Another great week in Vancouver, we began training this week. I got to give some hand signals for the whales and actually feed an entire session by myself because we were short-staffed. I pretty much only know how to ‘point’ and ‘station’ so far, but it’s a start! I also gave my first beluga tongue rub. Belugas have incredibly sensitive tongues, so they will come right up to you and open their mouths to try to get a tongue rub, it’s kind of like rubbing a dog’s belly, they really enjoy it. It is a pretty weird feeling to put your hand in a whale’s mouth, though they are completely unaggressive they do have some pretty good sized chompers. It also just feels weird to pet something’s tongue- but it is pretty fun. You can tell the whales love it, they look really content.

This coming week we get to learn the exciting task of power washing the otter exhibits! Yippee. This means I ‘get’ to be at work at 6:30am once a week. You can probably tell how excited I am to be learning this great life skill. We have to wear these yellow overall getups and glasses when we clean, but I still expect to be covered in algae and other…stuff…from the otter pool when I’m done. But, besides manual labor we should get to do some pretty cool stuff with training. We’ll learn a little more about the academic side on Wednesday and then probably get to try some practical application the rest of the week.

I’m really excited, but pretty worn out and it’s only the beginning of the week, so it might be a long haul to make it to my second month here. I’ve officially been in Vancouver for over a month and worked almost 200 hours, I think it’s about time for a vacation!