Week 2!

Wow.....my legs are tired.

Yesterday was my first day, and I had an orientation and was trained on one station. Today, the education department was short staffed. So.... I was on my one station ALL DAY! I worked in the No Bone Zone, which is an invertebrate touch tank. I have learned a lot about various sea stars, anemones, and sea cucumbers. Pretty cool, but somewhat monotonous! The cucumbers are my favorite! They have an appearance that seems somewhat hard, rocky, or prickly, but they are actually extremely squishy. It's fun to watch children think that they are touching something hard, only to find it's more like a big marshmallow.

It's funny--I can't stop the inquiry-based educator-ness! Right before a kid would touch the cucumber, I would ask them if they thought it was hard or soft, and then why. They would almost always say that it looked hard because of it's spines. Then when they felt it and freaked out when it as squishy, I would ask why they thought it would have spines if it was squishy. They would usually correctly say that the "fake" spines acted to scare of predators... very cool!

Week 1

So this week's post won't be very exciting, since I haven't started my internship yet…

I was supposed to leave Hawaii yesterday, but my plane was delayed by 24 hours, so I am leaving today instead! I have been corresponding via email with my superiors at the Florida Aquarium. There is some confusion as to which day I am starting--I have two different emails going. One is with the person in charge of all volunteers, while the other is with the person in charge of the education department. Each person gave me a different start date… So I am straightening all of that out right now. It look like I'll more than likely be starting on May 27th. 

I read the intern contract for the education internship. Last year, when I worked in husbandry, I jumped right into everything. I was following my biologist around, learning as I did, and I was doing things on my own the very first week. The new internship contract for education says that I may be subject to up to 6 weeks of training… 6 WEEKS!!! That's a lot of weeks!

Other than that, I am really excited about starting next week!