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.

Done with SCUBA Boot Camp!

We are finally done with SCUBA bootcamp, meaning that classes start on Monday.  On Thursday we took the Emergency First Responder exam.  I forgot how not straight forward that the exam could be.  What sort of question is "Name one reason as to why you would hesitate to help someone."  I believe that I passed, but it was not a happy test.  Then, we talked about dive physiology, mainly the many scary things that can happen if you are not careful.  Everyone here is being very smart about being safe, so I don't think that we will have a problem.  We also finished up the rescue dive manual.  In the afternoon, we did some of the rescue skills as well as point-line intercept survey.  What this involves is laying out transect tape across the reef at a certain depth.  A point intersect survey means going to each meter along the ten-meter long transect and recording the substrate under that point.  That was the first pass along the tape.  The second pass was a line transect.  This is where we take a piece of pvc pipe 50 cm long with 10 cm increments and taking approximate measurements of everything underneath the tape (i.e. dead coral, Montastrea annularis,  sand, etc).  All this is the hopes of getting an approximate estimate of how the surface of the reef is made up.  I looked a bit like an idiot while I was doing this surveying  due to the fact that I was spinning and flailing around, not because I was having buoyancy issues, mind you, but for no reason I can think of.  I asked around the dive and I was not the only one that felt completely uncool.  I'm lucky that I didn't throw up.  That would have been a very classy Quinn moment, and not that good a story, so I'm glad that I didn't.

First thing in the morning on Friday, we had a quiz on coral, algae, and disease.  Considering that I had no idea what anything was the night before, it went pretty well.  After that we had a lecture about research diving and the importance of what we are doing.  We then went to the decompression chamber on the island, and we got to go inside.  I can't imagine having to spend any sort of extended period of time there.  I hope that I never have to go back.  Though fairly roomy, it wouldn't take that much to make anyone claustrophobic.  After lunch we took the DAN Oxygen provider test.  I really wouldn't mind having all of these certifications.  I like being trained to help if the need were to ever arise.  I don't know why, but I find it exciting and satisfying.  Then we did an AGRRA benthic survey.  This was extremely complicated and involved multiple passes on a 10 m transect tape, looking for different things. I was completely upside down at one point during this exercise, and I remember thinking to myself "How did I get into this position?" and "I remember a time where I would not have been comfortable doing this." By my calculations, I now have 24 dives under my belt.  I believe that we have done eleven dive since being here.  That's not bad for two weeks work.  My gear has yet to be dry since I have been here.  In doing my dive log tonight, I have broken 1000 minutes underwater with 1046 minute, giving me over 17 hours of SCUBA.  I'm pretty excited about this milestone.  Hopefully I will have many more dives under my belt by the end of this.  I had about the fourth highest level of experience, which was surprising to me, coming into this.  It has been fun seeing everyone who hadn't done anything outside of the certification checkout dives, or those who just got certified here, get better and more confident as divers.  I can definitely see a difference from the nervous crowding around the lead diver to now.  Yay for improvement!  Happy to celebrate the survival of SCUBA boot camp, but now the real work begins.

Gina, really excited about getting her picture taken 

This is Gina.  She is really cool.  We have already talked about applying to internships for the summer together.

Andrew

This is Andrew.  He is the most amusing person I've ever met.  He didn't want to come into the program being "that kid", but proceeded to log in four times during our online predeparture orientation meeting.  He goes to CU Boulder, which is why I know so much about him.

Alex

In case you couldn't tell from the caption below the picture, this is Alex.  She is from Oregon and goes to Oregon State.  She is a beaver.  She is such a sweet person.

Those are all of the people that I will introduce you to in this blog.  More to come.  Five down, ten to go.

Current Events

I just felt like giving you an update as to what is going on in Bonaire right now, just because I have never experienced anything like this before.

Yesterday, before the dive at Windsock, we all noticed a fire on the north side of the island.

Before

After

It turned out that a lightning bolt hit an oil storage facility and set it on fire.  Due to the lack of resources, this fire is continuing to rage as I type, and from what I heard, is lighting up the night sky.

The raging fire...so large!

I took these shots on the way back from the supermarket and it began to rain.  The drops were sooty and dark.  I'm sure that if you were to Google "Bonaire Fire" there would be plenty of news articles about it.  Considering that there is so much oil stored there, I'm afraid that there will be some giant explosion that will consume and destroy the island and the habitats and reefs surrounding it.

Mike

Just to introduce you all to another person, this is Mike.  He is a SCUBA instructor.  You have to appreciate the wonderful facial expression he made for the camera.

My First Unfun Dive

My day started off pretty typical.  I woke up after taking some benadryl to take care of the millions upon millions of bug bites that I have.  It was a serious pain to get up, but it was a deep, deep sleep.  The morning was occupied with doing DAN oxygen provider training.  Who knew that such a short book could take three hours to get through.

