Only 2 days left :-(

Hola,

On Saturday for the "Sea Day" only 4 kids showed up. I was actually pretty happy about that, I wasn't in the mood for children. We ended up having sea cucumbers, sea stars, two kinds of conch, hermit crabs, pea crabs, sea biscuits, and sea urchins....it was pretty cool.

Sunday we just worked on our presentations and our posters all day. Yesterday we had to sit through 27 15 minute presentations....it was a long day. We started at 8:30 and got done at 4:30. Some of them were actually pretty interesting. Today we are having 1 person from each project present to the public. Nick is going for our group. Tonight the grade school and high school are putting on a Christmas pageant, I'm pretty excited for that. Tomorrow we have site clean up all morning long to get rid of our stuff and pack and clean up the place. In the afternoon we're hopefully going to go to a beach, but there is a big storm system moving through here, so that might not happen. I just looked at the forecast for Chicago and got severely depressed....I don't want to go home to ice and snow :-(

Tomorrow night "the boys" (the group of locals we hang around with) are throwing us a good bye party on the beach. They are going to grill chicken, lobster, and conch for us....it should be fun. I can't believe there's only 2 days left! Sorry I have no pictures to put up, we haven't been doing much lately. I hope all of you are doing well and surviving the winter weather!!

Love,
Michelle

Shark Dissection!!

This is the lemon shark we dissected. It was a 6 foot pregnant female.

These were the babies. Steve said they were only about half way through gestation. There were 12 babies total.

Hola,

On Wednesday when the fishermen came in, one of them had a 6 foot lemon shark that he had caught. Steve, our director, asked if we could have it for dissection. The fisherman agreed so on Thursday, we got to see a shark dissection. The liver of a shark is HUGE, it makes up 1/3 it's total body weight. The shark was pregnant so we got to see her 12 babies. One of the babies was much smaller than the others which isn't normal, Steve thinks that maybe that baby was in a different state of development than the others. If that's true, we were witness to a scientific breakthrough. We went through the shark's stomach, but there wasn't much in it, only a few small bones. Once Kristine started going through the shark poo I left because it smelled so bad.

During the day on Thursday and Friday we just worked on our papers. Some people went gill netting on Thursday. I didn't go because I think it's mean. They stretch out this net and sharks get stuck in it. A lot of times they die since the need to be moving in order to breathe. It turns out they didn't catch anything so it was a win win situation for me. I ended up turning in my paper a few hours early yesterday and took a nap....it was glorious.

Last night a few of our local friends, Michael, Amyth, Audi, and Conrad threw a party for us. They cooked lobster and conch which was absolutely amazing. I couldn't tell if people were happier about the conch or the fact that there was a couch to sit on (none of us have had a couch to sit on in 3 months).

Today for community outreach we have "Sea Day" for the kids. I am leading one of the snorkels which should be fun. We're also going to have a "touch tank" for them with sea cucumbers and starfish and stuff. There are going to be activities as well that center around turtles which I think will be cool. That's about it for now, I hope all of you are doing well.

Love,
Michelle

DR is winding down

Hola,

The past few days we have been finishing up DR. We were in the field on Monday and Tuesday, but now we are done with data collection so we've all just been writing our papers. On Tuesday we did more beam trawling which was actually very hard this time because most of what we were trudging through was muck up to our knees. In the afternoon we did sand netting again, but this time I think we got a grand total of 5 fish for the whole time, which was pretty disappointing.

For my paper I have to analyze seagrass patches within Bell Sound. I have to compare the density of the patches and then the health of the seagrass within each of those patches. Unfortunately there was only one major patch that I was able to get seagrass samples from, so this comparison should be pretty interesting.

Our paper is due tomorrow, then we have presentations to the class on Monday and presentations to the public on Tuesday. After that we are pretty much done. I can't believe how quickly this went by, it still seems like I just got here.

Last night we had the Conch Invitational Volleyball Tournament. Last time we had a vball tournament people thought it was unfair that a few teams were full of volleyball players so this time Kate (the student affairs person) picked captains and we drew names out of a hat. I got Devon, Britta, and Margaret. We did pretty well in our first game and won like 21-3 or something ridiculous. In our second match we lost pretty badly so we were out. Colby's team (3 men and a baby) won the whole thing. Unfortunately Kyle, the one that gave me so much garbage about beating my team last time, won again, so he's pretty content with himself right now. I told him next time we'll play with real rules and then he'll go down big time.

Sorry this is a short one, but I didn't have much to write about. I hope all of you are doing well.

Love,
Michelle

Church anyone?

This is the church I went to. It had probably 8 rows of pews on each side....each pew could fit 4-5 people.

This is a dog I named Ethel. She hangs out with us at Trench Town (one of the bars) and I, of course, always pet her.

This is down by Regatta, we found some cool shells here.

Hey Everyone,

Yes, you read that title correctly....I went to church yesterday....willingly. Mass started at 5 and was over by 5:40, there were about 20 people there. The priest said most of the mass in English but said the important parts in both English and French (for the Haitians). His homily was about how only God can give you a brand new heart and spirit as well as how pride is the worst sin. I thought that was interesting. He was saying how people shouldn't be arrogant and look down upon other people. He also said that when priests do it, it is worse than when regular people do it since they are "married to God" and when Bishops do it, that is the worst.

On Saturday I was on dock duty for site clean up so I had to scrub the bottom of the boats. It wasn't too bad....you get to be in the water so it is the only job you don't sweat doing. For community outreach I was supposed to be on games with the kids but only like 4 kids showed up so I got put on sand sifting duty. We just got a pile of sand in for the vball court, but it's full of rocks and shells so we have to sift it all.

Sunday I went with a few people to East Bay and Regatta to look for shells. It was fun until I stubbed my toe on a rock and sliced the tip of it off. Don't worry, I cleaned it out 2 hours later when I got back. There were a ton of shells at Regatta...I found some baby conch shells which are quite possibly the cutest things in the world. After that was when I went to church.

Today in the morning I had to help out with mangroves. By the time we were done, Liz and I looked like we had chicken pox from all of the bug bites. It was kind of creepy working in the roots of the mangroves. It's really quite and you can hear when a fish eats something and when the donkeys yell at you. It also rained on us 3 times so that didn't help the spooky feeling dissipate at all. After Liz and I finished the mangroves, we had to walk 2 miles to help the beam trawl people. Once again it rained on us. We tried to take shelter under some "trees" but it was raining too hard so it all came through anyway....so we decided to rough it and walk in the rain. The bugs were no better by the beam trawlers so we all continued to suffer.....it was great.

When we got back from Bell Sound Courtney and I took a walk around town. We haven't been in any of the "fashion stores" so we tried a few out today. They surprisingly have some nice stuff in them. Granted it's $50 for a shirt, but they look pretty nice. They had shoes and accessories and my personal favorite; a palm tree bathroom set complete with rug, toilet rug, and shower curtain. I now know how I am going to decorate my bathroom when I move out.