Warm Feet are the new Happy.

I finally made it!!!! After 21 hours of travel - including a customs check-point that was easier to get through than walking into a Target and a slight seating mix-up because apparently I thought seat 11F in Portuguese should in fact be 14F in English - I arrived to the hostel to find Hannah excited and full of information.

The past two days have already been packed of amazing people, new experiences and DELICIOUS food - again, I cannot believe that we get to live here for another 4 weeks!!

Yesterday I met a few of the staff members of the IBJ (the Humpback Whale Institute) who are all sooo nice and extremely gracious with our lack of Portuguese. Of course the quickest way to become a friend of mine is to offer good food, so we have found a new friend in Clarencio. He cooked a typical/traditional Bahian meal (referring to Bahia, the state we are in) called Moqueca. This is a wondeful stew that includes peppers, coconut milk and a seafood of choice --- yesterday´s being crab meat.

Today was my first official day on the job - which is a really unfair description since I was again able to meet amazing people, get trained, which included learning all about the IBJ, and spend our 2-hour lunch break...okay we may have accidentally stretched it to three...learning how to surf for the first time. As if that wasn´t enough, the remaing of the afternoon was spent at the turtle conservation project (TAMAR Projeto: http://www.tamar.org.br/). We have videos of everything mentioned so far but those will have to wait until I have more time to upload.

As for our surfing abilities, we were both able to stand up on the board...Hannah for short amount of time and me wobbly and with bad form. But we were "up" nonetheless. Though we will have to be more strict about how long we stay out next time, it is nice to know that we can surf for an hour during our lunch break on the pretty days!!!

The turtle project is really amazing and Luciana was nice enough to translate the history of the base, the importance of the work and other fun facts about the turtles and other animals. Again we have some videos that will eventually be posted, but I will go ahead and say that my favorite moments were when we went into a black, cold room to see animals that are found deep below the sea including a newly discovered species of starfish and intense looking eel. The craziest creature in the room though was something that can only be described as an oversized water cockroach! The other amazing part of this visit was that we got to go behind-the-scenes to see the animals that are quarantined for one reason or another.

Tomorrow though is what I have been waiting for- it´s time to go out on the boat to look for the WHALES!!!! We are headed to Salvador at 6am which will be an overnight trip, though we have been told to pack for up to 4 days because, weather permitting, we will stay out on the boat longer. We will let yáll know when we are back on dry land (hopefully at the end of the week!!) and I will try to upload pictures and videos then!!!

MWAH! Boa Noite!!!!!
D