First Week

First Week

 I could get used to this.

Apparently a lot of people make titles for their blog posts.  Whoops.  Guess I’ll start doing that from now on.  Anyway, on with the latest happenings.

I’m not going to lie, the first night here was pretty rough.  None of the rooms are air conditioned, and therefore have to be cooled by the breeze.  Due to the set up of this contraption, when the wind is strong, as it has been this past week, it whistles and howls everytime there is a gust.  By itself, this noise is manageable, but when you factor in the dogs that were having a barking contest right outside the center, it makes it fairly difficult to get a good night’s sleep.  Thankfully I was exhausted after the day of travel and the lack of sleep the previous night, so I was still able to fall asleep at a somewhat reasonable time.

            The first few days were mostly orientations, so no class(!), but they made up for it by giving us six hour-long lectures on Friday and five on Thursday.  The good news is that now that the course introductions have been taken care of, the field components will start becoming more numerous.  For example, tomorrow morning we have a snorkel expedition for Marine Ecology to identify species that live in mangrove and sea grass habitats, which aside from being an awesome usage of time, prevents us from having a lecture that morning!  Not that I don’t find the course material interesting, but it’s just more fun to be out in the water.  

            Sadistically, the staff didn’t allow us to go into the water until we had a swimming check-out around 4:00 on the first full day.  That may seem like a short time, just a few hours, to be denied water privileges, but when you are able look out over turquoise water all day, it’s torturous.  Needless to say, after people were getting checked out, they instantly grabbed their snorkel stuff and headed to our snorkel/swim zone.  Located right outside the center, we have a little section of the ocean that’s out of most boat traffic and has a small reef, sandy bottoms, and a little sea grass.  For how small the area is, it has outstanding diversity, from small invertebrates that hang out in the coral crevices, to much larger creatures, such as stingrays, spiny lobsters, and, if you go on a night snorkel, some vibrantly colored octopi.  

Great barracuda near a sea grass bed. (kind of hard to see, I know)

One of the few good underwater pictures I took.  It's deceptively difficult to take good pictures underwater!  I'm pretty sure that this is a lizard fish.

            I’d love to keep going, but I have to do some classwork before the Super Bowl – yes, even though the center doesn’t have a television, we are able to go the only operational hotel on the island to watch the game.  Before I head out, though, back by popular demand are some more quick thoughts: 

-          Despite being so small, there’s so much to see on the island, from the saltwater ponds in the middle of the island (the Salinas) that were used to evaporate salt when this place used to be a leading exporter of salt (but more on that later), to the rocky cliffs and beaches around the island.  We are going to do some major exploring in the next few weeks.

-          We may get very few options at meals, but it always surprises me how good everything is to eat.

-          While I’m on the topic of food, being “Student of the Day” sucks.  It’s just a misleading title given to the kitchen slave, and it’s not fun.

-          I actually don’t feel dirty or grimy despite not bathing in freshwater yet.  That will probably change, though, when I stop having clean clothes.