More Pictures

I did three more dives today: Red Slave, Red Beryl, and Karpata (in that order).  I took lots of pictures and thought that I would share some with you because I'm proud of how well they turned out.

Tiger Grouper

Smooth Trunkfish

Brittle Stars

Southern Stingray

Blue Parrotfish

Caribbean spiny lobster

Honeycomb Cowfish

Lionfish

Hawksbill sea turtle

And again

Find the sea horse

Foureyed butterflyfish

Peacock Flounder

Sun through the water

Lettuce sea slug

There are more to come once I get back.  I will be happy to share them all.  I love underwater photography despite its being so hard to catch some of these animals.  Love you all and I can't wait to come home for Christmas!

Two Weeks Notice

So I am now 21.  I was fortunate enough to be able to celebrate with everyone here, as well as with Mom and Ben the next day.  On the actual day of my birthday, I had to give my final Independent Research presentation which I believe went surprisingly well.  I was definitely nervous (because of my dislike of public speaking), but everyone sang Happy Birthday to me right before I went so my nerves were alleviated.  After all of the presentations were done, CIEE took all of us out for dessert, where I got to listen to another rendition of Happy Birthday.  I got peanut butter pie.  It was delicious, but they took it away from me twice, because Amy (a woman who works with CIEE) wanted them to bring out my dessert last with a sparkler in it, but they kept handing slices of pie to me, which kept getting taken back.  I finally got my pie back with a sparkler in it, so I was happy in the end.

On Thanksgiving was when I finally celebrated my birthday.  In the morning, Mom, Ben, and I took Katie and Mike diving at Margate Bay and the Lake.  Both were beautiful dives and I was able to take some really good pictures using my camera and my new underwater housing for it.  Here are some of the pictures that I took.  I would have taken more throughout the day, but I forgot to charge my camera battery.  I'd like to think that these are a good starting point.

Queen Angelfish

Graysby

Three Lionfish

Great Barracuda

Two Flamengo Tongues

Scorpionfish

Schoolmaster Snapper

Guess who?

Fatty Rainbow Parrotfish

Spotted Drum

Initial Phase Stoplight Parrotfish

Large Midnight Parrotfish

Gorgonians

In afternoon, we took Amanda and Ian to Karpata (my favorite dive on Bonaire so far).  Sadly, Mom forgot her wetsuit, so it was Ben and I.  On any other day, this would not have been a very large problem, but because of all the rain recently, the water has been colder.  We saw a green sea turtle and large green moray eel swimming around.  It was an interesting dive.  I was really happy to have celebrated Thanksgiving in such a fantastic way, considering we were away from the family.  It made me really excited to come home for Christmas so that I can take more pictures and tell all of the stories and such that has not made it to the blog.

This week is all about producing Physis, CIEE's research journal.  We don't have any classes this week, excluding our short meeting with the advisors in the morning.  I have less than two weeks to go.  It is definitely a bittersweet feeling.  This has been an amazing experience up to this point so far.  I have met some amazing people and it will feel weird not seeing them everyday, but at the same time I'm excited to get back to the States.  It will be nice to have a washer and dryer so that my clothes stop smelling worse coming out than going in.  It will also be nice to not have to plan trips to the grocery store in order to get milk.  It will also be hard to go back to diving in Lake Pleasant, or for that matter, not diving at all.  That's all I have for now.  Love you all!

Yay for Visiting!

So Mom is currently in Bonaire with me.  She and Ben have been here since Saturday and have been diving like crazy in one of the best places to dive in the Caribbean.  I'm so happy that they are here and that I have the opportunity to bum rides off of them in an attempt to go diving more often then I have been recently.  I logged my 50th dive today which is a really exciting accomplishment.  It has been fun to have them hear although I have been extremely busy.  Tomorrow is my 21st birthday as well as my presentation of my independent research project.  Sadly, I already want tomorrow to pass by quickly so I get my presentation out of the way and don't have to think about it anymore and go diving on Thanksgiving.  Luckily, we have a fun day planned with some really great dive sites in mind.  I just want to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving and tell you that I am thinking of you all and will see you all soon.  Love you!

