Day #7

Today we didn't have to wake up super early HURRAY!!! 

So we woke up at 8 and headed to the showers. Can I just say that I have always taken for granted the distance from my room to the bathroom? I know silly...but when it's freezing outside and you have to walk for like 2-3 minutes to go to the bathroom every step begins to count. I'm telling you no joke! 

Anyways, so after we were clean we were ready to enjoy a nice warm breakfast provided by the Petersen! Dr Petersen makes the best pancakes ever! 

I'm glad I got to sit next to Jess for breakfast because we (Angie, me, Mallory and her) decided to go for a walk to see if we could find some cool birds. 

Unfortunately, we did not come across any wild birds but we did land at a Whale Watching area. It was pretty cool because we found some cool stuff like these...

 

                 

No we did not see whales, but we saw and collected some cool stuff so I think we scored :) 

I found these...look!

After a long nice walk by the ocean we decided to head into the town and buy a few souvenirs. I bought a black shirt for Britt :) and a shirt for me. Then we met up with others from our group and Angie stayed behind. 

Luckily, we managed to make it back on time for our next adventure: The Aquarium! 

The Aquarium was pretty nice but really small. I mean nothing like a real aquarium. But I did learn a few cool facts like 

1) Squid give birth once and then die

2) White Shark roll their eyes backwards to protect their eyes when they are catching their prey. 

3) The Sperm Whale is the largest toothed animal on Earth! 

Cool huh? 

These are some pics of what I saw at the Aquarium. 

After that, we drove back into the town and got some food and did a little more shopping. This time I got a patch to iron on my backpack and some other souvenirs :)

Back on the road we were. This time to the Peninsula to see some more seals and some more birds. I really didn't take any pictures of this place because I was to busy searching for birds but Angie did take these two pics...

Me, Jess and Greg

And Greg took these...

The place was beautiful and I manage to find about 6 different birds. I still need to find which ones they were. My favorite one was this yellow belly bird. It was chubby and for some reason it made me think of the bird from Rio (the yellow one). This hike was my favorite because I was able to see so much specially with the binoculars Dr Petersen let me borrow. 

Dr Petersen decided to take us to the Coast Guard and see some penguins but that was a no go. It's ok I'm sure we will see some when we go see the March of the Penguins :) 

Now I am home with a bit of a fever. I may or may not have caught something. I hope I didn't. That would not be good! 

So two things I learned today....

1) Bird watching is fantastic! It's like a huge puzzle. The birds being the missing pieces. I definitely want to do it more. Maybe that can be one of my new hobbies when I go back home. I would have to buy a bird book but that's ok. I think it would be a lot of fun! 

2) Sometimes it's so hard to just take a step back, breath and enjoy the moment. Back home I'm always running from work to school to my house. It was even busier when I was in the RS Presidency. There was just so much to do like ALWAYS. Today as we went to the coast guard place, I decided to remove myself from the group and I just stood on a rock and looked at the horizon and the water. As I stood there, I felt great peace and joy. My day was rough so feeling this was an answer to my prayers. It was as though  Heavenly Father was letting me know everything was going to be ok.  I'm glad I had this time to do a bit of reflecting and clearing of my mind. I just need to remember to always take time to smell the roses per say :) 

I really hope one day I can live with my family somewhere near the ocean. I would just be the happiest person in the WHOLE wide world!  

Also, I love flowers and so far I have seen these cool ones