"Is that your real hair?" - Sea Day and 90s Prom

I have to admit, I'm surprised we are alive after yesterday. Not only did we finish data collection on Friday (no small feat), we had the busiest Saturday of all time. But how can a day go badly if it starts out with petting a sea turtle? Answer: it can't. And yes I did pet a sea turtle on my dive, it was a hawksbill.

Photographic evidence by my lovely roommate Juli

Yesterday afternoon we had Sea Day at the center, and spent most of the morning prepping. Organisms were collected, touch tanks set up, signs made, and costumes donned (no joke) in preparation for the invasion of children and their families coming to learn about the ocean. I was stationed at the mangrove station, obviously, and we had a baby mangrove tree, a sea cucumber, a sea biscuit, a sea urchin, a clam, and my favorite: upside-down jellyfish! The kids loved it, and got a huge kick out of learning about all the animals. We also had a live turtle, and a SCUBA demonstration!

Mangrove team, looking super psyched

My babies! So beautiful!

Learning all about seagrass ecosystems

Quality photo ops all around

So Sea Day was a great success, and of course culminated in cake. I believe everything in life should involve an elaborately decorated cake, it is a positive addition to any gathering. And yes, a fair amount of the girls asked me if my hair was real, and were then extremely doubtful when I said that it was! They pulled on it to make sure. 

Then in the evening we prepared for...90s Prom! This is not a joke. Throughout the semester we've had this joke Sigma Turks frat thing going, and have had many "pledge events." This one was obviously the best. We drew dates out of a hat, had to ask them creatively, and then come up with matching 90s costumes. Given our limited supplies, this was actually one of the most impressive groups of costumes I have ever seen. My wonderful data Aurora and I were Beanie Babies, and our costumes were pretty sweet. We also had Powerpuff Girls, green slime, Friends, Mary-Kate and Ashley, and lots of others. Prom was a major success, but now we are all exhausted. 

You bet there are poems inside those tags

The whole crew: can you guess who everybody is?

So after a weekend full of fun, we're going to have to buckle down to work on our final presentations and papers. I have to start wading through mountains of numbers related to jellyfish, and trying to figure out if those numbers actually mean anything at all. And then write a paper about it. And make a presentation about it. And give said presentation. And relish my last week and a half in this amazing place by snorkeling and diving whenever possible. And hopefully sleep somewhere in there too. Yeah, we'll see how that goes...