The Countdown Begins

Again, sorry that I have been abandoning the blog.  I'm sure a lot of you are wondering what is going on with me.  Tonight is the night were my final Independent Research paper is due.  We have all been working hard to get it done.  In addition to that, we have a lab write-up and marine mammal presentation due on Tuesday, and we are all feeling a bit burned out.  The fact is that we can all see the finish line, but there is a lot of work that will be put into getting there, and it isn't getting any easier.

On Friday night we went to a kunuku.  It is hard to explain what a kunuku is, but it is a really simple lifestyle that involves having recycled furniture and the ability to trade stuff like livestock, or crops.  In this case this kunuku had farm animals, and there were a lot of them.  We had these delicious fish burgers that were made from combining fish and potatoes.  It was fun.  I have to go because this paper won't write iteself.  Love you all!

The Trials and Tribulations of Science

Assembling the cages for my Independent Research Project (including the folding and zip tying together):  5 hours

Cutting wire mesh and wrapping it around four sides of the cages:  10 hours

Attaching dive weights to the bottom: 15 minutes

Drilling holes into ceramic tiles to put in the cages: 1 hour

Walking the cages out to the study site on the sand flat: 2 hours

Finding 10 pieces of rubble with Ramicrusta and 10 pieces without: 30 minutes

Moving 5 Diadema (long-spined urchins) to place in the cages: 30 minutes

Letting the Diadema go due to not properly covered cages: 10 minutes

Cutting off the dive weights to place in the cages and move them to a rubble patch: 20 minutes

Cutting more wire mesh to cover the top of the cages to keep the Diadema from being preyed upon: 2 hours

Tweaking the experiment: 10 seconds

Removing the 10 pieces of non-Ramicrusta rubble to be replaced with 10 more pieces of Ramicrusta rubble: 20 minutes

Measuring the Ramicrusta on all of the 20 rubble pieces: 40 minutes

Catching Diadema while simultaneously zip tying the tops of the cages: 1 hour

Doing this while a storm with thunder and lightning is about to sweep over: 10 minutes

Checking on the cages the Wednesday after the storm has hit to find that they are in disarray and one of the Diadema has escaped: 10 minutes

Learning that weather that could turn into a tropical storm is going to affect the island: 2 minutes

Removing the cages from the study site and releasing the Diadema to make sure they aren't killed from the cages rolling with the help of 9 other people: 1 hour and 45 minutes

Spending this much time on getting the cages ready only to have them removed and realizing that the time you spent collecting data to make the experiment work only to have the entire idea completely scrapped and knowing that you have to disassemble stinky, pokey the cages later: Priceless

Ahh...the trials and tribulations of scientific experimentation.

Sorry for the Absence

I really am sorry for the long silence that has occurred.  Things have gotten crazy and I have gotten lazy about updating.  Luckily this is going to be one of the more relaxed weeks that I am going to have since getting here, so hopefully I will be able to fill you all in on everything.

For the most part nothing too exciting has happened.  We all got to watch a sea turtle for about 10 minutes on one of our dives.  It was the biggest I have seen in Bonaire so far so that was really cool.  The only other thing that I can think of is that we went "spelunking" on Friday to learn about Bonaire's caves.  When I think cave I think of the traditional mouth of a cave carved into the side of a mountain sort of thing, but the mouth of this cave was literally a hole in the ground.  And not even a big hole.  We did this exercise where we all turned off our lights and sat in the dark to see if the bats would fly close to us.  I was a bit reluctant about this idea, but because there were other people there more nervous about sitting in the dark than I was, I was surprisingly calm.  I didn't have a bat fly close to me, but I don't think I needed to hear such a thing anyway.  There was also a part of the cave where we had to crouch down on all fours to get under.  I mention this because one of the girls made the comparison of walking like Gollum from The Lord of the Rings.  I was in the middle of scrambling under this overhang and couldn't help but smile to myself.  I couldn't laugh out loud because I was concentrating hard on getting out, but I thought it was really funny and that you would appreciate it.  It was extremely hot and I ended up sweating out of places I didn't know I could sweat.  Luckily, that was the case for everyone so we were all able to bond over it, I think...

