Land of the Mormons

So this blog is a bit overdue, but last week I got back from my first zoo keeping conference, which this year was held in Salt Lake City, Utah. As is always my luck, on the plane I was seated next to the most obnoxious man imaginable. He had the aisle seat and I was in the center one. He kept yawning and putting his armpits in my face as he stretched and made this raspberry noise with his mouth. He constantly bounced his knees up and down, which in turn made the armrest between us bounce up and down. After about half an hour he fell asleep and snored like a freight train, with his face hanging above my shoulder, and his body half in my seat. I ended up switching to the next row after about 10 minutes of that. Flying over the planes, and mountains was beautiful. Salt Lake City was weird. Weird to see a city with huge mountains in the background. Weird to see mountains that we orangey-brown instead of covered with trees. Weird that the city felt very open and clean, and yet there were an amazing number of homeless people. I felt thirsty the entire time I was there because the air was so dry, but on the plus side my hair has never looked so good. No frizz. I mean NONE. It was wonderful! We didn't have time for much sightseeing, but we did walk around the Temple Square grounds which were immense and is where the big Mormon church is. Best part- I got my picture taken with my homeboy, Jesus. We didn't see any men walking around with multiple wives, but they do have a beer there called Polygamy Porter and the catch line is "You can't have just One".

The conference itself was fun. I was with 2 other girls from bird house, and one from primates whom I was already friends with. We won a suite with our registration, so we had a nice big room to share. The first night our icebreaker event was held at a children's' museum, where the Philly girls just may have made fools of themselves taking stupid pictures playing with all of the kid stuff. The days were pretty long, listening to speakers and paper presentations usually from 8 in the morning to 9 at night. Had a couple of workshops on training and enrichment of animals. We also spent one full day at their zoo and separate aviary where there was some behind-the-scenes stuff planned for us. Watched their very impressive bird show. Silent auctions, fun dinners, drinking in the hospitality suites, and dancing on the final night.