Casillas

Monday, July 30, 2012 : Well I ran… cried a while and then took a shower. Since the water hurt the top part of my foot, I assumed my food had enough of my bull. Apparently, I should give it a rest. Mom’s frustrated with me, but I took all day off and RICEd it the whole time. Tuesday, July 31, 2012: Jeff’s computer was occupied today, so we ran out of stuff half way through the day. I went to find Ashley to find something to do, but when I got back there, she was out. I did run into Matt when I went to her office. He gave me a lovely job. I got to organize the library outside his office. Sometimes I really like working alone in a quiet room. I left to ... read more

Monday, July 9, 2012 Dolphin survey today! It was awesome! We got to do salinity testing, red tide sampling, and descriptions for each dolphin find. I’m not going to lie… I had a lot of practice looking for bugs with Nick, so I’ve got to say I was doing alright at spotting them. Tuesday, July 10, 2012 We went to the library today to look up more Bradenton specific information. Unfortunately, they didn’t have much, but they did have really great children’s books that helped a ton. I think we’ll go back again soon. The library also had a book store. I’d like to volunteer there, but I’m pretty busy as is. The bookstore had paperbacks for 50 cents and hard covers for one dollar. It was awesome. I wanted to stay longer, but we were ... read more

Monday:Matt picked us up because of the storm this morning. He took us to the shore of the Manatee River before we went in. It was lovely I have some pictures. There was no shore where we walked up – we were standing on the rocks that separate the shore and the parking lot. It was awesome. When we came in we searched the walls for water stains. It turns out that concrete block walls that surround the outside of the building can have water seep through. It looks like mold bubbling beneath a layer of paint and above the stone bricks. The tissue paper covering the items in storage can pick up the moisture and it can ruin the artifacts. Our building also has a roof that has rubberized layer above a couple of foam ... read more

Monday: Today began with chatting with everyone, getting some more direction, and some more research on the butterfly garden specifically in our office – I don’t know if I mentioned this, but we – college interns- have our own office. It’s like an ice box, and I love it. Matt ate with us – I think joining around food helps humanize people. That is, I feel that even though I think he’s incredibly smart and our boss, he’s approachable and does what he can to make us feel at home. We left for another field trip after a couple hours of more researching. We went to Emerson’s point, and hiked around a bit. Then we made our way to Terra Ceia Bay. After we went to the mouth of the manatee river we came back and ... read more

We met Matthew Woodside and Jeff Rodgers about the overview of the internship today. We got to touch Snooty! I was afraid to touch his skin because it looked like parts were ruffled up like it was coming off. His snout has bristles on them that were a bit scary, but it just felt like rubber bristles. He has a triangle shaped body because his musculature, from pulling himself up on the side of his pools. Turns out he lived in really shallow water for the first part of his life. Fortunately, he was able to get the big deep aquarium on the second floor, but he apparently didn’t like it right away. He needs the shallow ends that surround the feeding area to ease into the pool. Also, he is the only manatee that can ... read more