Student Update September 28, 2013

Hello everyone! This is Morgen writing again. We had another great day here in Eleuthera. Many students, including myself, endured in a very choppy scuba dive yesterday morning for Marine Ecology class. This week we focused on identifying species in and around our assigned coral reef patch we have been looking at for the past few weeks. The addition of large waves made this a very fun and thrilling dive!

Yesterday afternoon, we headed over to Deep Creek Middle School for community outreach. After picking up our buddies, my group (7th grade), headed back to the Island School to our farm to collect soil for the garden we have been working on over in Wemyss Bight. Next week, we will lay down the soil to hopefully start planting soon. It’s been so much fun getting to know the Deep Creek students. The highlight of my day was singing various pop songs with my buddy and her friends during the van rides to various locations. We then traveled back to the middle school for extended advisory period and wrote letters to our buddies favorite celebrities. They are certainly hopeful that they will write back! After CO, we all broke off with our advisor groups and dispersed across Eleuthera. Many groups went snorkeling, some wrote poetry, and some just indulged, including mine. No matter the activity, advisory time proves to consistently be a highlight of everyone’s weeks.

Its been really fun to have new faces on campus these last few days as members of the Island School Alumni Board have trickled in to stay for the week. A lot of us have found mutual friends with them, so it’s been great to make some new connections. They joined us at morning circle today, a little more eager for the second timed run swim as us. Students were really pushing themselves this morning and it was awesome to see so many of us breaking our times from two weeks ago. The love and support of the community standing around the flagpole cheering as we finish is by far my favorite part of morning exercise.

We are all anxiously pushing our way through these next two days of classes, as we look forward to Saturday night where we will have our first coffee house. Students are urged to perform whatever they would like, talent or not. Updates on unknown talents to come. It has been a great week here, and a huge shout out to the kitchen staff for making countless cakes for all of the birthdays we have had lately!