The sun is shining, the water is glistening, and the gappers are getting antsy because we just finished our last full week here at CEI. This week saw the culmination of our intensive programs, and we all worked hard to finish out our independent work strongly. While a few of us spent time in the wet lab finishing up experiments or dissections, others worked hard to make their marks on campus through various projects. We also spent time working on our final human ecology papers, in which we all chose an environmental issue to research and discuss. Along with our papers, we began to plan our Demonstrations of Learning (DoLs), which we will be presenting to the greater community in a few days. It means a lot that we will get to explain what we’ve taken away from this island to those who are also lucky to call it home

 Although our time on Eleuthera is coming to an end and we’re preparing to go our separate ways, we will carry the knowledge that we have acquired in the past super-awesome-cool eight weeks with us wherever we may end up.

Gapz forever.

Liza Wright-Fairbanks

It’s week five of our time here on Eleuthera, and we started off the past seven days by diving head first into each of our intensive projects. Just a little background before I continue: for the rest of our time here at CEI, each of us gets to help out on various projects going on at the institute. Each gap year student will be doing something different for their last three weeks, depending on what projects interest them the most.

I spent the week working with the wonderful shark team here at CEI. Currently, they are doing a longline behavioral study, seeing how sharks act once they are hooked on a longline, and how this affects their blood counts. Two other gappers, along with myself, got to go out and help set and check the longline for sharks. As of now, we have yet to see a shark, and we are slowly becoming convinced that we have cursed the entire team. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that this coming week will bring new results!

Other than intensives, we completed two more dives Continue reading →

Why hello there! Here it is…the much-awaited update of the Gap Year lord and ladies. The highlight of this week was our down-island trip, during which we got to see some groovy spots on the island. Starting at the Laughing Lizard Café with a breathtakingly close encounter with Lenny Kravitz, we journeyed north to Harbour Island. We put on our ritzy pants and ventured into the resorts, only to discover that Cape Eleuthera is a far more beautiful, righteous, and down to earth place to be. After scrounging around looking at menus of the various restaurants, we decided that instead of spending our college tuition money on a steak and accompanying beverage, we would retire to the fried food shacks and eat al fresco. A great time was had by all as we watched the sun set, munched on questionable fried items, and listened to the sage life advice of Scotty and Taylor.

The next day we toured Spanish Wells, which was enticing insofar as it felt like an episode of The Twilight Zone, and the accents were delightfully funky. In order to understand what I’m talking about, one must travel to Spanish Wells and experience the magic therein. We went on to explore the Hatchet Bay Caves, Continue reading →

It’s been a busy week down on Eleuthera, and with our Down Island Trip right around the corner, us gappers are excited about all we have experienced and accomplished in the last seven days.

SCUBA 

After grinding away for hours on the elearning, we all passed our final assessments and were able to get out on the water for some real SCUBA training. We started with some confined dives at The Saddle where we learned and practiced skills to get our Open Water Diver certification.  After 4 confined dives over the course of the week, and practicing a bunch of skills both under and above the water, we all received our Open Water Diver certifications on Thursday and began advanced work Sunday.

Pig Slaughter

We awoke on Wednesday morning to a beautiful sunrise and headed over to the farm Continue reading →