this tuesday was the first day back at it after spring break, and we celebrated with eight straight hours of class. it was a pretty grueling reintroduction into scholastic life, especially when compared with the past week, when the most grueling activity i engaged in was walking from the beach to the hammock. by the last class of the day, we were all pretty slap-happy from being in class for so long, and the presentations we gave were all distinctly…interesting. one group ended their presentation on the queen conch by saying "we're on the verge of something great!" …the verge being the uh male organ of the conch, and although i'm always a proponent of biological sex jokes, i don't know if our teacher was entirely pleased.
spring break involved twenty of us staying in a five-bedroom villa, but having grown up in the mills family, i got plenty of practice squishing into small beds or sleeping on the floor, so i did some of both. provodenciales (the most populous island of the TCI) is like, so expensive it's tear-inducing, even in a manly person such as myself. for example: a usual taxi ride, no matter your destination, costs around 20 dollars…per person. a small container of hummus at the grocery store is like a billion dollars (okay eight, but for real?! i just want some chickpea protein with my baby carrots!). not that i went to any of the bars on the island, but i hear tales of a typical drink being around 12 dollars, which sounds pretty pricy, especially for anyone with a high alcohol tolerance.
provo induced a kind-of culture shock in all of us. south boasts like 3 stores, 2.5 bars, 1 hotel, and no sit-down restaurant to speak of. compared to this, george, WA would look like a metropolis, much less provodenciales. provo is basically a rich tourist's paradise, bursting with crazy-nice hotels, an insane amount of beach-front, a wealth of aquatic activities, and a whole hodgepodge of fine dining. the abrupt change between two islands in the same country is enough to make anyone raise his or her eyebrows at least once, and as for me, i spent the first day in provo just wiggling mine like i had a tick or something.
the first day, four friends and i decided to walk to our villa, and i'm positive we looked like homeless vagabonds. there we were, marching down what some call "the nicest beach in the freaking world" with our sleeping bags, camping mats, and shoes tied to the outside of our backpacks, while within, a powerful smell emanated, somewhere between stale bonfire and wet dog (to be fair, we had spent the past week camping). the tourist population of provo seems to be about 6% families and 94% rich old people, and 100% were judging us as we made our way down grace bay, but none of us really minded. spring break was mostly spent chilling in the water, chilling on the beach, chilling on the internet, and chilling in bed (i acquired the bad habit of napping for 3 hours each afternoon that's proving hard to break).
spring break was real fun, but despite all the class and the usual study grind, it's been nice to have a purpose again, other than evening out my tan (just kidding mom, i soak in a sunscreen bath each morning). yesterday, we began our directed research project, in which i lucked out and get to study the most perfect animal that swims the sea….freaking eagle rays!!! there are three of us on this project, and my job is to study the distribution of the rays and discover if the same animals kick it in the same locations. i'll do this by following around any rays we see like a love-struck angelfish (they mate for life) and taking photographs of the ray's posterior fins like a stalker barracuda (creepiest fish that swims the seven seas). anyway, i think it's a fitting job for me, right?
i'm kind of obsessed
today we went out to take photos for the first time. we drove all the way to the tip of the island, but the current was wicked strong and the tide was going straight out to sea. it's my job to assess water visibility at site, on a scale of good to fair to poor, and based on the copious amounts of floating silt and the fact that we couldn't see more than two feet in front of us, i'd say visibility was pretty darn poor. we did see one eagle ray though! and umm i got within like four freaking feet of it, which is the closest i've ever been to one! since the current was so strong, we got out after only fifteen minutes, but we went back for an hour that afternoon. we saw probably fifteen or so rays, spread out over our time in the water, but i'm not sure if i got good footage of any. i definitely need to work on my ray social skills….someone suggested an eagle ray costume? i'm still considering that one.
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