Today was the first day this week that I've done anything more than sit in class or work on my directed research paper (hence no blog posts, I hate writing a post "I wrote a lot today..."). We have three sections of our research paper due on Sunday, including a literature review which probably took the longest time as I had to find articles that applied and then read them and pull out the important parts. I wasted a lot of time looking at papers that ended up not having much to do with my project.

But anyway, we did some fun stuff today! We had two quick lectures in the morning, one from Vero on tourism and one that an intern Nicki taught on birds, mostly on the main types of birds and how to identify them. Then we got into pangas and had a bird field exercise, where we drove around the bay counting the different species we saw. I actually liked it a lot more than I thought I would, I may have the potential to become a "bird nerd" as Nicki called it. I also somehow knew all the random silhouettes she used in her powerpoint (stuff like herons, warblers, swallows). We saw the obvious ones, like gulls (no such thing as a seagull!) and brown pelicans, but we also saw Brant geese, cormorants (diving/fishing birds), 2 American Oystercatchers (largest species of shorebird), Royal Terns, lots of Magnificent Frigatebirds (which also do this and I think what Nicki decided was a Least Sandpiper which were little tiny birds on the shore. I liked birding, it seems pretty easy to get started in, and you can do it wherever you go. I may pick up a bird guide when I get home, I already have a pair of binoculars.

We were supposed to go kayaking in the mangroves for more birding after lunch, but we all decided that the water was too choppy for it to be very enjoyable. So instead we had more time to write (which I happily wasted) and are tentatively rescheduling for tomorrow afternoon. It should be fun, I've liked kayaking when we've gone, even if I'm still not very good at it.

Oh! I almost forgot to retell my April Fool's successes. I really love April Fool's day, probably too much. I got both my postdoc Rickey and my mom. I've spent probably the last three months designing my own project with Rickey for the summer, and we've gotten funding for it and everything, so I sent him an email telling him that I got offered an awesome job in Mexico for the summer and couldn't pass it up. I was already planning on doing it, then Rickey sent me the perfect entry in an email confirming my summer start date. Mom also gave me a perfect opportunity when she sent me the usual "I haven't heard from you in X days, are you ok? Are you still alive?" So of course I sent her an email that casually mentioned I had typhoid and that if it didn't get better in the next week I'd have to go home. But don't worry. I let Rickey sweat it all day, but Mom would probably have a heart attack and die after news like that so I killed it within the same email.