Of Sea Turtles and Sharks: Evening Activities

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Evening Activities

Today I was scheduled for aquarium and chumming but the weather turned nasty in the afternoon and chum was canceled. Instead, we helped clean out one of the freezers where we store bait for chum and trapping trips. Since aquarium was the same set of duties as always (feeding, cleaning, water tests) and the freezers were the most disgusting things you could possibly imagine (you never, ever, ever want to smell dead, frozen whale and the smell lingers), I'm going to tell about something I realize I've left out so far.

Every evening there are activities that the interns can join:

-Monday nights are movies. The movies always vary based on what people are interested in that night and what people have on their computers.

-Tuesdays are trivia. We draw on the collective random knowledge bases of this whole group of biologists to answer questions about what cotton fabric is used to make curtains and dresses and was named after the city of Mosul, where is the only place that allows ATM transactions in Latin, and who discovered Australia.

-Wednesday nights are bingo. Awards for winning are cake so competition is fierce.

-Thursday nights are left open in case people want to go eat at a local restaurant that offers half price on Thursday nights.

-Friday nights are braai. Braai is a South African term for barbeque. There is an entire small dining room on campus for braaiing and it turns into a lengthy event of food and company. I'll have to remember to get a picture of it this week and post just about that; braaiing is a big deal in South Africa and possibly even more so among the interns here.

Mondays through Thursdays, we also have presentations from the directors or grad students about various research projects. On a couple occasions, we've also watched documentaries that Oceans has helped make. Oh, also, the updated Walls of Fame for free-diving were posted. I made both lists: 11th in static and tied at 1st for dynamic!