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My name is Brian and I’m excited to be writing the student blog for the rest of the semester. Some random facts about me are that I like to run and I like eating grits with lots of peanut butter and jelly.

The past couple days have been a whirlwind of classes and schoolwork. On Tuesday in Histories class we all participated in a mock stakeholder meeting wherein we discussed the upcoming mega-resort Baha Mar which is being built in Nassau. Each student had different roles in the meeting ranging from the Bahamian government, local Bahamians, environmentalists, and the Chinese government. I was the role of a US businessman representing the hotels and the airlines involved in the development in Baha Mar. Everybody got really into these roles and many dressed up or even put goofy mustaches on to really fit into their roles. There was a lot of heated, but friendly discussion. We learned a lot about the different perspectives that go into making big decisions about local development. And, it was really interesting and fun to be someone other than Island School student.

On Wednesday, we continued to work on our final Human Ecology projects. I’m part of the Inner Loop group and what we’re doing is marking landmarks and trails in the loop to encourage more students to go exploring. Yesterday was a big day for our group as we were finally able to engrave words into our signs with the help of our friends Chris and Ash over at the wood shop. The signs came out beautiful and we put some finishing touches on them by putting some paint to make the words pop out.

Today is Thanksgiving (already?!). Many of us are excited, but also find it hard to believe since we’re so far away from home. But still in the spirit of Thanksgiving we all made hand Turkeys last night and decorated the dining hall. I also can’t wait for the special dinner tonight. We hope all the parents doing well back home, and we wish everybody a happy Thanksgiving!