We had our midterm in Coral Reef Ecology last week.  It wasn't too bad, although there was a lot of material to cover so I am unsure how I did.  Based on the key that we were allowed to look at after we finished the exam, I believe that I at least got some credit on all of the questions.  We also had our Advanced Scuba Final this week.  It involved dive physics and physiology, rescue skills, EFR, DAN Oxygen, and other fun stuff.  I got confused on the first few questions so we shall also see how that went.  Monday is our Tropical Marine Conservation Biology Midterm worth 300 points.  This is the one that I am really nervous for.  There was A LOT of material covered so getting it all back into my head will be an interesting challenge.  Considering that I haven't been doing particularly well on the quizzes I am truly worried.

Went to Lac Bay yesterday.  I am currently sporting a Portland sun tan, meaning my back is a different color from my front.  Luckily I wasn't burnt too badly (compared to another girl that must be in a lot of pain right now).  This was the one time that I have gotten any sort of prolonged exposure to the sun and I got burnt! How not fun is that?  Fortunately Marissa had aloe that she let me use last night so getting to bed was a lot easier than it would have been without it.

It has also occurred to me that there are two people here that I have not introduced you to.

This is Paul.  He goes to Juniata College.  If he had a super power it would be that whatever glass he touches is half full and the word he dislikes the most is the plural of wasp.  He's pretty amusing like that.

This a Amanda.  She goes to Oregon State.  This picture is from our Rincon Walk field trip.  She is wearing a sun bonnet.  She's really cool and funny. 

So that is what has been going on as well as everyone that is on this trip.  I'll try not to be a stranger to the blog.  Love you all!

Regatta Break and the Return to Class

Regatta Break was a much needed stress reliever as well as a recovery time.  I was sick for the first half of the week which was truly an unfortunate occurrence, but it was fortunate to happen over the break.  It was also a really rainy break.  At night when all of the fun, music, food, and partying going on it would rain.  Rain basically stops the island.  Marissa and  I discovered a leak in the middle of our room.  Potentially a very hazardous and slippery situation.  I did end up going on three dives, which was a lot of fun.  The first one we went on was named Lighthouse.  It is on the very southern tip of the island.  There was a wind reversal that left the south part of the island calm.  This was probably one of the only opportunities to dive the south tip.  It was a really cool dive with some fun topography.  We did this dive with a large group of people which as good.  I saw this weird Crown of Thorns/anemone hybrid thing.  I had never seen anything like it before.  The other two dives were on Sunday before we had to go back to class.  We went back to the Hilma Hooker.  I was happy to hang out on it a little while longer and look at it.  My dive buddy, Andrew, and I saw some large Tarpon, a large barracuda, and a fatty tiger grouper.  There were a lot of people diving it when we got there.  In the afternoon, after grabbing a quick sandwich, we went to one of the most popular dive sites, Karpata.  It was hands-down the most beautiful dive I have ever done.  I could have been down there for hours, if only I could.  There was so much to see.  The reef was covered in coral and interesting topography.  It was covered in lots of soft corals.  I want to go again.  The only unfortunate thing was the rough entry and bit of wave action, but it turned out to be a solid 57 minute dive. Mom, I think that this dive is what you were expecting to see in Hawaii.  It was the best ending to Regatta Break possible.

I have a feeling that school will be as busy as possible.  Already I have another long To Do List that will never get done.  I'm excited to learn about videography tomorrow.  I also calculated that I have spent over 24 hours underwater.  That is one quality day.  Love you all!

Working, Studying, and Coral Spawning...oh my!

So this was honestly the busiest week I have ever had.  Whenever I managed to finish one assignment, there was always another one to fill its spot.  I will have to break down this week down day by day so that I don't leave anything out.

