One of the bad things about San Carlos (besides the lack of internet that means I can't update when I want to!) is it's making me into a weather wuss. I don't think it's been any colder than 60, but every time it dips below maybe 65 we're all complaining about how cold it is. I guess it doesn't help that I only have two sweatshirts and one pair of close-toed shoes that aren't awful to wear in the sand (bad call there). And these buildings aren't exactly built to keep in heat, so there's a constant breeze.

I got up early this morning to do yoga that Brady leads. I don't think I've said much about Brady yet, but she's the Student Affairs Manager and is in charge of us students in general-our happiness, our safety, our schedules, etc. I don't know if its part of her job or not, but she's essentially in charge of community relations. She's been here for three years and knows a lot of the people in town and tries to get them involved in what we're doing. She's essentially like a camp counselor with some admin powers. Anyway, this was one of the only times I've done yoga and I remembered that I do in fact like it a lot. I felt really loose and calmly energized (versus bouncing off the walls energized) afterwards.

We had a bunch of classes, including Coastal Ecology with Eduardo. I really like Eduardo, he's probably in his late 30s and Mexican but he did his PhD in New Zealand so his English is awesome. We did spend a lot of time going over currents and weather patterns, which was less than exciting. We also had Principles of Resource Management with Vero (short for Veronica), who's a petite Mexican woman with a strong accent. In class we've been talking about the agencies that govern fisheries and how fisheries work. Lunch was sandwiches with really awesome bread and assorted toppings. Brady, the student affairs manager, said that the cooks never believe her when she tells them that we're happy with just sandwiches.

We also got an intro to the directed research topics. The three professors (plus Gustavo, center director) have a total of 7 research projects for 2-3 students to work on and specialize a bit. Vero's are mostly concerned with fishery management for different crustaceans (blue crab, lobster and something else), AJ has socioeconomic projects like how changing ___ will affect the people of San Carlos and vice versa, and Eduardo has the sea turtle and whale projects. I'm not really sure which I want to do. I already have a fair amount of traditional ecology field work so I kind of want to do something different with Vero or AJ. But on the other hand, Eduardo's stuff is so cool, and he seems like he'd be great to work with! And I do truly like ecology a lot. But then again, we'll all work on all the projects at some point so it's not like I wouldn't see any whales. I would also feel a little guilty doing the whales or sea turtles because I know there's a bunch of people who really really want to work with them and who came here just to do that. I could get into the less charismatic species and projects, like mangroves or the rock lobster. Gustavo said they try to get everyone in at least their 2nd choice, so I may just write down my top three and say "I don't have an order" and leave it to chance a bit.

For Spanish class they broke us into two levels, and whichever level isn't in class gets to have free time. Today all the Spanish I girls went to Brady's friend who's a seamstress to get clothing tailor-made. The rest of us will be going in a few weeks, I'm soo excited for that! The only clothing I've ever had made just for me were Halloween costumes when I was little. I think I want to get yoga pants and a dress, but I can't decide what I want the dress to be like yet.

In Spanish 2 we had a debate on the influence of mass communication, with my group saying it was bad. Unfortunately it's kind of hard to argue with "without books and journals we wouldn't have modern medicine." It started to get a little heated but when we left everyone was laughing and saying things like "I don't actually believe it's ok to destroy cultures." It's hard trying to come up with arguments for something that you may not believe, and furthermore arguments that you can actually figure out how to say. For example, Martin didn't think there's even a word for "Westernization" in Spanish.