Happy Halloween!!!

These are some of the coconuts we painted.

This is Gabe, he was hurricane Katrina.

Kyle, one of the interns, was a tennis player.

This was one of the "scary trees" and our painted coconuts.


This is the bar looking amazing.

Katie was a conch boat, Liz was a pencil tree, Danielle was from the 80's, Britta was a rubix cube, and I was someone that just woke up.

Mitch was a palm tree and Steve was a girl with coconuts and a grass skirt.

These are the coconuts I painted. One is a pirate and one is Stewie Griffin from Family Guy.

This is the staff here. They were all sorts of fun things.

Happy Halloween Everyone!!!

So yesterday was just a chill day. We looked at all the damage from the storm; 3 busted boats and several chunks out of the pier. The storm wasn't as bad but the waves were still rough and it was still windy so we couldn't go in the field to do anything. Instead we just had class and then time in the afternoon to plan for the Halloween party and get some work done. I am on the Celebration committee so I was in charge of decorations. We made signs with fun Halloween facts and hung them around. We also put up streamers and fake cobwebs and Halloween lights. I had to go help Kate, the student affairs person collect coconuts yesterday so we could paint coconuts today for Halloween. While we were at East Bay doing that, we found some "scary trees" to put around the place.

Today for our Halloween party we had coconut painting, a Halloween charades game, a costume contest, lots of fun snacks, fun music, and capture the flag. For my costume, I was someone that just got out of bed. I had bed hair, messy make up and I had my pj's on with a sheet wrapped around me. Two of our professors; Richard and John, went as the Cassiopea, one of the boats that got ruined in the storm. Steve, the director of the school, went as a creepy old man and was very successful at it. A few people were sharks, one guy was Hurricane Katrina. When we did our coconut painting, I made a pirate and Stewie Griffin.....they look amazing. Some others were a mouse, a hedgehog, an elephant, some pumpkins, some ghosts, Frankenstein, and a monkey. We still don't know who won the costume contest....I think most people forgot about it.

For class tomorrow, we are giving presentations. My group is presenting on sediment; the basic problem with it, types, sources, and the situation in the Caribbean. I know so much about sediment right now, I could probably bore someone to death. Bottom line though, is it's bad. That's pretty much all you need to know. Well, that's about it for now. I hope everyone had a great Halloween!!!

-Michelle

Tropical Storm Noel

This was on the way to Provo from S. Caicos. As you can see, it's a very small plane. We all thought it was funny that Mitch, Gabe, and Scott all had to cram into the back 3 seats.

This is at the conch farm. This was Sally the girl conch. They have them trained to come out of their shell like that. The boy was named Larry.

This is the storm. The waves were crashing up over the sea wall onto us and the old hotel that's next to ours.

This is our pier, as you can see, the waves are crashing over the boats. One of the boat lines snapped and the staff had to scramble to make sure the boat didn't float away.

This is the wall right in front of where some of the staff live. This is probably one of the smaller waves we saw. I got a picture of one of the bigger waves, but it's really blurry.

Hey everyone,
So we had break from Wednesday to yesterday (Sunday). I went to Provo and met up with Mom and Dad. We had a lot of fun. We did a lot of shopping and eating and we went to the conch farm as well. Dad and I wanted to go parasailing and kayaking but they said it was too windy. Which brings me to my next point, we are in the process of getting hit by tropical storm Noel!!!

Last night the pouring rain started as did the howling winds. Our window did not get fixed over break so we woke up to a pond on our floor this morning. During class today the power went out so we had to postpone things until the ceiling in the classroom stopped leaking and the power came back on. There are puddles inside every room here, turns out the roofs all leak. The power came back on after about an hour so it was a nice little break.

We were supposed to be doing a field exercise today and tomorrow, but that has been postponed since the waves are like 8 feet high. Instead of doing work, most of us have been taking pictures and videos of the storm, it's pretty exciting.

Other than the storm, there's not too much going on. We have classes for the next two weeks and then another set of finals, then we get to do our directed research projects for the rest of the time. I hope all of you are doing well!!

-Michelle

Finals are almost done!!

This is a picture of right after this creepy guy named Freddy asked me for a kiss. When I shot him down, he asked Katie, so these are our reactions. Gabe saved me by saying he was my boyfriend, and Kenny did the same for Katie. From left to right: Liz, Gabe, me (yes I got cornrows), Katie, Kenny.
This is me and Scott at Baller's, and Katie is picking my nose.