Sunday
Our Independent Research Project was due at midnight.  So of course, we spent the morning on Saturday at Lac Bay trying to prepare for doing our projects.  On Sunday, all of us were up and working on our proposals, but Maria, our teach for Tropical Marine Conservation Biology and one of our research advisors, decided to take us to hear and meet Ned Deloach.  He is one of the co-authors of THE marine identification book that is used by scientists and anyone else who is interested in the subject.  He also co-founded REEF.  If you guys would like to Google it, it's really hard for me to explain.  This talk went from 6:45-9:30pm.  Luckily, I had done a lot of work and was in a pretty good place at this point in the writing process, but a lot of people were not close to done.  We were all dying to get back to finish our proposals and Maria was taking her sweet time getting us back to the house despite the fact that she knows we have the proposal due, and not just that, but also reading for her class, which of course she quizzed us on in the morning.

Monday
Apart from the quiz, a good thing that happened was Sarah, one of the interns, taught the lecture in the morning.  Without her teaching, I'm not sure that I would have made it through the lecture.  We were all truly exhausted at the start of the week.  We learned more about pollution.  Another assignment that we did in class was getting into groups of four and summarizing an article.  They gave us a series of questions that we had to answer.  The frustrating thing was that they only gave us 20 minutes to read it and then talk about who was going to talk about what in our group.  These weren't short articles either.  They ended up giving us more time, because the assignment was impossible to complete in the time alloted.  In the afternoon, a guest speaker came in to talk about an on-going monitoring program that is currently going on Bonaire.  We then went on a dive to look at the monitoring system that is on the reef. It had been raining a lot that day so the visibility was terrible compared to what is normal for Bonaire.  We also learned how to take water samples.  I discovered that I am terrible at staying in the same place in the water without a good reference point.  We had split into three groups for the dive and I ended up in the group at the highest depth, so I got to play in the bubbles of the ten people below me which I thought was really fun.  After the dive, we went back to the house to dry off, but had to go back the lab to learn how to test water samples.  The night was spent preparing for class the next morning by doing the reading.

Tuesday
For class we went to catch plankton.  We all went on a boat, got into groups of four, and did four different stations.  The four stations were vertical plankton tow, GPS and water testing, point sampling (the device broke so my group didn't get to do this), and Sechhi disk (which tests for visibility).  We did this near shore and further away from shore.  We had time to go snorkel on Klein Bonaire for about ten minutes.  We then went back to shore to dry off and get to the classroom to do a plankton lecture.  After lunch, we went to the lab to look at the plankton we had captured.  This doesn't sound like too crazy day, but let me just tell you all the assignments that were due this week.
1) Service Project Proposal for Thursday (in groups of four)
2) Reflection Paper from out trip to Mangazina de Rei for Friday
3) Plankton Lab write-up for Thursday
4) Reading for Coral Reef Ecology on Thursday
5) Reading "The Story of Papiamentu" p. 1-55
6) Summary of the Papiamentu Reading
7) Be prepared to give a presentation to the class about how one of these cultures: Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, or African influenced Papiamentu, but you don't know which so prepare for all of them
8) Studying for Papiamentu class Thursday night
9) Graphs of Beach clean-up data due Sunday
I even feel as though I'm possibly missing some assignments.  So I was working on all of these assignments in addition to all of the class time that we were putting in.

Wednesday
We went to Lac Bay to start working on the research project.  I spent the vast majority of the day building cages for my experiment.  I fortunately had at least one person working with me to get it done, but I still haven't finished making the cages so I have to work on those over Regatta Break so that I'm ready to set the cages out the next time we go to Lac Bay.  I also have to make a stand so that I take the same picture every time I go for my project and drill holes into tiles for my project as well.  So much for Regatta break being relaxing.  The really awesome thing that we did Wednesday was our night dive in tandem with a coral spawning dive.  My dive buddy was Beth, as usual.  I trust her a lot so it was comfortable.  I got to see two coral spawn, meaning releasing their egg/sperm packets.  It was really cool to see.  We also got to see a lot of bioluminescence and brittle stars.  The eels are also active at night to there were more of them swimming around.  The corals are also more vulnerable at night because they let their polyps come out so I had to be extra careful about not accidentally touching one.  It as fun to see the reef that we have swam in countless time transform into an entirely new place.  This dive marks my completion of the requirements to become an advanced diver.  YAY!  This dive ended up adding another assignment to the list above which was two paragraphs: one scientific about what we saw where and one about what we thought.  This wasn't a bad assignment, but it felt like some of these assignments were there for the purpose of busy work which was frustrating.

