On Saturday, we had classes in the morning, and enjoyed some fun activities in the afternoon like deep-sea fishing, free diving, and making a bottle wall. That night, all of Island School Spring ’13 was reunited! K3 and K4 came home from their trips, marking the end of kayak rotations. It was a little overwhelming to suddenly go from 12 girls in the dorm to 24, but after the hugging and screaming frenzy was over, everyone had a really nice time catching up with friends about the past week. At dinner circle, I looked around at our big complete circle, heard the count off end at 48, and I couldn’t help but smiling. I didn’t realize how much I missed our whole community and I felt a real sense of love for it at that moment. After dinner that night, we had a fun game of sardines followed by delicious ice cream sundaes and an outdoor movie screening of National Treasure. The next day was Sunday, and everyone enjoyed a well-deserved day off. In the spirit of Mother’s Day, we let the kitchen ladies have the day off and a bunch of students helped Scotty and Taylor cook brunch for everyone. We did this on Easter, too, because we feel the kitchen ladies deserve it and we always have a blast cooking anyways.

All the students had a nice time getting five minutes to call home for Mother’s Day. To all the moms reading this: thank you for having the courage to send your kids here, for raising these wonderful students that I spend every day with, and for giving us the opportunity of a lifetime. I promise you will love what we will bring back home. We love you!

The rest of the Sunday was filled with exploration and cooking dinner for those who wanted to help out. In study hours we got some work done, read Omeros, did some research, and started to outline our analytical essays that are due to wrap up our tourism unit. This morning we woke up and went for a run-swim, which we haven’t done in a while. My group swam through current cut (against the current!) and had a great workout. Today consists of research and brainstorming for our final Human Eco projects!

(As many of you know, this is an expeditionary period for Island School. And, in the spirit of such, we are entering a three day period where there will be no students on campus! All four groups will either be on a Kayak trip or else their Down Island Trip. Consequently, we will not have any student updates until this upcoming Saturday. Standby for that and look forward to the incredible stories that will come out of the next week!)

On Saturday morning, we all woke up at 4:15 AM to head to Harbor Island for the 5-mile walk/run in support of breast cancer. It was barely dawn when we began the run –the full moon shone brightly as the sun began to rise. There was some confusion during the race: we all thought we were running a 5K rather than 5 miles, so we kept running and running, expecting to reach and not understanding why it was taking so long. It wasn’t until we were done, that we realized the run was actually 5 miles. Regardless, the run was beautiful, and it was nice to be out in the settlement supporting Cancer research. Cancer is a huge problem here; the Bahamas is a leading country in hereditary breast cancer.

Anyways, our academic rotations have come to an end. The past couple of days were very long, and full of literature harknesses, math tests, and histories discussions. We finished our Human Ecology intensives today and presented to the class with our group videos on the individual subjects. It was really interesting to hear the different things everyone had done. In Research, we have gotten to the point where we are analyzing our data to form conclusions.  K1 is coming back from their kayak trip today, and I can feel the anticipation in the dorm for the reunion! That also means that we (K3 & K4) have to start getting ready for our down-island and kayak rotations. I am both nervous and really excited for the upcoming experience!

Last night, we got to go on a night dive for Marine Ecology –It was one of the coolest things we’ve done yet! Seeing the fish, invertebrates, and coral polyps all interact at night helped me understand the way the marine ecosystem works on a deeper level. For example, we saw actually saw the hard coral nematocysts out feeding, which only happens at night because there is no sunlight to provide the coral with energy (via zooxanthelle, a symbiotic coral algae). We saw lots of invertebrates out feeding, bio-luminescence  as well as large carnivorous fish. We watched as the horse-eye jack would dart in and out of our dive lights. Getting to experience the marine ecosystem at night really gave me a new perspective.

Speaking of new perspectives, in Histories class, our new unit is on tourism: what it means to be a tourist, how tourism has impacted the Caribbean, specifically the Bahamas, etc. We have discussed different works on tourism including the controversial essay A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid. Yesterday, we visited Princess Cays, the place on Eleuthera where the Princess Cruiselines come to port. A giant 3000 passenger cruise ship was anchored at the Cay, and hundreds of tourists were hanging out around the man-made beach. We later learned that people had brought sand over from different places to build the beach at Princess Cays, which is a typical practice when building resorts. It was interesting to see the shift in the way I saw this touristy area. The beach looked like any beach; there were no features that were uniquely Eleuthera, and I felt like the people were really missing out on what it means to visit this place. Before, I probably would have enjoyed destination like Princess Cays with lots of water sports activities, snack bars, etc. but while we were visiting, I couldn’t help noticing how stereotypical the experience was. It really made me question the way I see tourism.

In Human Ecology, we have started the intensives unit where we choose one of three areas of focus (i.e. Aquaponics, Sustainable farming, or Plastics) to delve deeper into during 3, 3-hour classes. I chose Aquaponics since that was the one I knew the least about and found the most intriguing. The Island School Aquaponics is a unique lettuce-growing, tilapia-breeding sustainable system. It is all connected so that the nutrients from the fish poop support the growth of the lettuce, and the lettuce filters to water to support the fish. It is amazing how we utilize the capabilities of each natural process. The system is almost completely sustainable; the only thing necessary to maintain the system is the fish food. We grow quite a bit of lettuce and breed harvestable tilapia, all the while using 90% less water than any comparable system! I would definitely love to bring this idea back home on a smaller scale.

Life at the Island School just slowed down dramatically, and I’m not sure whether I like it or not. With half the class gone, our community is so much smaller and quieter. I really miss all the energy created by having our whole community around. On the upside though, I will definitely get to know this group of 24 students a lot better in the next 3 weeks. I like that for Kayak rotations, the faculty separate us from groups that have already formed, in order to push our limits and force us to branch out. It allows us to become close to a variety of different people and tightens the community as a whole.

Yesterday, we spent the entire morning in my favorite class: Research. For Shark Physiology, we went out to the wall and laid out a longline. This week is going to be very fishing-intensive since we need a lot more actual data. In the past, we have been really focused on understanding the complexities behind our project. After the past couple of intense weeks though, I think we have a pretty robust understanding of physiology and the convoluted effects of stress. When laying out a longline, we have to first set up our gangions (each with a circle hook, accelerometer, hook timer, and GoPro video camera). After, we bait the hooks with pieces of bloody fish. Before sharks, I had never touched a fish before in my life (I’m also a vegetarian), now, I’m used to having fish blood and guts all over me. Unfortunately, yesterday, no sharks bit our line. On the bright side, we got practice laying out a longline with less people since half our class was gone. The incredible graphic above, which demonstrates the set-up, was designed by the very talented Read Frost who is a student on the shark team with me.