Almost every morning we circle around our flagpole at 6:30am and sing the Bahamian National Anthem: “Lift up your head, to the rising sun Bahamaland. . .” Going into my 7th year at The Island School, those words we sing as a community are just as poignant as ever.
Take this morning for instance. I’ve been playing around with my GoPro Hero camera lately, having discovered how to make time lapse video out of still photos. So on my way out the door around 6:00am, I pointed the camera towards the east and set it to take a photo every two seconds. When I returned around 8:15, I had a series of over 3200 still shots that Adobe Premiere stitched together into a 36 second video of the sunrise.
Those two hours are a great example of what our lives are like during the semester—non-stop action. For example, while that footage was being shot, K1 and K2 were filling dromedaries with water, packing their boats, and putting on sunscreen in preparation for their kayak trips; meanwhile, K3 and K4 went for a light 4.25 mile run, cleaned the campus, showered, and ate breakfast. Even as I write this blog entry, the kayakers are paddling off towards Broad Creek, where they’ll spend the next three days snorkeling in Mangrove wetlands, stargazing and telling stories around a campfire, or searching the beach for artifacts of the Lucayan TaÍno who once inhabited these coastlines. And the fledgling SCUBA divers are learning how to blow bubbles under the curious gaze of barracudas, Nassau groupers and spiny lobsters.
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As you’ve probably grasped by now, the Fall 2011 semester is off and running. With another 95 days yet to go, we can only begin to imagine what adventures lay ahead. The only thing that is certain is that when the sun sets on the Fall 2011 semester, our 101 days together will have felt like 101 years that went by in 101 seconds.