Thursday
We were supposed to go to Lac Bay in the morning, but Caren took pity on us and cancelled that trip so we didn't have class until two which gave me time to work on all of the homework we had.  We learned about oceans, currents, climate change, and REEF Fish ID.  It was a fairly relaxed class compared to what we had been doing during the week so far.  Because we saw very few coral spawn, some of us decided to do another night dive to try to see more.  I saw some sperm get released, but no egg packets.  I got to see a lettuce leaf slug, a peacock flounder (which Beth pet), a spotted lobster, and lots of creatures that I already mentioned above.  I had busted my butt working on assignments non-stop all week.  I worked, went to bed, got up, and continued to work.  It was a lot of fun to do.  I'm glad that did it.

Friday
We were supposed to have class at 11, but it was cancelled due to the fact the discussion that was planned regarding how the various cultures influenced Papiamentu, did not correspond with the reading. We did, however, go do a walk in Rincon for the class.  I got chewed up by mosquitoes and have to reflection paper for it.  I was just so exhausted at this point that I didn't particularly enjoy it.  Because of this week, I have developed a head cold.  I have been fighting it since Thursday after the night dive.  I don't like being sick, especially during a time where there is so much going on.  That's what I have for now.  I'll upload pictures later.

Just Another Rainy Day

In all seriousness, nothing really exciting has happened in these past few days after diving the Hilma Hooker.  There has been a tropical depression in the South Caribbean that has been spitting rain at the island for the past few days.  On Wednesday, we were supposed to go to Lac Bay to work on our research projects for a while, but that got rained out.  We were supposed to have another outing at Lac the next morning, but that got cancelled too, so we had class in the classroom and then had the afternoon off.  On Friday, we didn't have class until 11am, so we talked about our learning styles for an hour and went on a field trip to Mangazina de Rei.  It was were the slaves would travel to get provisions.  It is currently a museum and cultural center.  That was pretty fun.  The Lac Bay trip that was cancelled on Wednesday was moved to this morning, but was cancelled again until tomorrow morning, the day that our independent research project proposal is due.  It is really frustrating to have to figure how to do all of this and keep getting our schedule rearranged, but I can understand the necessity of it.  There has seriously been nothing to report.  Sorry for my first really boring blog.  Love you!

Finally did the Hooker!

I has been a while since my last post.  As usual it is because of all the crazy stuff that we have all been doing here.  I will do my best to catch you all up on all the going's on.

On Saturday I participated in a clean up dive at one of the piers downtown.  I actually forgot my dive computer and had to go back to get it and ended up diving with a complete stranger (I can't even remember his name) for my buddy.  It worked out okay.  I felt really confident in navigating around this new dive site because it was similar to Yellow Sub (the place where we have made the majority of our dives).  It felt good to help clean up the area.  There was so many things there!  A lot of glass bottles!  Glass is the only thing that they recycle on the island.  I believe that this is because there are no facilities to deal with any other type of recycling.  There was a barbeque after the dive to celebrate all those that participated.  There were approximately 70 people.  CIEE was a good number of those people.

We were supposed to go to the national park on Sunday, but because of all the rain that we have been getting, some of the roads were impassable so we rescheduled for the next week, the day that our project proposal is due.

