Oceanography field trip

I had the awesome opportunity to go to San Diego for the weekend with Shelby for the Oceanography club. We had so much fun together! Of course we didn't get much sleep. :) We left the school at 3:30 on Friday afternoon & stopped for dinner in Yuma around 7:30. Then back on the bus for the rest of the drive to San Diego. The kids were all divided up by 4's into their own hotel rooms & all the adult chaperones paired up. I bunked with my neighbor Chris Kimble & we stayed up talking til WAY TOO LATE so we were pretty tired the next day. We got up Saturday morning at 5:45 & left for breakfast at Denny's at 6:30. Chris & I combined our groups so we had 9 girls to keep track of. Here are 8 of them. Not sure why we didn't get all 9. Anyways, this is while we waited for the boat when we went whale watching at 8:30. It was pretty fun even though we didn't get to see any whales. We did get to hold shrimp, crabs, and some fish that I can't remember the names of. Here's a few pics of that. Shelby obviously had mixed feelings about touching the fish. Most of the kids all got a kick out of that. It was a lot of fun. Especially since we all took Dramamine before we got on the boat. It definitely helped. :)

After the boat we loaded back on the bus & went to Sea World! Here's a picture of the whole Oceanography club.

It was so fun!! We went on the rides & got really wet. & it was COLD!! Shelby was wet head to toe. Her whole goal was to be the wettest she could be. Honestly I don't think she could have gotten much wetter. Here she is playing with the starfish.& petting the rays. It was hard to get the kids to leave this exhibit. They had a blast!

Here's the crazy bunch who wanted to get splashed by Shamu. & they were totally soaked! You could ring the water out of their socks after this.

That night we went & had pizza & s'mores on the beach around a bonfire. Unfortunately I didn't get pictures of that. But it was pretty cool.

The next morning we had a little time to kill after breakfast at McDonalds so we went over to Mission Beach & had a mini scavenger hunt. We had these booklets that we were filling out at each of our stops & this scavenger hunt was in it. Here's our WHOLE group including Chris & I:I loved this picture of Shelby. Here we are at Scripps aquarium. All the kids & the chaperones.

They got to see more cool stuff here. Plus we had more questions in our book for them to answer. We sent them in groups of 3 to get the answers to the questions. We did this at each exhibit at Sea World too. They really seemed to like it & we all learned a few things. It was fun! They would race to see whose team got to answer the most questions.This is the one part of the trip that the boys were totally looking forward to & the girls were dreading. Ok. Most of the girls were dreading it. DISSECTING A FISH!! In theory Shelby was totally excited, but when it came time to actually do it she wasn't so sure. Her partner McKayla Kitterman, had to do most of the gross stuff. I even had to help cut. I have dissected lots of different things over the years between all the science & Biology classes, & 2 semesters of anatomy & physiology in college (I hate cats!) but I still get queasy cutting stuff open. It's just gross!They had to pull out their gills& cut open their belly's to look at their organs & open their stomachs & stuff. I will spare you the pictures of THAT fun stuff.After that was all done & we all washed our hands with lots of soap in really hot water for longer than necessary to get the smell off, we went to get our souvenirs & play some more. What trip is complete without a picture of being eaten by a shark?

I am really glad I got to go on this trip, Shelby is a really great kid & I don't get to spend nearly enough time with her one on one. She is so fun!! We had a great time together & I hope we can do it again next year!