Day 15

Alexandra Egnatuk

Today I woke up and couldn’t breathe out of my nose. I tried going back to sleep, but couldn’t so I just got into my sleeping bag for a while. At one point while I was sitting there dazed, Anneke sat up and started writing in her journal. After a while she put her journal down so I started talking to her. We were careful not to wake Natalie or Mackenzie and Kendra was helping with breakfast.

Anneke and I talked until the junior leaders woke everybody else up. When I came out of my tent I found that Ishtar and my van weren’t back yet so I couldn’t eat breakfast right away. Just as I was about to borrow stuff from a friend so that I could eat, Ishtar pulled in. I quickly grabbed my stuff, ate some pancakes, and washed my plate. As my plate dried I briskly walked to my van to put it away and grab my toothbrush.

When I was done getting ready for the day I went to my van and started making bracelets with Taylor. After a little while Ishtar called a meeting to talk about what would be doing today. When Ishtar was done we had some free time so I talked to a few people in their van. At about a quarter to one we piled into the vans and drove to the salmon weir.

All of the junior leaders decided to switch vans so instead of having Seb and Olivia in my van we had Asher. The ride to the salmon weir was really interesting because the reason the junior leaders switched was to get to know people that were in other vans and when Asher climbed into the van it got really quiet. When we got to the weir they told basically what they did and how the equipment worked. After they were done talking we had a chance to hold kiss a salmon.

When we left the salmon weir we drove back to the campground really quick so people could grab their journals. The reason we needed our journals was so we could go to a pavilion near Resurrection Bay and write two things in them. The first was finishing the sentence, Alaska is…, and the second was free writing. When everybody was done we drove into town and had about a half an hour to walk around and shop before we had to meet at the Alaska Sea Life Center.

When we went into the Sea Life Center there were two groups, which would determine when we learned about feces. I was in the second group so I got to walk around for about an hour before I learned about feces. I went to the touch pool and got to touch sea anemones, sea stars, a sea cucumber, and crabs. When the hour was almost up I went to the meeting place. Just as I walked up the first group came out of the room and my group walked in. For the hour we learned about steller sea lion feces. It was pretty cool to learn how the Sea Life Center did research on steller sea lions just by working with their feces. The whole day was filled with interesting things, I had a lot of fun, and can’t wait for the tide pools.