Shipping Up To Boston

Yikes! Almost 2 weeks since my last post..whoops! But its alright, everyone can relax now because I am finally updating! Between caring for a sick whale and still managing to take care of the other whales, work still has been keeping me super busy. I literally have been working, eating, and sleeping with an occasional break thrown in there! They just switched up my schedule and changed my days off. So I worked 7 days in a row and am now finally enjoying my weekend! With all that has been going on with Inuk, I still am pressing on with the internship and learning behaviors on the girls. So far this week, I have learned station spins, low vocals, chirps, and melon shake. Melon shake is one of my favorites so far. I will be learning some more behaviors this coming Thursday! It's so cute, after every behavior Kela does, she makes this 'yay! i did it' vocal! And Naku just makes vocals all the time, especially during after session tongue rubs. All the routine work is just becoming second nature and I can get them done in no time now.

Last Monday, another intern and myself went and checked out the good ol city of Boston (or Bahston). It was about a 1.5 hour drive from New London to get to a subway station known as the Boston T. From there it was like another 20 minute ride into downtown Boston. Along the way into Boston, we passed Fenway park -- home to the Red Sox. I would love to check out one of their games while I'm here! The city of Boston was really neat -- lots of really old brick buildings. It was not the typically big city you think of (like Chicago). Its not as tall and you can walk majority of it in no time. We did the typical tourist trap of walking the Freedom Trail. It basically took you through all of downtown Boston to all the different historical places. We got to see Paul Reveres house, the church where the lantern was hung to warn of the British coming, old burial grounds, the site of the Boston Massacre, and other places. It took us through different neighborhoods like a Pub alley and little Italy. We stopped at Quincy Market where they have different food vendors lined up and down the building. They had every type of food imaginable and I tried a canolli for the first time -- delicious! We went across the harbor into Charlestown where we saw Bunker Hill. They have a monument with 294 steps to the top. I thought of the brilliant idea to climb up all those stairs to see the top (spiral staircase nonetheless). By the time we reached the top both of us were huffing and puffing and my legs could no longer move. But the view from the top was worth it. You could see all of the Boston skyline and the inner harbor. We walked back to downtown and had dinner at the place where Cheers was filmed -- the place where everyone supposedly knows your name, but they didn't know mine. By the end of the day, our feet were aching from a good walking trip in Boston! There are alot of places we missed that I will have to go back and see!

Also during this past week I survived my first Nor-easter! These are the big storms that occur in the Northeastern part of the US (hence the name). They were predicting about a foot or more of snow to fall in the area. It was weird to see everyone kind of freaking out about this snow storm. Everything began to close way before the storm even came. Back in Michigan, its not uncommon for us to get lots of snow and snowstorms. And they tend to cancel things as the storm hits or after. Here it was a little bit different and it probably didn't help that the DC/Baltimore area was getting hammered with snow. Everyone was closing up shops the day before and stashing up on supplies. The aquarium was declared closed the day before too. The storm finally arrived and hit was pretty heavy, thick snow that was falling. I shoveled the beach on the exhibit and 5 minutes later you couldn't even tell I shoveled. It was nice to see a good snowstorm -- reminded me alot of back home :) Driving back home was a real treat. I was averaging about 30 down the highway and since I live on a hill, I had to gun it up an unplowed street. I thought I was going to get stuck a couple times but I made it back safe and sound! The go figure the next day it was 37 degrees and all the snow began to melt.

Since its Fat Tuesday I'm off to go find a yummy paczki!