I'm all settled in

This is a picture from one of the highest points on the island. The dock in the distance is our dock. We keep our boats there and that's where we take our sea baths. You can't really see our buildings from here though. I'll work on getting a better pic.

This is town and most of the island. you can see the ocean on the other side. The building with the red roof is the new medical facility. The tourist management people required them to build one so that tourists could have a place to go if they get hurt or sick.


this is a picture of long cay. It is the island straight out from our property. We will be doing dives to the left of it in "shark alley"

I finally got all of my luggage yesterday so now I'm all unpacked and settled in. I have met all of my professors, they are from all over: Belgium, Italy, England, Scotland, Argentina and the US. Yesterday we had our swim and snorkel tests. I passed, but it turns out swimming against the current is a true undertaking. I took my first sea bath yesterday, it was surprisingly refreshing until you finally are dry and realize you still smell and your hair feels weird.

Today we had a tour of the island and then ate lunch on a beach and played frisbee in the ocean. While on our tour, we ran into the local one armed thief. His name is Val. He was doing community service when we saw him because he had gotten caught trying to steal out of the treasury safe. We also walked to the Salinas which is an area where water is channeled in and spread out to evaporate. Then people scrape the salt off. That's what it used to be for anyway, now it's kind of abandoned. We saw flamingos there though, so that was fun. We also walked up to an old lighthouse were you could see pretty much the whole island. We could see Ms. May's house, the former governor's house, which is completely abandoned and termite ridden, we saw all of the areas they are developing. They are planning to build several large hotels, but I don't know how they are going to do it since the only freshwater they can get is from rainfall. Before that we had our first lecture, we had one when we got back as well. After our second lecture we went on a sea tour to see all of the coral reefs and then we went snorkeling. I saw TONS of fish, some conch, and a barracuda.

Well I tried to upload some pictures but the internet here is so slow i waited 10 minutes and not a single one showed up. I'll try again later when there aren't so many people on the internet.

-Michelle