On Monday, we had Tropical Marine Conservation Ecology.  We always have this class on Monday.  We learned about pollution.  The point was really hammered home when we drove to the landfill and did a beach clean up.  There was so much garbage on this beach that for the hour we were there cleaning up we barely made a dent.  I can't help but feel a little hopeless about the whole thing.  What possible solutions are there?  Recycling can only do so much.  Where is the garbage supposed to go, especially on an island this size?   This is such a global problem and sometimes I feel as though I'm one person and though I want to make a positive difference, there are so many forces out there rallying against what I could be doing.  I remember a few summers ago when I became so frustrated with my dad because he threw a bag of recyclables in the trash and said that those few recyclables didn't make a difference.  I want to believe that the recycling I do will help, but seeing the amount of trash on that beach stopped me short.  I suppose that I have to stick to my beliefs that I can make some sort of impact with the help of others trying to make a difference as well.  Those were all the thoughts that went through my head on Monday.

Today was really exciting!  This morning consisted of doing the knowledge reviews for the deep dive and night dive, learning about dive physics, and taking the Rescue Diver exam.  All-in-all it was a pretty relaxed morning.  In the afternoon, I was fortunate enough to do my very first deep dive, and to some degree, my very first wreck dive.  The site was called the Hilma Hooker, hence the name of the post for all of you dirty-minded people out there.  Caren, our teacher for Advanced Scuba, Coral Reef Ecology, and Marine Ecology Field Research Methods, told us the story of the Hilma Hooker.  Apparently, there was a ship that was injured, but instead of coming into harbor, it attempted to hide behind Klein Bonaire.  Obviously the ship of the story is the Hilma Hooker.

In case you can't tell from this picture, Klein Bonaire is extremely flat and not at all a good place to hide behind if you are a 300 foot ship.  So clearly this is a suspicious occurrence and will only become more so.  Officials go and board the boat to find a skeleton crew.  They seize the ship and begin searching, but don't find anything out of the ordinary.  Captain Don (a local hero of the island who pretty much single-handedly made the scuba dive culture on Bonaire and named practically every dive site) and his girlfriend of the time went to scuba dive around the ship and found a fake hold filled with marijuana.  Needless to say, the crew was sent back home.  The owner of the ship was never identified or found, so the government of Bonaire was left with a ship and nothing to do with it.  They decided that divers on Bonaire needed a wreck dive, considering that they didn't have one, and so decided to sink it between the sand flat of a double reef.  They gutted the ship and got rid of anything that could be potentially dangerous to the reef.  The problem that they encountered was getting the permits to go ahead with the sinking.  The story goes that some time later an inflatable was seen racing away from the Hilma Hooker (said to be Captain Don) just before it began to sink.  It sank in twenty minutes and landed upon the intended spot without any damage to the reefs.  Now it stands as the most popular wreck dive on Bonaire and lies at 99 feet.  

The skills that we did for the deep dive certification was looking at colors (mainly the color red) and an imploded tennis ball.  Caren, my instructor for the dive, cracked an egg and then sucked it into a water bottle.  Our last task was to solve six multiplication problems.  At the surface, I was able to do this in ten seconds, but at depth it took me twenty seconds.  Also of note was that the problems were different between the surface and at depth, but of the same difficulty.  We started at the stern and then went around the boat, looking into the cargo hold (because the Hilma Hooker is laying on the starboard side) and ended at the bow.  We then left.  It was so cool!  A lot us want to go back to check it out for a little bit longer for a fun dive.  Being at 98 feet felt no different to me than being at 30 feet.  I didn't even realize that we were really descending until the wreck came into view.  The only thing that was unfortunate was the weather.  It was raining the vast majority of the day (due to the tropical depression in the area that has cause us to cancel our planned trip to Lac Bay tomorrow to work on our independent research projects), so the visibility was terrible and the clouds didn't give us much light to work by.  I got to use my dive flashlight for the first time which was pretty fun.  At the surface we worked on a rescue scenario.  That was my day which was very exciting!

