by Dale Lattanzio

It is clear that with the coming of Parents Weekend students and faculty are extremely excited to welcome all the families to a very full weekend. Students continue to talk about parents and siblings who are coming to share a few days together here at The Island School. For our Saturday evening activity this week we went to a man named Giant’s house. He is the general contractor who works with the school has been a part of The Island School from the beginning. He loves interacting with all the students that move through the community. He kindly hosted us for a delicious dinner of mac ‘n’ cheese, rice, beets, and chicken with some delicious cake for desert. Despite the fabulous meal the highlight of the evening was the dancing that took part on the deck, it was a fantastic display of students’ rake and scrape dance abilities. On Sunday a group of students embarked on one of our structured free dives. This week’s trip was to the offshore wall where depths begin around eighty feet and then drop off to the floor of the Exuma Sound thousands of feet deep. The Wall is known for its congregation of large fish species both reef and pelagic and everyone was extremely excited to witness its awe. As we swam over to the wall immediately students were perplexed and excited by the nurse shark and large black grouper sitting under an overhang on the shelf. However the excitement really skyrocketed when a six to seven foot Caribbean reef shark came up from the depths. After safely watching the shark for a few minutes we swam back to the boat where we clambered aboard only to continue the fun by jumping off the roof doing cannon balls, pencil dives, and maybe even a belly flop or two. Overall we had a great weekend and we are all looking forward to seeing our families.