Hola!

Right now I am sitting outside on the patio at the SFS Center with the other students (there are 16 of us total) watching Finding Nemo on a projector on the side of one of the cabanas. We thought it was appropriate for the first night of program since we will be studying marine life. Tomorrow the some of the teachers are going out sea turtle monitoring. We don't get to go tomorrow because we just got here and haven't gone through all of orienation yet. We have to monitor twice a month...so we should have 5 more opportunities for playing with sea turtles. : )

Our first night here we spent in a hotel in La Paz so that we didn't have to drive after am already long day of of travel. Today we drove to 4 hours across the desert from the bay side of the Baja Penisula to the Pacific side where we are staying outside of a small fishing town called Puerto San Carlos. The drive was beautiful but pretty uneventful...basically 4 hours in the with nothing but desert. We drove on one two lane road the whole way only passing through one town other than San Carlos....there weren't even any crossroads other than maybe three dirt roads. The most excitement of the drive was the military checkpoint, police checkpoint(it's weird being somewhere where we are targeted by police)....and some sweet spanish music.

At the SFS Center we got settled in and had some presentations about school polices and risk management stuff....lots of wildlife to watch out for (sting rays, bugs, black widows, rattle snakes, scorpians....and more)

Also the food is awesome. Fish and frided zucchini tacos. yummm!!!

Thats it for right now. I'm exhausted.

<3

Maddie

P.S. the weather is gorgous....it was 70 and sunny today.