Monday Funday

WILD LIFE: Monday morning, we left the MPA campus and headed north on Interstate 5 toward downtown Seattle, destination Benaroya Hall.  There, we were going to see one in a series of talks National Geographic presentations. Our session was with Filmmaker Filipe DeAndrade, a biologist who works to preserve vital animal habitats. CJ can tell you more about what we heard.

Monday, at Benaroya Hall, National Geographic photographer Filipe DeAndrade gave an educational presentation to a number of school groups. He mostly talked about his experience filming and photographing the wildlife of Costa Rica. He works together with multiple foundations and organizations that help conserve the natural habitats they live in. He's most well known for hosting the National Geographic show "Untamed," which features many of the animals he works with daily.

During his presentation, he provided the crowd with many slow-motion videos of animals native to what he called his "backyard" in Costa Rica. These include hummingbirds, sharks, dolphins, monkeys, and a whole host of others. Costa Rica contains almost 6% of all the world's species!

DeAndrade seemed very comfortable and casual during the presentation, which worked very well with the somewhat younger children in the crowd. He made many jokes about the animals at times, and even recruited one audience member (whom he dubbed "Jason") to make various animal sounds. All in all, it was a very fun and engaging presentation. Filipe can be followed on Instagram, where his handle is @Filipe_deandrade.

After the formal presentation, Deandrade opened the floor to questions from the crowd. CJ was first in line. He asked about sea turtles, noting that Deandrade said 5 of the world's 7 species of sea turtles are found in Costa Rica. CJ asked where the other two types of sea turtles live. 

Deandrade responded that the other two can be found in other tropical places, such as parts of Oceania. 

Yesterday afternoon, we watched all of season two of NatGeo's "Untamed" series that Deandrade hosts. Below is just one example. We'd encourage you to check them all out. The episodes are only about five minutes apiece, and are oh-so-interesting and beautifully filmed.


ICE, ICE BABY: It was super chilly walking the six or so blocks to and fro the National Geographic presentation Monday morning. Even so, I couldn't help but stop and ponder some of the sites in downtown Seattle.

For instance, the skyscraper view from our parking spot was impressive.

Also, on our way back to the car, I was admiring they Plymouth church and telling the family I've always wanted to go inside it. It has dozens of interesting little windows. I've always what they look like on the inside.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Underneath the church is a much less interesting parking garage, and a small plaza with a couple of shops.

Surveying the scene, I spied a plaque on an exposed aggregate wall. Lo and behold, we were standing on the spot where an old ice arena stood. In fact, it was the spot where the Seattle Metropolitans won the 1917 Stanley Cup! Who knew?!

We're on the list for season tickets to the soon-to-be Seattle NHL team. It will be interesting to see what comes of that.

TOTE-ALLY: Monday afternoon we headed to the Burien library for a "crafternoon." The project of the day was crafting a tote bag out of an old t-shirt. Sounded like fun to us, so off we went.

CJ can tell you more about it. ...

I recently learned that it is possible to create tote bags using t-shirts in a simple, ten-minute craft project. I engaged in a t-shirt tote project at the Burien Public Library, following these steps:

First, I cut the sleeves off of the shirt, followed by the neckline. After turning the shirt inside-out, I can use an object (such as a book) to determine how deep I want the bag to be by drawing a line where I want the bottom of the bag to be. Then, I cut slits (about 3/4 to 1 inch apart) from the bottom of the shirt to where I want the bottom of the bag to be. This is followed by tying the right-strands from the slits to the left-strands of the slits to the right, continued all the way to the opposite side of the shirt. After doing this correctly, I pulled the strands to be tight, turned the shirt inside-out again, and voila! A tote bag!

A slightly more wordy version of these instructions, with pictures, can be found here.