It’s always a little sad when an intern leaves us, even though their stays are only 3 month we feel like we’re losing family when they say their goodbyes! We said goodbye to Lauran last Monday and ushered her back to bagels and cream cheese, pizza, and cheese! If you haven’t read her previous posts, to update you, Lauran came to us through the BMZA program in Portland (associated with the Oregon Zoo). Her lifelong dream is to become a panda keeper and our program provided the perfect opportunity to practice these skills and contribute to conservation research at the same time. I’ll share some of her more memorable moments that occurred via email, online, or in person that we loved:
Her liberal use of hilarious hashtags on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter
Her people skills and the way she seemlessly made friends
Her love of the babies. This is a photo Nate took of Ying Hua napping with her little boy while Lauran proudly updated him on new happenings at Bifengxia since our last visit.
https://youtu.be/nxX4hF61VJo
“PS Strange story, so Miranda and I were talking yesterday at lunch about how we wanted a toasted everything bagel with cream cheese, then got your email about eating bagels today! Ha! We have to know, do mom ears work 9000 miles away? ;)” – Lauran on 7/22/2015 talking about returning state side in a few days in response to me telling her bagels and cream cheese were in the near future. This is a photo of Nate Lauran took before she left. It’s weird, but we really do feel like a mom and dad to our interns, albeit scientific ones.
See how sad they are that Lauran left?
Her love, Love, LOVE of pandas. Particularly Yi Bao, her “fat love puff”. We couldn’t have asked for a more committed intern.
Her fabulous work ethic – see above 🙂
Her unshakable positive attitude. “The showers not working, the toilets broken, there’s tons of cockroaches in the kitchen, and we’re really HOT but I think we’re fine . . . can we buy an extra fan so we don’t have to fight over the one in the apartment?” – Lauran at the beginning of her internship when the apartment decided to have everything go wrong at once.
You’ll be missed!
-Meg