IGood Morning! I went to bed really early last night and consequently woke up really early too. The first time I awoke was at one something in the morning to the call of a rooster. He has been busy talking all morning. It's not quite 6am but I have been up for at least an hour. I slept great! I love my bed. We are very lucky to have mosquito nets (although mine has a few holes) and a wonderful fan. I actually got cold last night. I can already smell breakfast and I can hear my host family talking on the other side of the wood wall that separates our room from the main room of the house. It is the everything room - kitchen, dining room, tv room - we have a small tv, laundry drying room. Off that room is another bedroom for the family.
This is our room and the picture below is my bed. 
The sun is up and I see it through our flower curtains. One outside wall of our room is cement and the other is wood on the bottom and some sort of wire or mesh on the top. Curtains cover the material so I can't see it well.
I'm ready for the day. I'm excited to see what lies ahead and I am ready to do something. I have a feeling we will go to see the beach and the hatchery this morning and potentially get more intro to the turtles themselves. I hope we don't have as much down time. That was hard for me yesterday and gave me the opportunity to worry and get a little homesick. I know it comes with the change and it will all work out just fine. Fast forward 12 hours. It's now 6:15 at night. We have had a full day and it is not over yet. This morning our orientation continued as we learned about sea turtles and the different kinds as well as the methodology behind what we will be doing the next week as a half. It took most of the morning but we still had a chance to walk to the river. It is the same river we crossed in the pickup truck to get here yesterday. Here are a few pictures that I took.
After lunch we went to the beach. It takes 30 minutes to walk there - past houses, down the runway and across the lagoon. The water was too low to take the boat so we had to walk through the mud and then wade through the water. It was dirty but awesome! We reached south beach and walked a little further to the hatchery. We were there to exhumate 2 nests that had hatched earlier in the week. We had to count the empty shells and also count and investigate those that didn't make it as everything gets recorded. It was really cool and really gross at the same time. The hatchery is guarded at all times so that egg poachers cannot steal the eggs. We left Elias at the hatchery and we headed back to stop at the mouth of the river for a swim. It felt awesome. Here are some pictures of the beach. 
I will try to take more and I'll take some of the hatchery too.
We already had dinner and just relaxing for the moment. I have beach patrol tonight from midnight until 4am so I have to be at camp by 11:30pm to meet up with my team. I think I'll try and post this at camp where I have wifi and then head back home to try to take a little nap before my night patrol shift. Back at camp my shift changed - I am headed home to grab my head lamp and a poncho and we are off to the beach.
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