This is me, G, and Katie at Baller's. G is one of the locals. His wife works so he stays home to take care of the kids and then goes out at night. He's really nice.

This is most of the gang. From left to right, and top to bottom: Scott, Ashley, Juston, Nick, Rachel, Lacey, Erica, Britta, Colby, Liz, Christina, and Danielle.

Since it's mid term time, I've pretty much been studying and chilling. I did, however, go on a snorkel on Saturday. The highlight of that snorkel was seeing a school of like 200 blue tang. Saturday night we went out for Danielle's 21st birthday. Sunday we just studied, laid out to tan, and watched movies. It was pretty boring.

Today we had our resource management test. I didn't think it was too bad, but some people thought it was the hardest test yet. After the test, I went snorkeling. First we went to Tucker's Reef and I saw 4 squid lined up in a row swimming around. Devon, one of the interns, tried to make them ink, but 2 of them just ended up going after him. It was quite funny. We also saw 3 jellyfish there. Since it was so wavy today, we only spent half of out time at Tucker's, then we went to Shark Alley which finally lived up to its name. Britta was my snorkel buddy today and we were swimming along and all of the sudden we see 4 GIANT barracuda. Naturally we both started to panic, and then one of them started swimming straight at us, opening and closing his mouth. After screaming and gripping onto each other, we decided to take action. We swam at the barracuda as fast and as splashy as possible and we scared it away. After that little incident Britta and I were both on edge. Then we saw two porcupine fish playing together so that made us feel better. We also saw like a 3 foot tiger grouper which was really cool. So Britta and I were swimming along, minding out own business, and I see a 5ish foot reef shark like 20 feet ahead of us. It was just chillin there so I calmly pointed it out to Britta, as soon as I did that, the shark turned and faced us and started swimming towards us. Once again we panicked and booked it out of there as fast as possible. We were both screaming and laughing and swimming away so once we were surrounded by other people, we had to get all of the water out of our masks and snorkels. After that we decided that we had had enough for one day so we swam back to the boat.

This reef shark was the first one I have seen since being here. Upon seeing it, I realized that I like seeing them on TV much better than I do in the water that I am sharing with them. Luckily for my research project I will just be dealing with baby sharks, if any.

Tomorrow we have our last test, it's on directed research. It's only half as long as our other tests have been so it won't be too bad. After that we have site clean up, then homework time since we have a little bit due before break. On Wednesday I fly out to Provo to meet up with Mom and Dad until Sunday. I hope all of you are doing well!!

-Michelle

Mid Term Time

Since I don't have much to write about today, I will post a bunch of pictures of things I did up until this point that I haven't yet posted.

This is what the conch looks like out of its shell before you cut anything off.


This is me and Naomi skinning our conch after we got them out of the shells.

This is Scott eating the conch verge which is it's male part. He said it didn't taste too bad, just kind of rubbery.


This was us at children's day. I am with Nick and Courtney and a bunch of the kids. They were the ones that tried to give Court dreads. The girl with the pink shirt next to me is the one that was very disappointed in my hula hooping abilities.

This was a bunch of us taking freshwater showers from the leaky gutters. It poured that day and we all smelled so we grabbed our shampoo. I am on the left, Devynn is in the middle and Liz is on the right. Courtney and Scott were playing frisbee.

This was on our trip to Middleton. Courtney was trying to make the best of the situation, I look exactly how I felt, as does Katie.

This was us walking home in the rain on Friday. We were coming back from Chicken Bar, which is only like 5 blocks away, but it was pouring. From left to right: Nick, me, Alyssa, Christina, Katie.

This was us playing volleyball, look at that form. Juston is on the left, then me, then Ashley, Danielle was up at the net setting.
This is Team Mangrove, the ones we lost to. Mitch is the ridiculously tall one, Steve is in the dark shorts, Gabe is in the red short, and Kyle, one of the interns, is in the khaki shorts.


This week has been very boring so far. We have mid terms starting tomorrow so we've had study time and directed research time all week. We have had optional snorkels every afternoon as well. Good thing I did not go on the snorkel yesterday because they got stalked by a barracuda the entire time and they went to a place that I have been to twice already.