Tomorrow will be all about getting the vast majority of my project proposal done.  They work us really hard.  It feels as though all we have time to do is eat, sleep, dive, and work.  It has been a while since I have had such a structured environment that wasn't self-imposed.  Working hard and continuing to get to know everyone here.  Every so often I have moments where I tell myself how much I love everyone here just because I do.  It's a great feeling.  Love you!

Ready for the Weekend

Yesterday was a pretty good day.  The class of the morning was coral reef ecology.  I must admit that I am a bit overwhelmed by the fact that go through lectures so fast.  We covered three different lectures and my hand was throbbing from all of the writing I was doing to keep up.  Caren (the professor) is a very fast lecturer! Even though I am used to the three-hour class format, I'm not quite ready for this one, hard to explain.  Anyway....

In the afternoon we did AGRRA benthic surveys at Windsock and Cliff.  If you remember, I wrote about a really miserable dive, that was Windsock.  Trust me when I say that I was more than a little nervous about trying to do it again, but I did.  The thing is that Caren only required one of these dives to do the AGRRA survey, so I didn't have to do Windsock if I didn't want to, but I conquered my nerves and did both dives yesterday.  I am so happy I did, because it was a much different site today than it was previously.  There was no current although there was some surge on the way into shore.  Windsock is a really beautiful site and if the conditions are not miserable, I would definitely like to explore it a bit more.  Fewer people did Cliff, but after we did the surveys, we all went on a ten-minute tour.  We went and saw the Cliff that gives the site its name.  There were some squid, an ocean triggerfish, and a really large tarpin.  It was by far the largest fish that I have ever seen, but considering that I haven't seen that many fish to begin with (though I will admit that I have seen more than most), it was a large fish.

We got back from Cliff at about 5:30 and had to start working on the homework due today, because from 7-8 is dinner time and 8-9 was our Papiamentu crash course.  None of us wanted to go back to the classroom at night after the long day that we had, but I was, at least, pleasantly surprised by the woman that said she was going to be instructing us.  I suppose that she embodies the Bonairian spirit.  She is very enthusiastic and expressive.  We were just thrown into the class (the definition of "crash") and she seemed to expect us to have done homework that we didn't know that we had been assigned.  She started throwing words and phrases at us and gave us a quiz at the end (that we were luckily allowed to use our notes on), but Papiamentu doesn't seem like that hard a language to attempt to learn.  At least I don't have to conjugate anything.  Next time, we will at be prepared for the craziness that will be thrown our way.

I am really ready for the weekend to begin, so for your enjoyment, here are some more introductions as well as random pictures.

Annarose (in the center)

Because I have introduced you to the people to the left and right of her, you can deduce that the person I am introducing you to is Annarose.  She goes to Oregon State and is extremely smart.  She did an internship this summer at a marine lab (I believe) and it shows, because she has knowledge about everything that is required in a project proposal.

Beth

If you could please excuse my hideousness in this picture, this is Beth.  She is a divemaster and has been my dive buddy on the majority of the dives we've done.  We work really well together, so I like being buddied with her.  She goes to Wofford.

Rachael

I know that there is a lot of attractiveness in this photo (it is amazing the things that people will do when they don't understand that you are taking pictures for a blog), but the girl in the middle is Rachael.  She goes to Ursinus and was one of the people certified at the beginning of this program (and was my first buddy).  She is one of the nicest people I have met, in case you couldn't tell from the smile. She also plays softball.  Anyway, those are all the pictures I have of people.  I have to figure out who I have left to introduce you to and get pictures of them. Love you!

The First School Week

I haven't written in a few days so please bear with me as I attempt to recap the journey so far.

Monday
This was the first day Tropical Marine Ecology.  The class simply consisted of us talking about what we will be learning in the class.  The professor, a French woman with a fairly strong accent, lectured about why marine ecosystems are more complicated than terrestrial ones.  I suppose that being a terrestrial mammal would make it hard for most people to understand a marine environment.

