So today was pretty sad for everyone at the center. Two of the students had to leave for misconduct reasons and one of the interns, Antonio, got a job offer that he had to leave for immediately. So our male population was practically cut in half and we lost some pretty cool people. I'm not sure what it's going to be like without them.

Just to make the day even better, we spent the morning sifting through trash and recyclables at Brady's recycling center. Trashbags full of plastics and cardboard were stacked almost to the ceiling in some places. It hadn't been gone through in two months I think so we had to go around picking up everything that spilled and pulling things outside the building for a truck to collect. I'm really starting to get the "plastic kills" thing, especially here where there's soo much of it. And it's so easy to just refill a reusable bottle instead of buying water bottles. Another thing I've learned is that if you have to buy something and have the option, glass is easier to recycle than plastic. And I'm going to make an effort to carry reusable shopping bags from now on. Puerto San Carlos is absolutely covered in trash, the vast majority of it being plastic. It never degrades, it just fragments into small pieces that hang around forever.

After we got back we had a couple of classes, including a discussion in AJ's class of a book on saving the gray whale and a discussion in Spanish on love in the age of the internet. It quickly devolved into what you value in someone and if you believe in love at first sight. Martin's also been starting each Spanish class out with a song in Spanish, usually by some pop singer. Today was Nelly Furtado, who actually sings Spanish fairly well. There was a mad rush around dinner time to turn in a report for Vero on lobster habitat. Then after dinner we watched a documentary on gray whales and the hazards they face on their migrations.