Rainy Adventures and STEMM, Bahamas-style!

Happy Friday!!

Our day started off with a 20 minute late start (we were really excited!). We made our way to the presentation room and met Ron who taught us all of the scuba diving techniques and started preparing us for the dive we were supposed to have this morning. We learned the proper ways to dive safely and how to interact with others while underwater during a dive, including the three skills we would need to complete. After this short introduction, we made our way to the boathouse to check out the equipment we would be using. 

So many scuba tanks!

After that we made our way to the dining hall and as soon as we got our steaming bowls of oatmeal and cinnamon buns, lightning struck. The staff informed us that we were going to observe a lightning lock down, waiting in the dining hall until it was safe to walk about outside. The rain started to pour and after a while we were told the scuba dive would be postponed until next Monday. Plans changed, the storm calmed, and we gathered in classroom to watch this cool video about yesterday's sting ray adventure. Check it out below this paragraph! We also learned more about the challenges in pleasing various stakeholders when deciding where to set boundaries for marine protected areas. Then we headed to the boathouse to prepare for our camping trip!!! 

Sting Ray Research!

The girls practice setting up their tents! We have a few first-time campers-- exciting!

Next we ate lunch and walked over to CEI for the intern’s proposal and research presentations. Topics varied from stingrays to sea turtles, conchs, and designing MPAs (marine protected areas). It was cool to see researchers not much older than us contributing to all of the science we have been learning about here. After listening and paying close attention to the presentations, we were blessed with chocolate chip cookies for a snack!

Afterwards, we headed back to the dorm and out of nowhere, Ms. Post shouted that we had three minutes to put on tennis shoes and grab a dollar. We weren’t allowed any more information which made all of us really nervous but excited. We made our way over to the parking lot, split up into two vans, and we were off! The whole ride over everyone was trying to guess what we were about to do- “we’re going to donate the money” “we’re going to buy candy”- evidently, our guesses were a tad off. We finally stopped in the nearest settlement, named Deep Creek, and our teachers collected our money and ran into a little house. When the teachers returned, they were holding plastic cups with frozen passion fruit juice. At first everyone was very skeptical, but they turned out to be amazing. With cups in hand, we took a short drive over to a tree house overlooking a beautiful mangrove landscape. The sun emerged from the clouds and it was a great ending to what started off as a rainy day.

All of us eating our cups on the balcony!

This is Deep Creek, the creek for which the settlement is named

The sun setting over the mangroves in the creek

Week one is over! Many of us really enjoyed calling home tonight; we can't believe we'll see you in a week!

Bar and Vicky

**Editor's note: We are going camping tomorrow morning and will not return until Sunday night. Thus there will be no blog tomorrow night; I will post both Saturday's and Sunday's blogs late Sunday evening when we return. Thanks for reading!