Last night we had the volleyball tournament. My team went to the finals but we ended up losing to team Mangrove. Their team wasn't that great, but it was made up of 4 guys that were 6'1, 6'5, 6'3, and 6'7 and the net was probably only 6 feet high. It was quite funny to play them though, at the beginning of the game they played some really dramatic music and walked out onto the court, it was hilarious.

Our finals schedule is: Environmental Policy on Friday, Marine Ecology on Saturday, Resource Management on Monday and Directed Research on Tuesday, then we have break.

Oh, I almost forgot, turtling got canceled on Tuesday because the winds and currents were too strong. We are eventually going to go, we just don't know when yet. Well that's about it for now, take care!!

-Michelle

Long Key

This is (from left to right) Courtney, Britta, Sanchez, Lacey, and Rachel. We ran into him at Trench Town.

From left to right: Nick, Britta, Courtney, Alyssa, Liz, Ashley, Colby, Christina. We were at Trench Town just chilling after a hard day's work at the beach.

On Friday we went to Long Key to go hiking, snorkeling, and to just chill. I was in the group that went snorkeling first and it turns out the visibility was horrible. You couldn't see anything until it was literally a foot in front of your face. So we went into the shallows and searched for sea biscuits and shells instead. After an hour of that, we went to the beach on Long Key to tan and swim. Courtney brought a mushball so we got a game of 500 going, it was very entertaining.

Saturday for community outreach I went to the wellness center again. I talked to Mr. Cox again as well as a lady named Ethel. They were very talkative this time, I learned what foods they liked, what restaurants are good and what sports they watch. After community outreach, we had an invitational dinner. We invited all members of the government and education system. Everyone got all dressed up (I even showered and painted my nails). John, our marine ecology teacher, walked by all of us and said "what is that unusual clean scent I am smelling?" It was fun to see everyone with their hair done, with make up on, and in nice clothes. The dinner went well, David Bowen, the director of education for the TCI talked to us about their school system. They have primary school which goes up to 6th grade. After that they take a test, if they pass they go on to high school, if they fail, they have to re take 6th grade. High school goes from 7th grade to 11th grade, then they graduate. There is 1 community college in the TCI that they offer scholarships to for students. The deal is, they get money to go to the community school for 2 years, and then money to go to a university for another 2 years.

After the dinner a bunch of us watched a movie because we were tired, but others went out to the bar. Friday night we went out to the bar for a little while and ran into Sanchez, the chief of police's assistant, we also got stuck out in the rain which was nice. I met a dog here that is incredibly adorable. She's probably only a year old and she looks like a rotweiler terrier mix, I named her Josie. She followed me home and we fed her left over hot dogs, she was very happy. Mom, do we have room for another dog :-) ??

This week finals start for us. We have directed research (DR) for Monday and Tuesday, then study time on Wednesday and Thursday with tests on Friday, Saturday, Monday, and Tuesday. We have optional snorkels and dives every day this week to break things up, I'm quite excited. Oh, I got a 95% on my corals test, just thought I'd throw that out there. Well, that's about it for now, take care!!

-Michelle

I am a very important investor

I just thought this was a cool pic. It had just stormed and the storm clouds were breaking up.

This is a picture of the boat our food comes on. It's hard to tell how big it is, but those are train cars on it. I wanted to get a pic of it coming into the harbor but I was on breakfast duty so I couldn't, maybe next time though.

This is a picture of the Cox Development, the place we went for our project yesterday. This is the main building with 24 rooms in it.

So Tuesday night some people went turtling. I think they only caught like 4 turtles, but one group saw 2 HUGE sharks. One was a 7ish foot nurse shark and the other was a 7 or 8 foot reef shark. Needless to say there was some panicking and one of the girls ended up riding piggy back on one of the guys (in the water of course) until she was sure the shark was gone.

Yesterday we went to different developments around the island to see if they are going to be sustainable businesses both economically and ecologically. The basic premise of the project was we were "investors" and had to decide if we wanted to invest in the business or not. I ended up going to the Cox development which is right by our center. Long story short, the owner had no idea what we meant by being ecologically friendly and could not understand why we were disgusted by the fact that they don't filter the rain water that they use for real water in the hotel. Needless to say, we opted to not invest.

Last night we were supposed to have the first volleyball tournament of the semester. Of course, after 1 game a huge thunderstorm came through and made us have to postpone the games until further notice. Don't worry though, my team is going to go all the way. Three out of the 4 of us played volleyball in highschool and one of the girls on my team still plays in college. The only one of us that hasn't played before is Juston (the only guy on our team), but he tries very hard so it's ok.

