Hey Everyone! My name is Summer Wrobel.  Today marks the beginning of K1 and K2′s academic rotation, meaning that K4 will be leaving for their eight day kayak.  I think that even though we are all going to miss them we are excited for them to have their own experience and to hear all their stories when they get back.  It’s definitely going to be strange having only 24 students on campus though.

But yesterday was a day off for the students, which means that we all got time to relax, catch up on work, or just take a breather at the beach.  It was a little hectic though because K1, K2, and K4 where all reunited for the first time and so we all had tons to talk about.  I was especially excited for this because I had just gotten back from my eight-day kayaking trip, and as rewarding as it was its definitely also a challenge.  During the eight-day kayak you head towards the Atlantic side with a goal to get to this beach called Lighthouse Beach.  I have to say it is probably one of the most beautiful beaches I had ever seen.  It’s on this beach that we have something called solo.  Solo is a part of eight-day kayak where everyone separates for forty-eight hours and for those hours you’re alone on your own little section of the beach.  You have the bare minimums like a sleeping bag and a tarp, water, a bag of food, and your journal.  For me, it was one of the first times that I was ever that alone and yet somehow it wasn’t necessarily lonely.  Every student will have their own experiences on solo, their own moments of peace or realizations, but overall I think it gives us time to think and truly be in our own company.  Before my kayak group split up for solo we talked about an hourglass analogy.  You see an hourglass starts wide, gets narrower, and then widens again. For us we are all starting wide in our home-towns or our states.  And then we come into the island school, and then from the island school to our kayak groups and then to solo, the narrowest part of the hourglass, where we are just with ourselves.  And then back again to our groups, school, and states.  It was a really cool way of putting it. Overall, I think one of my favorite memories of solo was waking up and watching the sun rise directly above me.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to this next academic week because there’s a bunch of fun things planned, like a rake and scrape dance, fundraising stake-out, Eleuthera’s annual Ride for Hope, and even a night dive.  It’s going to be nice getting back into the rhythm on campus.  And of course were all wishing K3 and K4 the best on their kayak trips!