End of Orientation

Let's quickly recap my last few days:
Wed.: It was a pretty boring day as we were just talked at about how to be successful in the program and not let ourselves get kicked out or burn out. The big highlight was they discussed and demonstrated their technique for euthanizing pigeons (which I'll have to do eventually). Eight people got to go ahead and do it, but I wasn't ready and there were plenty of volunteers. Tearing the head off of a pigeon sounds barbaric, and it is somewhat, but it's also pretty painless for the bird. In a few weeks I'm sure I'll have done it and hopefully I'll be over it too since all of that bird is going to good use, not just being thrown away.
Thur.: A lot more being talked at. We signed up for our "day watch" shifts, which is really our zoo skills class. It's pretty weird how it feels like we should be getting paid as employees or something, yet in reality we are paying them to let us do all of this and it's all a big class... Anyways, we also got our nifty new uniforms that we'll be wearing nothing but for the next two years! Then we did a pretty fun scavenger hunt around the zoo to see how much we remembered from our tours, and my team won!
Fri.: Today was work day. Yes, it's just a fun as it sounds. We broke up into teams and worked on various tasks that needed to be completed around the zoo. I mostly hung out with Wendell the goat. He was pretty cool and seemed to want to take an active role in the filling in of uneven areas in his pen. It was extremely difficult to follow the rules of not interacting with the animals when I was in there with him and he seemed to be really wanting me to talk back and hang out with him. I also did some weeding, which is always a blast... At the end of it all, all the first years were told to gather for a picture, and it turned into a roof-top ambush of water by the second years. I didn't get too wet, however, my roommate was drenched and her phone has suffered for it.
That was orientation week, it was busy but cool. Next week, we get elbow deep in it all...