The program here came to an end last week, culminating in the students Demonstration of Learning and Graduation ceremony. Over the past nine weeks Eryn, Ryan and Jordan have made profound change in their own lives and of those surrounding them.

All of the things that were accomplished by these amazing individuals are difficult to quantify with words, however a list of all the things we delved into over the program might suffice:

• Taking marine ecology classes
• Teaching an environmental issue class of their own
• Taking a human ecology class
• Community service projects
• Down Island camping trip, experiencing a sense of place on Eleuthera
• Community outreach at the Deep Creek Middle School
• Conducting the Fall 2013 shallow water conch surveys
• Adventuring on 5 day Kayak expedition
• Being part of a research team as an intern for three weeks
• Getting both Open Water and Advanced Scuba certified
• Presenting their learning to the wider community

They have each proved themselves in both a personal and professional setting, being part of the community family and involved with the research facility. During the student’s demonstration of learning it was clear how much they are taking from the program. The diverse learnings of each student are a testament to each of their personal challenges and growth.

We would like to wish the Gap Year Team of Fall 2013 all the luck in the world as they move onto other endeavors and experiences, we hope you take what you learned here and build upon it. You are the game changers.

If you’re interested in joining the Gap Year Team of Spring 2014 or learning more about the Gap Year program in general, you can find out more on our website; http://www.ceibahamas.org/gap-year.aspx.

If you are looking for a great GAP year challenge, follow other alumni who have spent some time exploring and learning all about African wildlife and conservation. Recently the Maxeys visited Campfire Safari Academy, located in the Balule Nature Reserve and part of the Greater Kruger National Park. The Academy is focused on educating the next generation of wildlife conservation professionals to help conserve the natural beauty of Africa’s flora and fauna. There is the potential to build a bridge through our GAP year at Cape Eleuthera Institute to GAP and intern opportunities at Campfire Academy.

 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

Intensives continued for the gappers – for me that meant continuing on with the shark team, the highlight of which was discovering we sharking gappers are not bad luck (aka we finally got to help with a shark!!!). After a long morning setting up and then watching our line in the marina, tempting a number of sharks with fresh bait from fishermen down the dock, we finally had one large nurse shark bite! Jack, Shaper and I got to help Brendan and Ian take the necessary samples and measurements, plus tag the shark before releasing it again. This was the second-to-last nurse shark needed for the longline physiology study – wahoo!

On Tuesday night, various members of the CEI/IS community gathered for a Coffeehouse. Among a cluster of various talents from baking to putting chickens into tonic immobility (more commonly used – at least here – with sharks), Shaper performed an excerpt from the Vagina Monologues written by her friend, Sasek a poem by the spoken-word poet Andrea Gibson, and Jack sang Neil Young’s Heart of Gold with two of the interns. All around a fun, talent-filled evening!

Wednesday was Foundation Day, celebrated with participation in various activities (I went lobstering, which turned into Shaper and I practicing hauling ourselves into the boat – just getting buff), meetings with our “extended advisories” that we will be a part of (briefly) while the IS students are here, and a barbeque and bonfire on Sunset Beach!

Training continued throughout the week, including the first taste at swim drills for most of us, led of course by our fearless leader Scotty, as well as an early morning game of kickball with two visiting programs and a number of Island School faculty…

…which led to THE highlight of this week: the MONSTER Run-Swim (if you were to have someone explain to you the 6-mile course, you would indeed see how it is rightly termed a monster). On this cloudy, breezy Saturday morning we woke up early to meet at the flagpole to warm up as per usual for morning exercise and greeted the day, led by Will. Our support staff (a collection from IS and CEI) took off for their places around the Cape, and at 6:49am we gappers began the long course. With many different legs of running and swimming, we wound our way through “the loop” and marina, along beaches, and finally over the final portions of the regular run-swim course, ending on campus. Our strengths – whether as runners, swimmers, or somewhere in between – balanced us out, most of us returning to the flagpole-finish line within minutes of each other, and everyone under the 2-hour goal! It’s pretty impossible to describe exactly what this experience was like in a blog post, but all in all it was not as bad as we thought it would be, it was in fact fun, and I for one felt like a powerhouse athlete afterwards – so, pretty darn rewarding. (A shoutout of thanks to the support and cheers from fellow gappers and the support staff, especially Scotty, who did the whole course with us!)

