It’s hard to believe, but the semester is halfway over! Today was our last day of midterm exams, and tomorrow we all leave to go on spring break! Last week was pretty busy, I went turtle monitoring in Los Cuervos one of the nights and caught an 115 lbs. female green turtle who we named Aretha. I also did an osprey behavioral observation for 7 hours with Libby and Stacy the intern. I did a group presentation about Rodolfo Montiel Flores who was a Goldman prize winner in Mexico for his activism against logging in the 90s. We also went to Consti again and helped teach English to teenagers and adults at the institution there. The highlight of the week was getting to see….a GRAY WHALE PLACENTA! We got a call at the center on Monday morning saying that a placenta had washed up on the beach in Lopez Mateos, so a bunch of us went for the day to check it out. It was very large and it jiggled when i poked it. It smelled a lot too. It was pretty interesting considering it’s late in the season for calves to be born, however there were reports of a small calf sighting in the same area that week.

Tomorrow (Weds.) I will be getting on a bus at 7:30 AM bound for La Paz, and from there I am traveling with 8 others to Todos Santos, which is about 1.5 hours north of Cabo San Lucas. We are camping on Los Cerritos beach for the night and a couple of us are going to try to take surfing lessons the next day. On Thursday, Mom, Dad, and Jake are coming to Todos Santos to spend the day, and then they are going to take me back with them to Cabo. My plan is to sleep either in their hotel room, or in one of the varios rooms where other friends will be staying. I am hoping to do a Discovery SCUBA dive and spend some time sailing! No matter what I end up doing, it will be nice to take a little break from “the compound.”