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?