When the volleyball tournament got called off, we played a mini fooseball tournament and then had a board game night. I had an off night in fooseball so I wasn't happy, but I made up for it in Balderdash (which I had never played before).

Tomorrow if the weather is nice, we are going to take a day trip to Fish Key. We can bring our snorkel gear and snorkel if we want or we can just lay on the beach. We have to go there by boat so we'll be there all day, I'm quite excited. If the weather is bad, things could get ugly.

So to answer Julie's questions, most of the people here are from the East Coast (New York, Maine, NC, Maryland, Boston), there is one other girl from IL, she goes to U of I, there is a girl from Minnesota, one from Indiana, and one from Cleveland. There is one guy from Colorado and a guy and a girl from CA (Evelyn is from San Fransisco and Gabe is from San Diego). If you want to see pictures of everyone, go to www.fieldstudies.org and look at "News from the Field" and you can see pictures of the students and what school they go to as well as where they are from.

At night, if we don't have homework, we watch movies, play board games (some favorites are catchphrase and Balderdash), play card games, go to the stores to get candy, or go out to the bars either to watch tv or just chill. Some of us (including myself) brought books to read so if I do get a chance to read, it's at night before bed. During down time in the day, we sometimes play volleyball or frisbee or chill in the pool. I hope that answers your questions Julie.

Well that's about it for now, take care!

-Michelle

Classes are almost done

Hola,

So yesterday I had my last id test, I don't know how I did yet, but I think that was the worst of the three. Other than the test, we just had class and a lot of homework.

Today I am student of the day which means that I have to refill the water and the food in the fridge and in the cabinets. It doesn't sound too hard, but we got our shipment of food in today so everything was empty this morning and I had to refill it all in like the 10 minute break we had between class and lunch while I was trying to set up for lunch. Although the food came, the dry goods did not so we are down to using kleenex for toilet paper and all's we have are the little travel packs....I also had to come up with a game for all 40 of us (that is staff and students) to play. We ended up playing animals which I can explain to you once I'm back home. All in all, it was a fun game that everyone enjoyed.

Tonight half of us are going turtling. I am not, however, since I cannot free dive. When you go turtling, you look for turtles and when you find one, you dive down and grab it by the back of the shell by the neck and hang onto one of his back flippers and ride the turtle to the surface. Once at the surface, there are people in the boat measuring them and tagging them. Since I can't free dive I think I'll probably end up being one of the measuring people, but we'll see.

We are basically done with classes until after break. Right now we are just working on our research projects and having field exercises for class. Tomorrow we are going to the Cox development, the only hotel that is up and running right now. We get to ask them all sorts of questions about their business and later we will present to the class what we found out.

Well, that's about it for now, I will post a pic of the boat we get our food on when I get a chance.

-Michelle

One more ID test

Hey Everyone,

Thursday night we went on a night snorkel which was pretty cool, we went to Shark Alley. I saw a bunch of squid, a sea turtle, a HUGE crab (like 4 times the size of my head), and a lobster that looked like a giant cockroach. I still haven't seen an octopus which is sad, but there's still time. It was cold so I actually wore my wetsuit.....turns out its the weirdest feeling in the world to be in the water while fully clothed. I stayed warm though, so that's all that matters.

Friday we had a coral id snorkel which was good because we got to see a giant nurse shark, it was probably 5 feet long. We also saw some porcupine fish which are pretty much the puppy dogs of the ocean. It was also nick's birthday so we all went out and had a good time.

Saturday was a pretty rainy day but we still had community outreach. I went to the wellness center again and talked with Mr. Cox. He was telling us how much he hates Provo but how he likes the rain. Since Friday was Nick's birthday and Saturday was Lacey's birthday, we all went out to eat at Muriel's. She served spare ribs, fried chicken, conch, and fish. It was soooooooooo good.

We are starting to run out of food again. We are out of eggs, bread, milk, jelly, and meat so we are basically eating quesadillas and pasta. The sun has gone away for the most part, it's rained every day for the past week so I think my tan is going away.

We only have two more days of regular classes, then our research projects start. I'm pretty excited for that 'cuz I'm getting sick of id tests and doing readings. I hope everything is going well for all of you!

