Training Day 1: Intro to Rugby?

I get the feeling that today is a model day for how the rest of training is going to be. Its now 9:15pm, most of us are curled up watching some impressively bad television show while others are off discussing the various advantages/disadvantages of the latest amphibian trapping techniques. One thing we have in common, however, is that were all entirely exhausted, filled with good food and ready to start the next day. The question is, how did we get here?
It surprises me every time I say this, but yes, I woke up at 7:30 this morning. Let me repeat, Dan Myers woke up at 7:30 this morning and was productive...must be something strange in the air of the island that makes me function so well. After waking up at such an early hour, we all sat down for a nice chat about the intense responsibility we have as the island's interns. To quote our supervisor, we have become "the rock stars" of the island. Kids will adore, parents will be grateful and the general community will be more than welcoming. Why? Because we talk about turtles. Yeah I know, this was a head scratcher for me too, but apparently its true. I guess we'll see...
Following our meeting we broke for lunch and decided to reconvene later for our inaugural tour of the island. Lunch passed uneventfully, apart from my discovery that as much as I love peanut butter (and I do) I really can't handle it for almost every meal. It sounds whiny, I know, but still variance is a good thing.
Anyhoo, at 1pm we were off for our tour. Led by Maureen, our main supervisor, our first trip was to a beach down by the golf course on the southwestern side of the island. The beach, however, is in some serious trouble. Because of recent dredging changes by the Army Corps of Engineers, Bald Head's beaches are rapidly being swept away by the longshore current. This can be seen in the image above. That cliff that you see, is supposed to be a nicely formed primary dune. Primary dunes are not cliffs. As the dunes get more and more eroded over time the houses that are close to them are in greater danger of storm damage. Its obvious that if a big storm hits the island head on, alot of property owners stand to lose a lot.

The rest of the tour was mostly uneventful except for the last stop, East Beach. The beach was a textbook model of storm erosion. Because of the recent powerful winds (30mph) flying in from the north, almost all the sand has been blown away and the entirety of the beach has been eroded.
Again, bad news for homeowners.
To cap off the day, all the interns and Brett (our live in staffer) decided it was time to play rugby. Little did we know that one of the interns was part of the Penn State Women's team that just won the national championship. We'll just say this much, on several occasions our manliness was tested...and failed miserably. She ran all over us.
We limped our aching bodies back to the dorm, threw some burgers on the grill and collapsed into a heap. Thus we find ourselves in the two groups, one watching painfully bad television, while the other highlights the various techniques used to trap little amphibians.

Goodnight.