Saturday afternoon was spent with well-deserved rest and relaxation (aka naps, snacks, and movies), particularly appropriate for the chilly weather (the rain started just minutes after we’d all completed the Monster). We have also been continuing work on our Human Ecology final papers and beginning brainstorming for our DoLs (Demonstrations of Learning). AND, this coming week will see the arrival of the 48 Spring ’13 Island School students; it’s sure to be yet another exciting week here on Eleuthera!

by Julia Peters

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 – our deep dive and our naturalist dive – and are almost done getting advanced open water certified! I know I put an exclamation point after that last sentence, but in a way I am kind of sad that we are almost certified, because in the process of getting certified we have gotten to go on some amazing dive excursions. We’ve visited sites that make you feel like you’re in a whole new underwater world, swimming amongst grouper, lionfish, and barracuda, and I will miss going out twice a week to experience those things.

Anyway, after a long week of intensives and diving, the whole group was exhausted and spent Saturday relaxing at Plum Creek, our favorite beach, and enjoying each other’s company. I think we all realize our time left here is dwindling, and we want to make the most of it. And there you have it, week five has ticked away, and I can’t wait to see what the rest of my gap year experience will entail. So far, it has been an amazing and wild ride.

by Jack Davis

This Tuesday nine of us embarked upon a sea kayaking trip – destination: Lighthouse Beach for our 48-hour solo experience. With choppy waters, we paddled a whopping mile from campus before having to beach the boats and camp out for the night. Day two, we try again: only to encounter more sea-sickening waves and exerting far too much effort for the distance traveled. We stop for lunch and a nap on the beach, then out on the water again. Alas, we make it one-third of the way to our destination before resulting to hitching a ride the rest of the way to Lighthouse. Along the way, some lovely conversations, bonding over games of Wizard, and the best campfire pizza bliss. Valentine’s Day dawned upon us and we spent the holiday alone — in the most literal sense. Thursday marked the beginning of our48-hour solo. Seven of us scattered along the shore of Lighthouse Beach with nothing but pink sand, our thoughts, and the horizon of each new day before us. 

Solo: a time for self reflection, awareness, acceptance. Ye of little faith who may be wondering, “What in the world do you plan on doing with your life?” Well, I took some time during my solo to contemplate this question and let me affirm your doubts by responding–I still have no idea. “But,” you say, “weren’t you supposed to figure that out on your gap year?” I, too, had in mind an idealistic notion that my gap year would provide all of the answers to my confused teenage angst over what to do with my life. But, you see, us gappers — we’re still figuring things out. I rest assured that I’m worlds away from the person I was when I graduated high school, and no college textbook could have taught me what I’ve learned this past year about my place in this world. As I reflected upon this thought with the crashing of waves before me, I realized how perfectly okay it is to not be completely consistent in my beliefs. To contradict myself is what it means to become a young adult. So I say: soldier on, wandering warriors. Life’s short. Defy those societal pressures and live the life you want to live. 

by Sarah Sasek

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, bathing ourselves in spa mud and spelunking through the darkness. We spent the night at the abandoned navy base beach, ate delicious camping food, and fell asleep under the stars, which could be seen through our tent after removing the rain cover, and conveniently, it rained that night. Ah, nature, the sly little minx.

On our final day, we broke fast in Governor’s Harbour and toured the beautiful pink library, which awakened within me a deep desire to read children’s chapter books in a beanbag chair. As a final hurrah, we visited the Native Plant Preserve, which was by far my favorite portion of the trip. Our guide revealed to us a myriad of botanical solutions for aches, pains, itchies, and sexual lethargy. It was quite a lovely walk through a beautiful garden, which ended in bush tea shots all around. Yeehaw!!! A wonderful trip, another wonderful week. Dang, it’s good to be a Gapper.

by Hannah Shaper

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 where Joseph had a fire going to make hot water for the pig cleaning. After Caleb shot the pig, it was brought over to the cleaning table, where knives were handed out and people began removing the hair from the pig using the hot water to loosen it up. After the pig was all cleaned up, we hung it up across a wooden beam, and Jai and Joseph began gutting and cleaning it. The whole process was a great way to see where your food comes from. Although the majority of pork we eat in the states isn’t raised as well as this pig was, it was really cool to see the process of turning an animal into food.