After lunch, we headed out to two dive sites to do a midterm skills assessment exam and AGRRA fish surveys.  The basis of our exam was to make sure that we are good divers and dive buddies.  I think I did well, but I have serious issues when it comes to swimming in a straight line at the same depth, so that part I probably failed.  But the first dive site we went to, named Windsock (a foreboding name from the start), had an extremely strong current.  I threw up in my mouth a bit towards the end of the dive from all of the work I was having to do to go against the current and get back to the exit point.  I asked at the end whether the current is normally that strong there, and the answer was no, but I'm not too sure about that just considering the name.  My dive buddy, who is a dive master, said that if she were the dive master on this dive that she would have aborted the dive and that she had never felt a current this strong on Bonaire. It was just an unpleasant dive all the way around.  Considering that we were with some new divers that only have nine dives under their belts, I don't think that we should have done this dive.  My worst dive to date.  If the experience hadn't been so unpleasant I bet that I would have really enjoyed the beauty of the reef.  It would have been a better drift dive than a scientific dive.  At least  I got to see a Cubera Snapper, a fish that we have been learning about, but I had no idea how big it could get (three feet).

Luckily our second dive site of the day, Cliff, did not have a current to it.  It made for a much better dive experience, although I still couldn't swim in a straight line to save my life.  I definitely need to get better. I managed to miss seeing a large barracuda which was really upsetting to me because I really want to see one.  I couldn't find him despite my dive buddy pointing frantically at him.  I did, however, manage to see a porcupine pufferfish at the exit to the dive.  I didn't realize that they were such large fish.  I would say probably a foot and a half long.  That was my accomplishment for the day I suppose.  This was a good dive to end on for me.

This a picture of my roommate Marissa, in case you all were wonder what she looks like:

She is fixing her earring.  I will attempt to get pictures of everyone in CIEE into this blog so that you know who I am talking about.  Thanks for being patient with me while I get things together.

Cool Again

After we came back to the house after Bonaire Day, all of the power was restored except for an a/c in one room that we all believe is a broken a/c unit and has nothing to do with the power.  These power outages are so frequent that we can no longer be surprised by coming back to the house after class and finding the power out, like today.

Here's a picture from Bonaire Day:

It was a pretty cool gathering.  Everyone was wearing blue, yellow, and white shirts (though you can't see it in this photograph) resembling the Bonaire flag.  These people have a lot of national pride and share it with Aruba and Curaçao.  I definitely had a fun time.  I remembered to grab a few souvenirs while I was there.  I have plenty of time to get some more for everyone.

I will also include some pictures of the house and my room.

This is my bed in a certain state of disarray:

This would be Marissa's bed and our dressers.  Again, it is a bit messy because we had been running around a lot by this time and had no time to clean or organize.  Please don't judge.

The bathroom where we are clearly using the shower rod as an impromptu drying rack even though there are clothes lines out back.

This is the television area:

The kitchen:

If you were to turn to the right in this picture, you could see the television area.

This is the front of the house, not including the very large fence this is just outside of the field of this shot:

A view of the water front facing north.  You can see both Klein Bonaire and the North part of the island:

On the water front facing south towards downtown.  If you can see in the photo where the water gets dark, that is where it slopes down and the reef starts.

Now that I have some pictures included I can tell you about my day.  This morning we did a boat dive on Klein Bonaire called Keepsake to start our attempts at doing some scientific diving transects.  It was a lot of fun.  My buddy Beth was a dive master.  I think that I did pretty well at holding my own and staying calm.  We were using air at exactly the same rate which was really cool.  I like being so evenly matched in air consumption.  We saw a little sea turtle from the boat after our dive.  The other group was still under and got to see it swimming around after it had left the surface.  This siting makes me really excited to tag sea turtles later on in the semester.  In the afternoon, we did the secondary EFR skills, basically meaning first aid.  After class a bunch of walked downtown, got ice cream, visited a dive shop, and when to the super market.  It fascinates me how different  the grocery stores are here than in the States, but what could I possibly expect.  Every once in a while it hits me how lucky I am and how crazy amazing this program is.  How many classes involve going scuba diving and interacting with the environment?  Love it!

Still Without Full Power

So due to the fact that we are still running on half power, the people in the center that don’t have a/c are currently staying at a hotel.  Hopefully this problem will be resolved soon, but because today is Bonaire Day, it will be at least another day, if anything. 

Yesterday, we did a snorkeling trip to Lac Bay.  Lac Bay is a pretty shallow place.  This was in preparation for our independent research projects.  Our leader, Sarah, took us “extreme snorkeling”, meaning that we were dodging fire coral while in the surf at the entrance to the Bay.  The payoff ended up being worth the scary experience of following her, because we got to see a golden spotted eel swimming around, a spiny lobster in a hole, and a manta ray (which is apparently is a rare thing).  The manta ray was pretty large and it was fun to see how graceful he was when he started swimming around.  It was really fun to just sit and observe and watch all of the creatures interacting with one another.  I would have to say that this was a very cool first snorkel for me.  The only problem is that I would like to do a research project that requires me to scuba dive, but at the same time I don’t want it to be too complicated a data collection process.  I will have to see what I can come up with.

