chemistry, modern-day resurrections, and lemon sharks

when i finished my final semester of chemistry last year, i was absolutely certain of two things: hell is temporary and i'm never going back. however, much to my surprise, last wednesday found me in a local high school, trying to teach juniors and seniors about the joys of inorganic chemistry, of which there are none. i pretty much couldn't remember a single thing. who's avagadro? aren't moles animals? i was relieved when they started asking me physics questions, and i'm pretty sure they were too.

later that day, we began the first of weekly house visits to families on the island. two other girls from my program and i were assigned for the semester to an elderly woman who raised 6 kids and 5 of her 16 grandkids, and has the trophies and medals all over her house to prove it. i guess she has some sweet genes, because the medals ranged from track to chess to academics and there were a lot of them. i was feeling a little like an underachiever, but then i remembered that my parents have a "participation" ribbon from when i ran cross-country as an eight-year-old. i haven't seen it around lately, but they're probably just getting it framed. 

she had some crazy stories too, all of which had morals, which i deduced were nearly always "don't go to the doctor." take, for example, the first story she told us. about thirty years ago, she had a terrible pain in her side, and she had to be flown to grand turk (the capital of the turks and caicos islands). at the hospital there, the doctors discovered she had appendicitis, and rushed her into surgery, during which she lost a lot of blood and was pronounced dead. as is protocol in these cases, she was wheeled into the morgue and her husband was called to pick up the body. a day later, he flew into grand turk and went to see his dead wife, who he found in the morgue with her lips moving. he called the doctors and was like "uhhh i think she's still alive guys," at which the doctors questioned his emotional stability, but he was like "nah i'm serious," so they visited her in the morgue and found her alive and talking. surprise! don't trust the doctors.

on wednesday night, five of us got to accompany our ecology professor on a research trip to tag sharks. understandably, almost everyone was drooling over the prospect of seeing elasmobranchs in the flesh, but as there were only five spots, the sign-up was posted at a random time and whoever was quickest or most aggressive got to go. since i'm neither quick nor aggressive (jk about aggressive guys, bio or death, but i'm really slow), i didn't get my name on the board. but as my old gaffer likes to say, it's better to be lucky than good, and one girl ended up having to back out at the last minute, so i got to go along after all.

we took a van to a stunning bay on the other side of the island, and set up the shark net (which is the length of a football field) by the light of the almost-full moon. aaron, our professor, told us to "get comfortable and start talking about our feelings" (that's a direct quote), but before i could begin telling the group about my troubled childhood and delinquent outbursts spurred by emotional instability, we caught a shark. and then another. and then four more. we caught six freaking sharks in the first hour!!! aaron says in a usual night of sharking, they catch maybe two sharks. dad, you were right about the lucky thing.

sharking, of course, is not all glamour and gills. it also involves a lot of wading through mud, tripping over worm-mounds, detangling angry lobsters from the net, and sitting and waiting for sharks to hit us up. but oh gosh, when you catch one…....if i was a crier, i would have been in tears for sure. we were catching baby lemon sharks, so they're not terribly big (the biggest was probably only three feet), but they have these cute sharp teeth that they'll use if you give them the chance, and the rumors are true about their skin! it is smooth one way and the other way feels unnervingly like a cat's tongue. i went home that night smelling like a shark, i kid you not. if i start growing gills, stick a tag in me and put me in the shallows.  

on thursday we had our first identification exam (see guys i am going to school here), and to celebrate, a bunch of us went out to town that night. that was real fun, as i got to get to know some of my classmates better, attempted to salsa dance, and practiced my super rusty spanish with a few of the men from haiti. it did make me very tired for class the next morning (i wake up at 6 here, which means my bedtime is approximately 8 pm), but it was well worth it. especially as that day was valentine's day, and i got to celebrate by spending eight hours in class with my boo, bio. it was pretty romantic. we may have made a few people behind us uncomfortable, but it's not true love if someone around you isn't gagging. 

things i had never done before this week:

• touched a shark
• seen a hermit crab bigger than my face
• danced zumba
• gotten followed by a barracuda for over an hour
• watched frozen (which was real good by the way, and the irony of watching a movie called "frozen" in the tropics did not escape me)
• saw a herd of humpback whales breaching 
• eaten okra
• nearly got beheaded by a frisbee 
• swam through a herd of eagle rays (i nearly cried of joy)
• gotten stung by a jellyfish

identification nation

yesterday we went out into the field for our first identification session. apparently we actually have to go to school here, who knew? this surprising fact is made slightly more tolerable by the fact that for my marine ecology class yesterday we were out in the warm water paddling around and identifying only the chillest of marine organisms. 

sometimes when i say i'm studying biology in school, people make snide remarks about how much memorization biology is comprised of, and i, quick to defend the love of my life, insist that it's more theory and concept based really. however, today i am proven utterly wrong as by thursday, we have to know about fifty scientific names, the key characteristics of each phyla, class, and subclass, and be able to identify and describe each of the fifty organisms in the field. you win world, you win. so naturally, i decided to write a blog post instead of get to work on naming. 

i have to admit though, it was pretty cool to see the animals and plants out in the field. this is literally a nerdy biologist's heaven….so i'm fitting in just fine. i'm stocking up on super fascinating and utterly useless facts which are the delight of biology students everywhere. for instance, sea urchins have these little suction feet that tickle when you hold one, and you can identify the black mangrove by tasting the bottom of leaves to see if they're salty, and though sponges are basically the most boring creatures ever, there's a type here called the fire sponge that hell no you don't want to brush against. 

the fire sponge, a slightly less boring branch of the porifera. 

