English Lessons

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Day 3 in Tenerife. There's about 13 volunteers here now, so we work on a rotation, about 8 people out on the boats and 5 at the house/research room. Sadly, today is not a boat day for me, so I'm at the computer researching sea turtles. Yesterday was the first day that everyone was here, so we did an all day training and information day to find out about what we would be doing and what the foundation does. A lot of the work we do when we're not on the boats will be compiling information about endangered species and work that is being done to protect them, as well as coming up with educational material for tourists. Ed, our boss, is very dedicated to his work and is starting to send teams all over the world to help with conservation projects. It's probably a good thing that I'm already committed to this med school thing, otherwise I'd probably decide I want to go live in Sri Lanka and save the elephants. It's cool to be working with a project like this, we hear so much about all the horrible things that are going on in with our environment and its easy to feel helpless. This at least feels like I'm making some sort of a difference.
The town we are staying in is called Arona, it's up the hill a bit from the beach, which is nice because there are no tourists around. I went for a run this morning (despite a questionably swollen ankle) it's a beautiful place to run, great views of the ocean, and actual hills! It's fun living with such a big group of people. I'm the only American, just about everyone else is British, which makes communication interesting, I can't believe how different the same language can be! I'm getting to work on my Spanish while I'm here as well, only one other girl in the house speaks it, so we get to attempt to be the translators whenever we're out. I have managed to order everyone's food from a restaurant, get cold medicine from the pharmacy, and convince some women to sign our anti-whaling petition. I have also been recruited to teach the rest of the group how to surf (being from California and all).
Tomorrow I get to be back out on the boat again, then its the weekend! We have a ton of activites that we can do, I think I'll be able to get some diving and hiking in this weekend. Next weekend there's going to be a hiking and camping trip up the volcano that sounds amazing, I can't wait!
That's about it for now, back to the turtles!
Music: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah: "Yankee Go Home", Neutral Milk Hotel: "King of Carrot Flowers"

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Comments

[anonymous]

jen you are so lucky...it sounds so rewarding on so many different levels and its only been three days!