Today, the morning started off with a fish identification quiz followed by the primary care part of the Emergency First Responder course.  All in all it was a pretty easy morning, except that a girl in the program was bit by a dog today on her run.  There were only two wounds, one on the front of her calf and one on the back of her calf, but she walked into the house with blood running down her leg.  There are a surprising amount of dogs running around the island, and so I can’t say that I’m surprised that something like this would happen.  She is okay and doing fine.  The people in the program took a look and are might try to get her into the hospital just to get a tetnus shot.  There are no rabies on the island so luckily that is not a concern.

Playing Catchup

On Thursday afternoon, we did some more diving.  We took a quiz on coral and fish identification and did more rescue diving skills.  That night was also had a speaker coming from University of Santa Barbara.  I am sure that what she had to say was extremely interesting, but after 12 hours of class none of use were in any sort of shape to listen.  She also made the talk one and a half hours instead of the suggested forty-five minutes.  She talked in way too much detail for people that are not that familiar with biology.  Thursday ended up being a very long day

On Friday we did a boat dive.  With this third specialty dive, I have now become an adventure diver.  Two more specialty dives and I will be an advanced diver.  Yay for progress!  But any way back to the boat dive.  We traveled out to Angel City, supposedly named for the many angelfish that are there.  We didn’t see many or any at all for that matter.  It was a fun double reef meaning that there was one reef ending in a flat sandy split leading to another reef.  It was fun diving somewhere other than Yellow Sub.  We were all really excited about it.  It was also very fortunate that the ocean is so calm here, because staring at the horizon would have been a very hard, pretty much impossible feat.  No seasick divers in this crew!  In the afternoon we watched more rescue diver videos as well as the Emergency First Responder video.  The weekend finally came and we fortunately got to enjoy the place we are in.

Just to let you all know.  There was an island wide black out between 11:45pm and 1:15am Saturday night.  Very unfortunate, but was luckily fixed although the study center is still running on half power.  A little bit of a pain, but it still means that we have everything working in our room.

Learning About Living on an Island

So the reason that I haven't posted anything in a while is that two days ago, on the second, the block that the study center is housed on went down to half power.  We have currently been going on two days without air conditioning in the main living area and no internet.  Luckily, the research center across the street has internet so this is where I am sitting in order to write this post.  I have also been very fortunate that my room has complete power so that our a/c unit has been working at night.  Another important thing that has been down is the refrigerator.  We have no way of keeping anything that we have bought at the store cold.  This did not affect me as I ran out of milk, the only thing I needed to be kept cold, the day before this whole incident began.  Most people do not have power to their rooms and have been slowly melting in the heat.  It has gotten to the point that going outside is cooler than being inside, which is a strange concept to me.  Marissa and I have one girl that is squatting in our room.  I made an offer for anyone that wants to be in our room to come sleep there at night, but I have only had one taker.  It's their choice, so who am I to stop them.

On September 2nd, we did underwater navigation in the morning and some rescue skills.  I was not particularly good at navigation, but I make one hell of a panicked diver seeing as how I almost managed to turn over and push my dive buddy under.  I would have, but I figured that I had made my point at didn't need to do much more.  I'll write more later, but I have to go.  Love you!

And the Fun Continues

So I was unable to write a post yesterday because all of the work that we had to do but I shall try to recap it as best I can.

After a morning in the classroom learning about the history of scuba and talking about identifying fish, we spent the afternoon doing checkout dives three and four for the open water certification.  While we were working on our first skill about ten to twenty spinner dolphins swam about thirty feet from us. The visibility was not that great so we didn't get to see them as clearly as we wanted, but we were at the surface and got to see them swimming! It was so exciting!  We could also hear their high pitched noises if we stuck our ears in the water.  At first we were just floating around and then all of a sudden our instructor Caren started yelling.  None of us could understand what she was saying.  I personally thought that something was wrong and that something very bad was going to happen, but we all eventually figured out that dolphins were just off shore.  That was easily the coolest thing that happened yesterday and I was really excited to write about it, but had so much work that we didn't have the time.

This morning we dive and started working on skills to get the advanced open water certification.  Today was peak performance buoyancy and underwater navigation.  We worked on staying motionless in the water, and I was good at it, but I did win scuba limbo.  That was at least a little validation.  We also started working on a site map.  My buddy, Tom, and I swam around and looked for five objects underwater so that we could make a map of the dive site called Yellow Sub.  We are going to continue this exercise tomorrow and finish the map up.

This afternoon consisted of rescue diver knowledge reviews, a skills workshop, and learning about coral.  Nothing too hard or frustrating.   I'm happy and having a good time.  This is the kind of experience I wanted and I am glad that I have made the decision to do it. Love you all!