Trash and Turtle Poop

Author: Katie
Location: The Recycling Center and Darwin Research Center
When I first found out we were working at a garbage and recycling center, I was not excited. On arrival we were surrounded by bugs and the stench was overwhelming. But after the first few minutes, once we had masks and were drowning in DEET, it became fun. We divided into stations working with glass, sorting trash, packing cardboard and composting. The workers at the dump were really funny and some of them were chatting with us and invited us to play soccer with them. Then a CBS crew showed up to film some kind of documentary and interviewed some people. I think it was pretty awkward, but still cool to be on TV. We stopped for an amazing snack consisting mainly of Oreos and peanut butter and Kelly the leader walked into a cactus which was pretty funny.

After that I went to work in the compost area which was really interesting and surprisingly clean. We were sifting the trash from the fertile soil and it was sad how careless the people are with their trash and recycling. It was tough work shoveling, but it was so rewarding to see the huge piles of perfect soil that resulted. It would be such a help to island if everyone composted correctly because it would drastically reduce the landfill pollution.

We returned to town and grabbed a quick lunch of burgers and finally were able to have ice cream bars. It was delicious, as expected.

In the afternoon we visited the Darwin Research Center and cleaned out tortoise enclosures. A group of people were able to hang out with Lonesome George and clean his poop. They were really excited about it, even though the poop looked like collard greens. During the work about 5 people managed to slip on and fall on their butts which was very entertaining to the onlookers. Luckily all of the park rangers were very kind to us and we made lots of new friends and took a lot of funny pictures with them. We also were able to see the tiny baby tortoises which I thought were really cute. After that we walked to a rocky cove where we hung around and relaxed. It was a lot of fun and I think we all were able to get to know different people and have some good conversations. There was also a game of soccer and taps.

In the evening we did a bit of shopping and the usual internet and phone. A group of us tried to bargain but ran into trouble when the woman told us a dress was 13 dollars and we understood it to be 30 so we tried to force 20 on her. We were frantically yelling take the twenty when she was telling us that was too much. Finally she wrote the 13 on a calculator and we felt ridiculous. We all washed thoroughly and made our way to a well deserved dinner of nice risotto and a delicious breaded fish. Tomorrow we work with kids and I can finally take off the gross work pants I have been working in for 3 days straight...thank god. Wish me luck removing the garbage stink...
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