last night, we went out for our first night snorkel. i'll admit, i felt pretty badass sitting in my wetsuit with my flippers on, about to hop in the dark water with only my dinky flashlight and the moon for light. i'm sure i didn't look too epic though; wetsuits and flippers, sexy as they are, aren't really my thing. 

we didn't see anything too wild last night (i was holding out for a lemon shark, but no cigar), but all the colors of the coral looked so different in the dark. we also saw several parrotfish, which have the charming habit of coating themselves in mucus at night to protect them while they sleep. yay science! we have a number of decently big barracuda here, and one of the girls in my group got rammed by one last night. it didn't bite her, but just ran into her side and then swam off. barracuda are basically the creepers of the ocean. they have these big glaring eyes and they like to follow snorkelers and divers around, and though they usually just like to creep from a respectful distance, apparently they will bite your fingers because of their fondness for rings and other shiny objects. if i were a fish i'd probably be a barracuda, so watch your fingers.

me in fish form.

today we're going out into the field again for another identification session, so i better study up. although okay, some of the critters have really awesome names….a type of mangrove that grows here is called laguncularia racemosa and doesn't that just sound like a harry potter spell? it'd probably turn someone into a tree or something. also, there's a fish here named halichoeres bivittatus whose common name is "slippery dick." not gonna have a problem remembering that one, thanks science.

halichoeres bivittatus....better known as slippery dick.

this isn't belated or anything

thursday dawned as the hottest day yet, so the historical walking tour of south caicos was pretty toasty and despite the sunscreen i swear i'm wearing (hi mom) i may have gotten a nice tank-top burn which is going to turn into a tan any day now, i swear. the salt fields, pictured below, are no longer in use by anyone but flamingos, of which we saw many, at least before the dogs undertook their duty to chase them away. there are also a number of wild horses and donkeys on south, and the dogs believe it is their life's purpose to attempt to herd them. it's usually unsuccessful, but often amusing.

thursday night found a small group of us wandering around town in search of ice cream. once procured, we meandered toward the docks, and found a number of split bivalve mollusks, whole gastropod shells, and empty crustacean exoskeletons (whoo bio classes and i seriously apologize i can't help it).

we then decided to explore miss may's house. a mansion turned hotel turned failed hotel, the house is rumored to be haunted, so what else would we be doing on a thursday night at nine? we bushwhacked our way to the house, trying to avoid the acacia thorns and yelping whenever we failed. due to poor planning, we only had two flashlights among the eight of us, but we made our way up the hill all the same, pausing many times to nurse our wounds and trip over small objects. 

once inside, the irreconcilable power of hurricanes became apparent. 2009's hurricane ivan hit south caicos hard, and the splintered wood, water damage, and general disarray of items inside the house made that clear. when i wasn't shivering from fright, we examined the ground floor, some of upstairs, and tried to convince eric not to go in the crawlspace. it was pretty cool, though we did not see a ghost….this time. 

finally, we wandered down to one of the rare sandy beaches on south. there, we went star-tripping on the beach, as shown below, and then sat and star-gazed while talking. we walked home in time to make our 11 o'clock curfew, which i thought was silly until i realized we have to be up at 6:00 every morning, which sadly is a far cry from my usual 9:00 am classes.

i miss everyone at home, but not so much the weather. here, when i hear that it's 27 degrees centigrade, i always chuckle to myself because i know in spokane, it's 27 degrees fahrenheit....on a warm day. although i did get a picture of my dog in the snow the other day, which as far as i'm concerned is enough to convince anyone to move to the north pole.

the last few days in photos

just a sample of your average sunset

the abandoned salt flats

exploring a haunted house

reading some literature in said house

star tripping at the beach

made it to turks and tacos whaaaat

well, after an ungodly amount of time spent sitting in airplanes, waiting for airplanes, watching airplanes get deiced and deiced again (thanks new jersey winters), and generally thinking of airplanes altogether too much, i am here in the turks and caicos islands and by some miracle, all my bags are too. it's the second day at the center - we arrived yesterday evening and oh my holy goodness, it is so beautiful. growing up in the pacific northwest left me no stranger to breath-taking landscapes, but the islands are unlike any landscape i've ever seen. it's such a cliche to describe the water color, but hell this is a travel blog, so might as well go there: it's this light, flat shade of green-blue for which i know no name, and flying over it yesterday after quite a few hours of travel made me desperate to get in it.

we didn't actually swim until today, when we took our very scary swim test (aka group swimming 50 meters and floating for 10 minutes in the ocean….i hope i passed) but the water is a far cry from the oceans i've known. today we also learned about everything in the world that could kill us, in a presentation that left me afraid to step outside my mosquito-netted bunk bed. sting-rays, jellyfish, lion-fish, eels, sharks, sea urchins, you name it, i learned about it today, and i'm scared of it. not really, but i am never putting a foot in the water again.

 this afternoon, we played a game of beach volleyball. it was fun, and i've never wished so badly to be someone else….that someone being my younger sister. yes, it is unfortunately apparent that the sports gene passed me by, and this fact is made more blatant by me succeeding in shanking the ball onto all corners of the island. also by the fact that having watched lil sis play all these years, i sort of know what volleyball should look like….and what i'm doing is not it.

 tonight after dinner, a few of us went on a night swim down at the docks. i want to say the water was a little more nippy, but i know in a few months i'll have swum in the pacific ocean and rue my words, so forget that. a couple of us swam out to the boat, and saw lots of fish, a spiny lobster who came out and shook his claw at us, the graveyard of every conch shell ever, and a spotted moray eel! it was way way cool. and none of us got killed by a nocturnal echinoderm either, so that was chill.

 ps. my mother would be overjoyed to hear that i actually applied sunscreen today (twice!) and did not get a burnt. is this what being an adult feels like?