 |
Tommy listens to kayak instructions |
Week 3 was full of excitement. Some students were on academic rotation, others got scuba certification and went kayaking. The first kayaking group (aka the Tango Charlies) left on Monday morning and happily returned late Wednesday afternoon, looking forward to a nice shower! The second kayaking group (who had been taking scuba certification classes) then left campus Thursday morning.
 |
Kayak 2 gets ready to hit the water |
Students on academic rotation found themselves deep into work. Reading the book Omeros, working on math projects, and meeting in research groups took up a lot of time here on campus. Additionally, on Tuesday morning, as part of history class, we all biked or ran out to Palm Island. Only two miles from campus, the site was a Lucayan (the first settlers of The Bahamas) settlement more than 500 years ago. Amazingly, shards of their pottery (called Palmettoware) can still be found on the beach! Hurricanes have stirred up the beach to the point where the pottery is easy to find. After a brief lecture on what we can find out from such archaeological evidence, we walked down the beach, locating numerous shards of this Palmetto pottery.
 |
Stretching on the beach after run |
On Wednesday, we had community outreach. For this second session with our buddy, most groups began to work on teaching their buddies reading skills and environmental topics. For example, in the third grade Reading Comprehension unit, we went through books about oceans and helped our students pick out nouns.
Saturday was the highlight of the week for most Island School students. Kayak 2 returned home with smiles, and we all loaded up in the trucks and went out to High Rock to watch the sunset. We built a bonfire, ate delicious chili, and made s’mores… unfortunately without chocolate. We hung out at High Rock well past sunset, examining the constellations, playing music and watching worms glow in the dark. It was really cool.
 |
Diana and Renne work on |
While half the school was busy with academics, the rest of us started scuba training class. Scuba is great fun and we saw a lot of cool stuff as we did practice dives in the marina. Even though we only dove down to 10 or 15 feet it was still very worthwhile; scuba opens up a whole new world to you. We learned many skills needed in order to become scuba certified, including air and water composition, how to set up your gear, what to do in emergencies, how to read a dive chart, how to plan your dives, and many other interesting facts and skills. In the process of practicing these tasks, we saw all sorts of species that we never would have otherwise. We spotted various types of live coral and many kinds of fish, mollusks and other interesting sea animals. The highlight of the training, however, was that we saw a nurse shark, swimming by the dock! We all had a lot of fun and look forward to more dives and time to find new and fascinating things.
 |
Sky and Asa display pottery |
Kayak 2 (aka the beuf bones) left on Thursday and came back on Sunday. Thursday morning the weather was windy and we were still learning to control the boats. After a yummy lunch of peanut butter and jelly and dried mango, we got back on the water and stayed in a much closer pod formation. On Friday we snorkeled over an ocean hole, which was cool, especially after learning about them in history the week before. While on the water we saw a baby shark and two huge spotted eagle rays. We had an awesome time and found out a lot about each other. We started each morning with yoga and silent reflection on the beach. It was a brief respite in quite an adventurous week!
Melissa: Mom and Dad I miss you! Hey Bama, Bop, DD, Jeff, Bri and Hols…I’m having a great time. To all my McC girls and Yardley friends-I miss you guys
Tommy: Hey mom and dad! I’m having lots of fun and I’ll send a letter soon. I promise! Hey everyone back in Pawleys and Myrtle Beach. Vanessa, I’ll see you soon!
Sally- Hey mom, Dad and Robby! I miss you! Liz, Rosie, Care, Stephie, the summer will be awesome. Everyone else, I miss you guys so much. Write me! I’ll see you soon!