I could get used to this!

Hi everyone! Well as I'm sure you all know, I have arrived in the beautiful South Caicos. I've already been here a little over a day, so let me just give you a re-cap of what I've done so far! When I arrived at the research center yesterday afternoon we got all situated into our rooms and then the staff gave us a tour of the center. I am rooming with two other really nice girls so that worked out good. After the tour, dinner was ready, which was surprisingly yummy! I had some chicken fingers, potatoes, spinach, and a salad. The food here is shipped every two weeks from the United States so the last few days waiting for the next shipment is supposed to be the last rations and not the best food. Well, they get there next shipment of food tomorrow, so if last night's meal was the last rations then I am excited for tomorrows meals! :) Anyway, after dinner we had our first "lecture"on potentially hazardous organisms in and out of the water. There is some scary stuff, but as long as I keep my hands out of dark, dangerous-looking holes underwater I think I'll be okay, haha! I finished off the night finishing settling in my room and then I went to bed to catch up on some sleep I missed while traveling. So, below are some pictures I took on the first day here!

The little plane we took from Provo to South Caicos.

Welcome to the School for Field Studies!!!

 This is the student wing, and where my room is located.

As for today, I had a very eventful and exciting day!! First, I woke up at 7 a.m. to a loud bell letting me know it was breakfast time. I just had a bowl of Special K cereal and some yogurt with granola. Not too shabby :) So after that we had our "morning meeting" which is a ritual we will be doing every morning after breakfast. It consists of the schedule for the day, an update on any important information and a community bonding activity. This morning we played an ice breaker game to get to know each other, it was fun :) After that we had two short classes on what our course structure, policies, and outline will be like for the summer semester. The second part was the rules and policies we have here as far as conduct, behavior, etc. Finally, after the professors laid down the law, we took our first tour of the town! It was not as beautiful as the ocean, that is for sure. However, it is a cute little town with very nice people everywhere! The people here are called "belongers", and they have the coolest accents!! The entire South Caicos Island is about 12 miles and it is unfortunately ruined in so many areas from the hurricane that hit here in 2008. There are so many wild dogs and horses roaming around that are not particularly owned by anyone either. Believe it or not, it is frowned upon for some reason to be nice and friendly to the stray dogs. If one is following you then you get accused of training it to be mean to the locals (even though they are only mean to them because they throw rocks at them instead of pet and play with them). I did take some pictures of the town, but I want to get a few more next time I go out and I will be uploading those on my facebook. After the tour we had lunch and got ready for our swim test and our very first snorkel session! It was raining while we did this, but the water was still extremely warm, they said it won't get any colder than what it is today! The swim test was just a swim to a boat and back and then treading water for 10 minutes. It was actually pretty tiring haha! Then we jumped on the boat and headed out to snorkel! OH MY GOSH was it beautiful!!!! It was my first time ever looking at the underwater life in person and in a natural environment. I already cannot wait to do my first SCUBA dive in the ocean tomorrow. I saw so many different species of fish and it was so colorful! The staff mentioned how much prettier it will be when it isn't raining, which is so hard to believe from what I saw today. It's amazing how the life and critters work underwater and it was absolutely breathtaking. Dad if you are reading this you would be SO JEALOUS. Anyway, we were underwater and snorkeling for about 40 minutes and then we had to head back for our mid-afternoon snack, BROWNIES! :)

Then I took a shower in the rain under a pipe that was flowing from one of the roofs, and it was actually wonderful haha. I got all the salt off of me and didn't even have to use my one shower a week pass!! I almost want it to keep raining here!! The good thing is that when it does rain it only rains for an hour or so and then stops, and it cools it down a lot. So here I am, nice and clean (if you can call it that), and I'm just waiting for dinner to be ready. After dinner I have to go to a dive class, and then I have the rest of the night to start my homework (almost forgot why I was here). Tomorrow starts our first real lectures that doesn't consist of procedures and policies, so I have a few readings to do prior to the classes. I also get to do my first check-out dive in the water tomorrow, so that'll be fun! I hope everyone has a good rest of their day! :)