A day with the sea lions

I had quite the experience the other day. Now as interns we get to help with the sea lions just a bit. This is b/c they can be pretty dangerous, but also b/c the sea lions in our area are in training. These means we have two young sea lions, also two older sea lions that came have minimal training (or had good training years and years ago). The thing that made the day cool was that I got to help and interact with all of them. With Leona Kai (3yr old) they are working with her to be less skittish and nervous in different environments. I got to help do A to B's with here. This means the trainer sends her to me, I re-enforce the behavior, and then send her back. We did this outside of the enclosure so she was ooh soo cute running back and forth in front of me. The trainers then had Wyland (2yr old) out in the pool to practice him getting use to interactions, so I got to put my hands on his back and pet him. What a squeal of delight!!! Another experience I had was with Ma'alea (older near-blind sea lion once trained), working on her interacting with people. So Azu had her give me some kisses; the funny thing about this is I was on her blind side so when Azu said kiss she didn't know where to go. Which means she once necked with me (kinda scary for me) then kissed Azu's wetsuit, and then finally got it right and kissed me on the cheek. They are also working on bringing Kamani (large older sea lion) out of the enclosure. So I got to act as a spectator so she can get use to people around.

I also got to do a sea lion interaction yesterday, these pictures are from that. Ohhh Sooo Cute...


Maukele gives me a kiss, whats with the snarl?!?


Maukele still snarling

Discombobulated

I feel all out of sorts for the past two weeks or so. I haven't been updating my blog like I use to. I guess it has come down to me trying to get things in order for Christmas, although it really doesn't feel like Christmas. I have been working on Christmas cards, getting presents bought, packaged, and ready to ship, making my Christmas letter and photo, and wishing I had all the ingredients to make my holiday ginger spice cookies :( . I have also been spending a lot of time job hunting. It is soo hard to believe the internship is going to be done with in a month, and I need to be prepared if I don't stay on at the park. I.E. looking around the island for another job hopefully using my degree and not some standard job to "get me by". The house is pretty festive now, Kyle bought a tree, I decorated stockings for all eight of us in the house. And with the help of my family I have a nicely decorated felt tree hanging in my room with "picture" ornaments of things I love. Today I even got some wrapped presents to go underneath of it until Christmas morning :) At least this year I will have something to open on Christmas morning even though it is the second one I have spent without my family.

Other than that things have been clicking along at work, at home, and out and about. I have been keeping up on updating the yahoo photos, so check those out when you get a chance. The newest additions is from the Parks Christmas party. Tons of cute photos of the interns and trainers. I hope everyone enjoys.

PS I do miss you all back in the quah. Feel free to call me when you get some time :) xoxoxo

How cute is this!!

Me and Kermie!

Aloha

The proceedings of screaming like a girl

So you know how you come across those situations where you can't help but scream like a girl? Well one of those happened at our house the other night. A rat through who knows what kind of means seem to have taken up residents in a roommates room. I go up to see what the commotion was and of course they are screaming like a girl. I trying to be the "tough kid" in the situations tell them that I will get the rat out. I also told them that most times I can handle my own but may (small chance) scream like a girl as well. Well, of course they were screaming at the slightest move of the rat. At one point I will admit I did scream like a girl, but I do have a valid reason.. The rat ran across my foot. Now who knows why we do such things in some situations where you think you are going to Mr/Miss cool. And you think you can handle it no matter what, but something catches you off guard, maybe it is peer pressure and some ungodly way catches you off guard. So just remember next time you see a rat squeal like a girl for my just so I don't feel like such a pansy.