by Caciques Maddy and Ian

A Poem Update by Maddy:

Waking up, it’s a brand new day

All of the rain got chased away

Waking up it’s the early morn

Shhh.. you have to be quiet inside the dorm.

Doing some homework before the day starts

Makes me feel so awesome and smart.

I walk to the boats, excited inside

The water is currently at low tide

We boat to blue holes ready to dive

We want to see lionfish, we’re so alive

Justin and Rob dive down with spears

And I have to wonder if they’ve been doing this for years

Some of us practice shooting the sand

There are no lionfish, nothing goes as planned,

We try two more sights and it’s obviously clear

That they’re much deeper down than they appear

Rob catches one that he had chased way deep down

We all crowded round to see the lionfish with the great big frown

We got back in the boats to head back to school

I got to practice free diving and that was so cool.

This morning was educational and fun

We got to swim in the nice warm sun.

That’s what I did on my morning off

Even though my bed was so soft.

A Reflection by Ian:

Sunday is easily my favorite day of the week here. For the past couple Sundays of the academic session, we all get the rest and time for exploration we wait for. A group of us had an adventure on a free-dive that was led by Rob and Teschna. After practicing our deep, slow free-diving breaths in the boathouse, our group took out two boats to a reef called ‘The Cathedral.’ The reef, the bottom of which lay about 45 feet underwater, was impressive. When I first arrived at The Island School, I did not think I could go deeper than 12 feet on one breath, but I’ve been practicing free diving and am starting to improve. I dove about 25 feet, and after the free dive, I was proud of how deep I swam. After we all climbed aboard the two boats, we realized that one boat was out of gas, so we ended up towing the empty boat to the marina to fuel up. Besides one unexpected hurdle, the free-diving expedition turned out a success. After working on homework, I ended my Sunday feeling ready for the challenging week ahead.