7/26/03:
Great news came yesterday!  Apparrently I'm not going to be as poor as I thought I would be.  Almost the entire Seaquarium was given a salary adjustment on the increasing side.  This will make living this life a bit more affordable! 

I was able to be backstage during a show, and do a little work with a Pacific harbor seal named "Lucky."  He's an adorable little guy who's getting on in years, but still manages to deliver a phone on stage, and to slide down a waterslide into the pool.  I basically just had him follow me, head out on cue, and just stay stationed behind stage.  As simple as it was, it was very cool.

Today had a lot more cleaning than usual. Almost no interaction with animals today.  Just scrubbing down things until the paint wants to come off.  This can be very intense labor-oriented work at times.  I know it comes with the territory, but right now Jim and I have the brunt of the laborious work being the 'new' people.  I look forward to when we're able to do more interesting things more often.  Everyone always works hard though, which is a good thing.  Even senior trainers do a lot of work, so you never have any room to complain!

Right now, it looks like I'm going to be working all days of the week except tuesdays and wednesdays.  Jim and I have different days off, so we're not going to be car-pooling for the entire week.  I need to find a good church in the area that has wednesday services, because I work all day Sundays!

Time for more reading and then off to bed!

7/24/03: 
I've started!  As of yesterday I am a marine mammal trainer at Miami Seaquarium.  (See their website at http://www.miamiseaquarium.com/)  There's a whole lot of work that myself and Jim (another new hire) are doing every day, but we're also getting contact with the animals at the same time.  The pace is fast and furious, but the job already feels very rewarding.  I'm glad I made the choice to come down here and do this! 

My day consists largely of food preparation (I don't think any other job involves this much fish) and cleaning cleaning cleaning ad nauseum.  However, intermixed with this busy work is also some initial animal contact.  I've been doing "relational" sessions with one of the sea lions named Jangles, where I just kinda hang out with him, feed him, let him get to know me, and vice versa.  I've also been cleaning the sea lion feeding pool.  This may not sound interesting, but the key is, they're still in the water with me while I'm doing it.  Very cool stuff.  Nobody else seems to enjoy doing it so I'm probably going to end up volunteering occasionally.  The other new hire spent 45 minutes playing catch with some of the dolphins in a play session under the supervision of another trainer.  I'm rather jealous.  However I'm sure I'll have a chance to do so soon as well.

The people seem very cool to work with so far.  I'm in a male/female ratio of about 10/1 so Jim, myself and Danny (another male trainer) are very outnumbered.  This is not a problem.  Enough said.  However I've already been noticing that there can be quite a bit of tension between female trainers.  I'm sure I'll get more clued-in to the culture over time.

Tonight I have a lot to read.  I am going to try and cover most, if not all, of the material in the park's animal training manual.  I'm already starting to identify mammals by sight and call them by name.  (This includes trainers)

Jim and I are currently rooming together and commuting together for convenience purposes.  We're looking for a permanent apartment in an area where barbed wire and barred windows aren't the order of the day, and have quite a few possibilites brewing. 

I'll try and keep this section of my website up-to-date so check back often!  :-)