Last day at Mote

Today was my last day working at Mote. Tear. But, it was boat day, which is my favorite day, so it was an awesome last day!! This is where we take the kids snorkeling on boat today.


This is Becky, Molly and I in the Merc classroom. Notice Becky and I are sporting our super cool bottle cap necklaces that Karsen made as a going away present for us!


This is me and Christine, one of our high school volunteers. She is from Cincinatti and left for there this morning. Her birthday is tomorrow.



This is Karsen and I. She is a high school intern and she is the coolest. She made me a paperdoll of herself to remember her by! haha! Plus, the cool necklace I am wearing. She will be a senior in high school this fall and wants to go to Boston University when she graduates.



This is one last picture of us. I'm not sure where Demi is/why she isn't in this picture. But it's Becky in light blue, Veronica in dark blue and Chelsey in the red dirt color shirt. I'm going to miss you girls!! :(
Chelsey and Demi and Veronica both have like 3 or 4 more weeks. Becky's last day was also Friday and she is leaving for Missouri on Monday.

Mote Interns Pictures!!

From the left, Karsen in blue, Demi in the back in white, Veronica in black, Chelsey is behind me, Becky is in front of me in white and Kiley is in green.




Here are a few pictures we took yesterday of us education interns.

We've all been one big, happy family this summer. I'm going to miss them, especially since tomorrow is my very last day... :(

Here's a few pictures from my week in the keys. I don't have very many. I was just having so much fun and it was so awesome that I usually completley forgot to take pictures. I need to get in touch with a few of the girls because they were always taking pictures! haha.
The top one is a low-key private resort island that is super exclusive and someday, I will vacay there.
The one below that is on the Mini Bus, or MB as we called it all week. (All the kids spoke in acronyms and everything had an acronym all week! it was hilarious)
Below that is a mangrove tunnel we kayaked through. It was beautiful!!!
The last one is at the dolphin research center.
It was a great week and I probably won't have the time or energy to tell all the tales but hopefully I can snag a few more pictures, especially the underwater ones from the campers.

Manatee Feeding

Wednesday we got to feed the manatees. It was super cool. They are so HUGE! I mean, you can see in the tank but when you get up close, you can really, really see. They also have no front teeth because they are vegetarians so they can just eat right out of your hand. These are 2 of the 6 trained manatees in the world. We fed them cut up apples and carrots and they get romaine lettuce heads tossed in the water.

PS: The trainer told me I had to put a disclaimer: This is at Mote Marine Laboratory and it is illegal to approach/feed/mess with a wild manatee! They are an endangered species and their populations are in danger.

Myakka

Sunday, I finished my last 2 dives for my open-water certification and I'm now a certified diver. I was amazed at how easy it all was. Then, Patrick and I went to Myakka State Park which is about a 20 min. drive east of Sarasota. It's so close but it feels like a whole different world. Definitely something worth seeing.

Everglades

This weekend was super fun! I'm so tired from it all. We did so many things. Here's a summary/the short version since I don't want everyone to have to read a super long, long post.

Saturday morning: 9am went to dive shop for my first open water dive. My instructor's name was Sven...he's absolutely hilarious! From Germany, pro-triathlete. The picture on the right is us diving at Venice Beach. We're that super tiny little blob far out in the water. It was a long swim out there. We did 2, 20 minute dives to 20 feet. I made it through all the skills really quickly and didn't have any problems. It was really fun. After my dives, it was close to 1pm so Patrick and I jumped in the car and made our way southeast to Marie's. It took 3 hours to get there but we made a 30 min. stop in Naples for food/free slurpees from 7-11. This is a picture of a swamp buggy on the left and on the right is Jimmy and Marie's cabin:


This is a picture of riding in the buggy.It's so much fun!! You get all muddy and it's a really rough ride but it's pretty country.

These are pictures from the ride. These are the buggy trails they drive on. This one below is a lake that was made when the gov. decided to make an emergency landing runway for a super sonic jet that's 3 mi. long and so they dug out to pile up the land for the runway.



This is right in front of their cabin. We barbequed burgers and ate inside in the a/c since the bugs are at their worst right about now. Patrick really enjoyed the trip and had a lot of fun he said. We left rather late at like 11:30 so we didn't get home til 2 but it was alright, I slept most of the trip back once we got back on 75 so I wouldn't be too tired for my dive the next morning.

Sarasota area beach day

I worked a half day and Patrick and I toured the area. First, we went to Siesta Key Beach. (above). It has the whitest sand of all the beaches here locally.
These 2 pictures are from Anna Maria Island Beach. We went there to watch the sunset. It was beautiful!

Here's another from Siesta.