Arrival

So first of all, I made it fine! We had to get up at 2:30 am to be at Philly airport at 4 for my flight at 6. Dad went to park the car and I almost missed saying goodbye to him-I was just getting waved to security when he made it. I managed to sleep (or at least doze) through my first flight to Dallas. I missed the first mini shuttle to my terminal because I thought I was getting on the wrong train. The people on it must have been pretty amused when I got on, looked around, got off, and then stood right in front of them while they left. My Dallas to Guadalajara was fairly simple, it was on a smaller jet and I ended up getting the very first seat-extra leg room! Going through Guadalajara airport was an experience though. They funneled us straight through Immigration, where I got my visa but since I had a connecting flight my luggage was checked to La Paz, so I got to go through a faster line where they just checked my carry on luggage. All this took me about 20 minutes to figure out, all when I only had 1 hr 40 min to get set for my connection. I managed to communicate in Spanish, since most of the airport workers I talked to didn't know a lot of English. I ended up walking outside to get to my next terminal, the weather was fantastic. I met up with three other SFS girls at the Guadalajara gate. Got onto another jet (which we had to walk across tarmac to get to) that took us to Culiacan and then La Paz. Somehow my luggage (and Lindsey's, the girl I was carrying things for) didn't get lost. And somehow I think I managed to skip customs in the mixup between Guadalajara and La Paz-each assumed I'd be checked at the other, but I just walked right past the customs officers at La Paz. Then we had a four hour drive to the field station, a good portion of which I slept through.

The center is essentially on the beach, and all the buildings are white with thatched roofs (pictures to come once it stops raining). Our cabin fits four people and has a lofted bed with room underneath it with a desk and shelves. We have 17 students and I think the center can hold 30, so I don't think any of the cabins are full. I managed to get unpacked last night in about an hour which was a little anticlimactic considering how long it took to pack everything.

Today we got up and had breakfast-there were tortillas, beans and scrambled eggs, which most of us combined, as well as cereal and fruit. Then we had a guest lecture by J Nichols, who basically started the whole sea turtle conservation movement. He was advised not to work with sea turtles because they were too far gone, and he wouldn't get enough data for a PhD thesis. He was the first person to track sea turtle movement and found that they travel 7,000 miles across the Pacific in one year. He also got us thinking on how much trash and plastics we put into the ocean. After his talk we had a tour of the center, a rules and policies meeting and a risk management meeting. At this point we've probably played at least 5 name games, and I think I've got everyone down. We were supposed to do a tour of San Carlos today but since it's raining a lot of places will be closed and a walking tour would be miserable anyway.