It’s looking like another breezy and beautiful day here in Eleuthera. The vibe on campus is refreshing and energetic after a morning run-swim. There’s something inspiring about exercising as the sun rises. Every time I took a breath while swimming this morning, my head was greeted by a gradual glowing sun. We started the run-swim in the gray-blue dark sky, and by time we got out of our final cut, the sun was at a pleasant height, casting it’s bright glow across the ocean.

As you all have probably learned, research takes up the entire afternoon on Thursdays. Because we have so much time with our research groups, Thursdays are almost always field days. However instead of entirely field work, some of yesterday’s class was spent preparing for our Project Introduction Presentations. Today, every research group is presenting their projects to their fellow students, faculty, and some scientists at CEI. It’s a chance to inform everyone of what we have been spending so much time and effort on. After much preparation today is this big day, and I cannot wait to learn about every ones projects. Continue reading →

I’m a big fan of Mondays. From sunrise to sunset they’re full of productive, exciting, adventurous, inspiring memories. At my sending school, Mondays would be full of groans and complaints because it was no longer the weekend; not here. Yesterday we started out with a choice between yoga and soccer for morning exercise. Feeling very tight and slightly stressed because I had zero clue what was going on in Omeros, I chose yoga. It was so refreshing and I felt 100% better afterwards. I remember looking around the room yesterday while we were all trying our hardest to a seemingly impossible position called “crow,” laughing with each other, encouraging each other, and realizing how close we have got over the past month. Continue reading →

This past Saturday was one of my favorite memories since I’ve been here. After a pretty strenuous hour and a half long run for me, our first long morning exercise with our tracks, we had our final Settlement Day. Usually we head to our assigned houses/areas in the afternoon, but because this was our last one, we got to leave at 9:15 and stay the whole day! While some students grew weary of  7 hours exploring settlements, Lexi, Cate, Brian, Tom and I spent the day a woman named Toya Carey, one of the most, if not the most hospitable, kind, and generous person I have ever met. Our day included meaningful conversations about her family and her community, baking lemon pound cake and strawberry cheesecake from her mother’s top secret recipe, and ordering grouper fingers and fried conch from her favorite local restaurant. Despite the difference of age and background, we all got along so well and had such a wonderful time. When John came to pick us up at 4 for the cook out, there was an unspoken but obvious sadness about saying goodbye – so we didn’t. We decided that there was no way we could take the pound cake to the cook out, and the cheesecake wasn’t completely ready, so we planned to swing by to say bye and pick up the cakes afterwards.

[slideshow] Continue reading →