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?