Monterey

We have finally made it to California!!! So excited to be here. Just got in yesterday, and met with Marc's aunt and uncle for lunch, and then spent the afternoon in Monterey. The aquarium is great; I was super excited to see the otters (both wild and at the aquarium). And since they are on the coast, we also saw wild sea lions and harbor seals :) You can see the last photo; the aquarium is right on the water, and even have a tidepool theatre where you can go out and see what naturally washes in. The aquarium was really awesome for their jellies, they have massive exhibits! The octopus, squid, and cuttlefish were also super cool. And they had a little loggerhead turtle who kept playing with his reflection, very cute! A great start to our trip here :)

Des Moines fun :)

Our trip in the US is going so quickly! Had a fantastic visit back home in colorado, and a sunny visit in Florida. And while Marc finishes up at a zoo conference in Florida, I am back in Iowa/Illinois :) First stop was Des Moines, where I visited the Blank Park Zoo (really really nice little zoo). Had never seen how ugly/cute baby flamingos were before!!! Also visited the Great Ape Trust / Iowa Primate Learning Sanctuary. The group has had trouble in the past, but has a fantastic new group of staff, volunteers and board of directors and seems to be a top notch facility now. I have never seen a nicer facility for primates, I was so impressed! I would be very lucky to get to work with them in the future.

Another Edinburgh Zoo visit

Had another very enjoyable visit to the Edinburgh Zoo, continueing to explore the possibility of doing some future work with them. Might work with this guy come next year!

Scottish Referendum, the results are in...

...and Scotland has decided to stay in the union. Personally, I think this is a good decision and in the nations best interests given the economy and uncertainties of the future.  And despite the no result, hopefully England will follow through with the promises that were made for more devolution of power back to Scotland, which should help.

Either way, it is so very encouraging that overwhelming numbers of voters came out and were engaged in the campaign, and that the result is being received peacefully despite the near even vote.

Seal training fall 2014

This past week we had a new batch of student recruits go through seal training basics. Very promising bunch, we will get them started with the seals next week :)

Kitty training for asthma meds

This upcoming week we have a new batch of students starting up in my animal training class. We try to branch out and discuss all the awesome ways training can be used, and have a nice example from my critters at home.

One of our cats has asthma, so over the past month we've trained her to let us put her nose in a tube to breath in the medicine. Now that she has figured that with cooperation tasty food is involved, she purrs when we bring it out. Happy cat :)

End of Summer Fireworks

Haven't been posting much. For the next month I will be buckling down, hiding in a cave and writing my thesis.

But Sunday night was lovely as it marked the end of the international festival, and pretty much the end of summer. And the way we celebrated was a delicious veggie dinner at David Bonn, and then fireworks :)

They put on a 45 min firework display synchronized with classical music. They opened with Ride of the Valkeries, pretty cool to see with fireworks. And we watched from a carpark behind the castle, which resulted in the display looking as though the castle was on fire, or at other times that the royalty were actively launcing bombs from the castle at the city. Either way, pretty cool.

And now back to work!