Ready to Shellebrate the Start of Our Trip!!: Lexi Wolfe (Participant)

Hi everyone! My name is Lexi, and I am from Cockeysville, MD. I am a sophomore majoring in Neurobiology/Physiology as well as Spanish.  This will be my first year on the Terps Helping Turtles trip, and I am can't wait to have the opportunity to voltunteer at the Beasley Sea Turtle Hospital!
My absolutely favorite thing to do is travel, and if I can see animals as I go (as I had the chance to with the sloth in Peru as pictured), even better! I have many favorite animals, and while sloths and turtles are certainly close to the top of my list, my absolute favorite has to be a polar bear.  Polar bears, like sea turtles, are obviously being greatly impacted by climate change and pollution, and we all need to do what we can to help them.  I am excited to have the opportunity learn more about and participate in environmental conservation efforts during my spring break with our Terps Helping Turtles group.  I am looking forward to getting to know my fellow participants, and to making lots of great memories during our week in Topsail! :) 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TURTLES!!! And THE Most Inspiring Person on the Planet

Image
Rise and shine! We woke up early this morning to get a jump-start on our service experience. After a quick breakfast of Honey Nut Cheerios (not sponsored) and oatmeal, we headed out to the Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center. We met up with some of the volunteers to figure out what we would be doing for the day. With a very warm welcome, the Sunday volunteers explained some of the tasks we would be doing. Four members of our group ventured into Sick Bay to care for the more critical sea turtles, while the rest of us filed into Sea Turtle Bay to care for the other residents of the hospital. Donald and I were in Sea Turtle Bay: we walked in to see large tanks containing Loggerhead, Green, and Kemp's Ridley sea turtles. The largest tank was home to Snooki, a 350-pound Loggerhead, who Donald and I had the pleasure of meeting last year. A few volunteers introduced us to some of the sea turtles, and then we jumped right into volunteering tasks. We started by using C
Read more

The Spot Between the Fish and the Vegetables

Image
Terps Helping Turtles is a go! The team got on the road around 8:30am yesterday and began our journey stocked to the teeth with snacks. Nelson and Sabrina took the wheel(s) for the first leg of the trip, and the cars jammed out to everything from K-pop to classical. Conversation topics ranged from arguments over the moral existence of altruism to a debate over whether 2000s music would be classified in the "oldies" genre. Since our normal visitor center lunch stop was closed, we took a short detour to lake near Gaston, North Carolina. The nearby paper mill produced odors of the most unique quality- so distinct, in fact, that two participants in two separate vehicles narrowed down the smell to one location: the spot at the Great Wall supermarket in between the fish aisle and the vegetables. Lunch on the lake was beautiful, but our enjoyment was cut short by a height chart on a nearby children's playground. According to the sign, Hannah was 5.5ft. She's actually 6
Read more

Turtle Teaching = Totally Terrific

Image
Today was the day a lot of us have been looking forward to: Teaching Day!  We spent this morning awaiting the arrival of 550 students ranging in age from kindergarten through high school who all came to learn about the sea turtle hospital.  Some of us were placed at the teaching stations in the hospital where the students could learn about the different sea turtle species, sea turtle anatomy, cold stunning, nesting, threats to sea turtles, and surgery success stories from the hospital.  The students were also able to peer into sick bay and walk through sea turtle bay where the rest of us were stationed to tell the stories of the individual sea turtles. It was fun to watch their excitement as we introduced them to the turtles. Going into Thursday, we learned and practiced our presentations during reflection the night before. This morning, we went to our stations, armed with our new t-shirts from the hospital we have all been anxiously waiting to receive. We stood ready while students
Read more