Back to school

Today was great - though I felt like I was going back to school as I set off this morning with my rucksack filled with pens and booklets! We learnt some Mexican history and then about the mangroves and the bird life. This afternoon we leant how to use a GPS and how to use binos! Not that the latter part was terribly new to me but they also have a telescope and can hook it up to a digital camera which was pretty cool!
Going back a bit - after I had blogged yesterday I set off back to the hotel where I met Fred, from Philidelphia, who too had been here for a couple of days but at another (more expensive) hotel! Paco and Vanessa, two of the organisers met us there and took us to meet everyone else. Dee, fron Maine, and Luiza, from Brasil, had arrived the night before and had stayed at Casa de Maria, where we are staying. Susan, from Mobile Alabama, and Denny, from Rio, had come down with Dave our organiser and runner of Immersion Adventures. And there´s Santiago who is Dave´s assistant and who wants to study ecotourism next year. So thats everyone, we were to be joined by a chap from Egypt but he couldn´t get a visa. We went down into the village for dinner at Immersion Adventures HQ and Linda cooked prawn kebabs, rice and salad - yummy!!! After a few ´getting to know you comrades´ type games we had a briefing on the project and were then left to find our own way home - which wasn´t too hard.
We´ve been put into teams and I am with Fred for dining duties, we had to sort out breakfast and lunch today - lots of cereal for breaky and then boiled eggs and tortillas for lunch, which went down very well. Then I am in a research team with Susan and Denis. Tomorrow there will be more studying in the morning, this time of marine fish and how to identify them, then we´re off into the field. I am toasting like a marshmallow so I shall don as much suncream and long sleeves as possible without roasting, and hopefully will not burn any more!