Island Hair

Yes. I have island hair. And yes, it is awesome. For those of you who don't know what island hair is...my hair is starting to curl slightly from the ocean water. Finally, a little body! Although I do feel like I will forever have pruny fingers with the amount of time I've spent in the water over the last few days. I'll give you a little recap of life since Monday.

Mary and I got up on Monday morning at 5 and left Riverside at 6 in order to make sure we made it to the boat at 8:30. And if it hadn't been for the carpool lanes, we would've missed the boat (even with it leaving well over an hour late). Anyway, we enjoyed a breakfast of yogurt and tabbouleh in the car...found my parking spot and made it out to the boat in plenty of time. 

On the way over to Catalina, we saw dolphins swimming on the side of the boat, and we also passed a buoy with a bunch of California Sea Lions around it. And then we got to Catalina. [Commence chaotic afternoon.] Since the boat was so late, we dumped our stuff and jumped into labs. I was shadowing Fran with the other "trainees" and we started Bird lab. This lab includes a kayak around Indian Rock...

 ...which started out great. But, we had a couple stragglers, and so the other trainees and I were sent to help them along. One of the kids I was trying to help got too tired to paddle, and he kept drifting farther and farther away from the group. So after trying to encourage him to paddle and having no way to get anyone to help since I had no radio, I ended up towing him over halfway back to the group. And that is not easy when you are paddling against the current with a huge drag behind you....I had no idea how to lash him to my kayak, so he was just holding on to the back handle, forming a T with our kayaks. Fran finally came over and as he was going to lash the boy to my kayak, mine happened to flip, thus dumping me into 53 degree salty ocean water. Ugh. I spent the rest of the day/night freezing. I seriously felt like an icicle. 

Yesterday was better. We started out with squid dissection, and then headed back into the water for a fish lab snorkel. This was also my first time snorkeling (what a week for firsts...not my fave...) my mask was a little loose and kept getting water in it, which was a total downer. But I did get to see some sweet fish. We then got to stay dry for the rest of the day. We also got a heater in our cabin, so it isn't 40 degrees in there at night anymore. :) These kids were really tough to work with though. We had 107 kids from 5 different schools within a charter system, and they seriously would not shut up. Every time there was a pause in the lesson (and even when there wasn't) they were jabbering away. We yelled at them quite a few times, and they didn't care. They were also pretty disrespectful. I told a couple students to hurry, and they just looked at me and kept walking slowly. Ugh. I wanted to slap them all. Thankfully, there were a couple kids that made it worth it, and they are gone now. Which means I get to start my real job tomorrow!! Although I must say that I did enjoy this week's activities. We went on another snorkel today and I saw a lot more fish. 

Anyway, that's about all I've got. I'll leave you all with a few pictures that I've managed to snap so far on our minimal breaks. Love you all!

View of the courtyard and ocean from the dining hall patio

Beach with the kayaks

Whale's Tale and the ocean

Melodie, Mary and me (wearing David's hat)