changing how we act. We often use it to gate the animals in a different way. (Gate is shifting them from pool to pool through underwater gates.) So environmental shift requires us to run yelling like banshees up and down the docks. The dolphins get so excited and start fast swimming along with us and they get rewarded really well for it. It's also amusing for us and I'm sure it's really, er, funny to watch.

Anyways, Liz and I are going into Hamilton today to go grocery shopping, and then we'll be headed to the beach afterwards. I hope you all have a relaxing day! :)

Kels