-Michelle
PS: Julie, I will address your other questions in another post, I promise

Heck (I can't say the real word) week is almost over

Hola,

So all of our paper products are currently stuck at customs meaning we have run out of toilet paper and paper towels. Turns out if we run out, we get to buy the paper products from the store....$18 for a 12 pack. There is an upside to this, we get Charmin from the store instead of the normal recycled paper so we were actually quite happy about this.

Yesterday was a very busy day. We had 3 classes in the morning then a waterfront activity in the afternoon. I did not go because I have so much work to get done. My conch assessment is almost done, I finished my presentation and my literature report, but I have yet to start studying the coral. Last night we played flashlight tag but before we played, they informed us that they were changing the schedule for today so we would be snorkeling in the morning. There is a no going out policy on nights before snorkeling or diving so I couldn't go out to watch the Cubs game....needless to say I was quite upset. So after that shock, we played tag. We had to play with a partner since there was a total of 40 people that played. My partner was Courtney and it was her idea to hide in a tree. Getting in the tree was no problem but getting down was a huge ordeal. I ended up having to swing out of the tree and I got a huge scrape from my wrist to my armpit on my left arm. The worst part of it was I got caught as I was swinging so we lost. Courtney and I did not have the best hiding place though, some of the other girls hid on the roof of the main building and at the end of the game, couldn't get back down. One of the teachers had to get a ladder to help them.

Today we started out with a presentation from a local historian. He has done work all over the TCI and he talked about Middleton Cay where there used to be a Lucayan settlement. The presentation was quite interesting but then later we went to Middleton to see the "settlement" and it was just a pile of conch shells surrounded by black dirt. Either the presentation or the fieldtrip would have been sufficient, but not both back to back. We also went on a coral ID snorkel and I scraped my knee on some coral, I wasn't the only one to do that so I didn't feel as bad. On the way back to the boat we saw a fish trap full of fish. We felt bad so we freed all of the fish, that was probably the highlight of the day so far.

This afternoon we have our lectures since we did snorkeling and the fieldtrip in the morning. After dinner we have a night snorkel in Shark Alley. If we go on this snorkel, then we can go turtle rodeoing next week. I'll explain that when the time comes. Well, that's about it for now, take care!

-Michelle

The Police Chief Paid Us a Visit

Hola,

Yesterday we had our reef fish exam, I got a 98% because of the stupid parrotfish.....turns out they all look the same. Things are starting to get pretty stressful around here. We have our big conch project due on Friday as well as stuff for our directed research projects. I think I'm doing more work here than I ever did at Iowa.

Today we started to learn the corals, we have a test on those on Monday. We get a new group of students to snorkel with and a new instructor each time we have a new type of ID's. This time my group is Scott, Nick, Naomi, and myself and our instructor is Andrea. Usually she doesn't give hints on the test, but since I can't free dive I am at a disadvantage. To fix that, Andrea has to describe everything so everyone in my group is incredibly happy that I am in their group because it's making their tests easier. On our snorkel today we saw a massive stingray and a HUGE school of bar jacks and gray snappers. A smaller school of giant barracuda were following it close behind, but we did not witness any fish getting eaten.

The Chief of Police visited tonight to give us a speech about the island and drugs. He was very hard to understand and I don't think he ever completely finished one thought. He ended up making a bunch of jokes and told us who the drug dealers on the island are so we stay away from them. He also invited us out for a few beers. He brought his body guard named Sanchez with him on his talk, Sanchez was Dominican and pretty scary looking, he never opened his mouth though.

Julie requested that I describe my professors so here it goes. John is our marine ecology professor, he is in his mid 30's, is from England so he has an awesome accent and he's cute. He is obsessed with fish spawning and that is what he got his doctorate in. Richard is our environmental policy professor. He used to teach at the University of Florida and he's got so many degrees I don't even know where to start. I think he looks like Steve-O. He's probably my favorite professor, he's quite funny and does a lot of in class activities. Catherine is our marine resource professor. She is turning out to be my least favorite teacher. She's from Belgium and does not speak English very well. She thinks we know everything that she is teaching so she goes over things really fast and then won't answer questions, Steve, the director of the program, has been on her case about it though. Steve is really cool. He's from England as well. He's 31 and has his doctorate in something having to do with sharks I think. He has been on Shark Week on Discovery Channel.

Well, I think that's it for now, let me know if there's things you want to me write more about!

-Michelle