by Cacique Ian Huschle

Saturday was a big day. We began at 6:30 AM with the long Saturday morning exercise. I’m on swim track for the semester, and to train for the 4-mile swim, all of us on swim track swam to the current cut. The current cut is a short strip of water cut across the point of Cape Eleuthera, leading out of the marina, and the direction of the current changes with the tides. The current will get so fast it can feel like a class-one rapid. On Saturday, we tried to swim into the current. Most of us swam pretty far up the current cut, and a few others swam all the way to the end. This was just the start of a busy day. After breakfast was research class. I am in the patch reef research class, and a typical day consists of either discussing issues in the classroom, or going out snorkeling in the field. The field is right out of my dorm room window; the bright, blue, shallow water marine ecosystem. We have been studying small coral heads that grow in this area. For the second half of the day, we were sent out to the different settlements to interview locals for Settlement Day. I ended up interviewing a woman who had witnessed the independence and the creation of The Bahamas as a nation. Really cool. To end the day, we had our first Coffee House. The Coffee House night is kind of like a talent show, where students and faculty can get up and perform. We set up the boathouse to be a perfect stage, and I witnessed some serious talent in my classmates and teachers that I wouldn’t have known about otherwise. Based on the success of this Coffee House, I realized that I still have a lot to know about my peers and teachers, and their talents and hobbies.