Beach Plastic

One of our last activities of the week was on beach plastics with Kristal. We started in the presentation room, watching Kristal’s presentation on her experience researching the Pacific Ocean gyres. We then went out to a beach in Wemyss Bight to do some surveying. The results we got were pretty surprising – we found a ton of micro plastic pieces in each of the quadrants we surveyed in. The microplastics came from larger pieces of plastic in the ocean breaking up, a current environmental issue that researchers at CEI are hoping to learn more about in order to effect change both locally and globally.

Well, that’s a wrap. Until soon,

Will Fox

When I asked around the copious newcomers that arrived at Cape Eleuthera Institute in the past week or so, if they could describe their experience so far, they responded ultimately with; surreal, funky fresh, refreshing, really salty, filled with lots of lettuce, and extremely informative. Personally, I would not object to any of those, but due to lack of time, as I am a gap year student here at The Cape Eleuthera Institute, and have to finish my prerequisites for SCUBA training, I am only going to focus on the week being “surreal, informative, and refreshing.”

Along with four other gappers (for the sake of an easier flow to this blog post, and a more real description of our time here, I am going to refer to a gap year student as a “gapper”, what everyone else has come to call us), we arrived to the sunny south side of the island Eleuthera, and it immediately seemed as if the luminous sun hovering the enticing, crystal, teal waters sucked out the oxygen from the moment, where we were all amazed at how perfect a place can really be. It was only the beginning to the infinite exploration we will endure here. Later on in the week we were fortunate to witness a beautiful sunset over the water in Plum Creek, spend an afternoon snorkeling around the sandbar (one of the most unique places I personally have ever been too), climb a Banyan tree, swim in an ocean cave, and many more. I do not think there will ever be a night where we are not amazed by the abundance of stars and bright moon that covers the “rumber” (lumber and rubber, made out of used tires) bridge through the mangroves, coming back from dinner to the dorms.  It is nothing but surreal.  

On our second day here, we were given a “tour” which ended up containing enough information for it to be more of a lecture on sustainability, disguised as a tour.  Scott, the director of the gappers, showed us all of the many ways Cape Eleuthera Institute and Island School makes sustainability an attribute. This lesson continued further with exposure to more lessons brought to us in all different varieties by the community here. We were fortunate enough to have Ian and Joseph introduce us to the permaculture here. We were not only able to see and understand the purpose of permaculture, but also got to work in the farm as well, leaving very excited to see our kale, swiss chard, and arugula thrive! Later in the week we got to help Claire conduct a survey along the shoreline on conch. After learning about the significance of conch’s presence in culture, and biodiversity, we left that lesson in a funk, where we only had found three live conch out of around three hundred surveyed. The more unfortunate aspect of that, not regarding the preposterous ratio, was that most of the conch found had been proven to be harvested, particularly the juvenile.

But not all hope was lost. We even got to learn from within us gappers! Two of us paired up and presented the others with information on banyan trees, ocean holes, and ocean caves. I personally thought taking a gap year was going to be a break from school, but I have never learned and enjoyed so much within a week here than I ever did in school itself!

One thing all of us gappers have in common is the interest in the mystery of the world and culture we live in. Joining the community here was relieving to see a great amount of people who had the same intentions. All of the programs running here at Cape Eleuthera Institute introduced us to their projects, inspiring us to further our interest into one of these projects, and plan to eventually get the chance to work on them. Rachel Carson said it best, “Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth, are never alone or weary of life.” It’s refreshing to have all of these amazing opportunities brought to us, all coinciding with our enthusiasm for sustainability and conservation.

I spent my last three months backpacking, seeing a whole different world of conservation, and in the eyes of a tourist I should really say the lack of conservation in a world. I found myself in a position where I was in fact doing the complete opposite. Returning home, I again witnessed another world of conservation, but here ignorance was present. It’s extremely refreshing to join a community that is working hard and thriving to set an example for others. There is no better place to be welcomed than a place that is filled with your personal passion. It’s been of the utmost informative, surreal, and refreshing time so far.