We went to Lac Bay in the afternoon to snorkel in the mangroves.  They were eerie because the visibility is lower than I have experienced in Bonaire, and there are a lot of fish, including the Great Barracuda.  They are not that large, but very fast and clearly hunters.  The mangroves contain many, many upside-down jellyfish, which look like anemones.  Also saw a lot of baby fish.  They were too cute for words.  I enjoyed seeing the mini fish, but it was a bit too creepy, imagining all of the things that can hide in the mangrove roots.  At least in Lake Pleasant, I know that there aren't big fish that could potentially come out of no where, but this is not the case in Lac Bay.  Luckily I had a wetsuit on or else I would have been very unhappy with all of the grasses touching me.

Tuesday
This was Coral Reef Ecology class day.  We talked about all the things we would be doing during the semester.  We did Coral Jeopardy.  My team, the Claminators, placed third out of four.  I at least answered one of the questions and helped the team.  We then continued to learn more about coral and algae.

The afternoon involved a dive where we looked for various phyla on the reef and collected algae.  I had a new dive buddy, Andrew, who I featured a few posts ago.  We also practiced rescue skills, and I was the victim in one of the scenarios.  My feelings were a bit hurt by how hard my rescuers found it to get me out of the water.  It was a fun dive though.  We were finally able to dive without having extremely strict objectives besides looking for various creatures among the coral and the reef.

Today
We did project proposal presentations in front of the class and had meetings with our advisor.  Everyone is a bit upset by the fact that we were forced to do the project proposal outline and a bibliography without having any meetings with our advisor first.  The vast majority of us felt lost and clueless.  During the advisor meetings after the presentations, many people had their projects changed, including me.  The only good thing that came out of this is that I know what I'll be researching.  My project is about Diadema antillarum (long-spined urchin) and Ramicrusta (a type of algae) in Lac Bay and whether the urchins are having any impact on the spread of Ramicrusta.  The thing is that not much os know about Ramicrusta so there are many wider implications that could come out of my study whether I get results or not.  It is going to be an interesting project at least.  I think that I was one of the few that didn't get my butt handed to me during the meeting.  Ah well, it's just a part of the learning process.

I feel as though I should also comment on the fact that things are not as good as they should be.  Before you jump to any conclusions, I am happy and I'm talking about the fact that the power completely shut down during class today, the guy who makes our food can't seem to prepare enough or produce enough variety, the front gate to the house that we use is broken, and the sink in one of the rooms fell out of the wall one night (proceeded to drip on the floor and flooded the room a bit).  It seems like the program and house was not built to hold sixteen people (not including the four interns in the room above the house).  Anyway, here is my update.

Now for some more introductions:

Ian

This is Ian. He goes to Vassar.  He cracks me up and definitely dishes sarcasm right back at me, which I love.

Osha

Osha is from Australia and has an accent that I really love, but sometimes no one can understand her because either her accent or the random words that she uses.  She is a sweetheart and gave me Nutella on a cracker today, so how could I not like her?

Dan

Dan goes to University of Oregon.  He and I are both doing urchins for our project.  He is really nice, although I have a lot more to learn about him.

Tom

Tom goes to Goucher and plays lacrosse there.  Tom is Tom.  He is really hard to explain.  But that's all I have for introductions today.  I have discovered that I need to get more pictures of people so that I can get them up on this blog.   Love you all!

Circle Island Tour

Today, we took a tour around the island today.  I'm just going to let the pictures speak for themselves. Enjoy the beauty!

The Devil's mouth

Abandoned building

The oil reserves that were on fire on Thursday

The beautiful ocean facing Klein Bonaire from the north

Lake on the north part of the island

Flamingos! Bonairians love them

Kralendijk with Klein Bonaire on the horizon

The east part of the island

The slave huts on the south part of the island.  They look bigger than they are.

The salt mounds on the south part of the island.  Some of the pools are pink.  Really pretty!

Katie

And just to introduce you to another person.  This is Katie, and she goes to ASU.  She was the person that raced with me to catch the connecting flight in Atlanta.  She also studied Tiger sharks for two months in South Africa this summer.  She is really interesting and nice.  Just another awesome person on this trip.