Live a lil' in my shoes...: Shark, Shark, Shark!!!

Okay, so I know you probably want to here about the shark...but it's not until a little bit later :)

Starting with the morning...after breakfast I had a short environmental ethics lecture and then we had two hours to study or do whatever before the next class. I used my time to take a nap LOL, I was sooooo tired this morning! But, I was responsible and made sure I finished my homework for tonight before I fell asleep, so now I don't have anything to do later tonight except study some fish! The second class of the day was just going over our first project that is due next Friday. It's a 10 page paper about marine protected areas, and we can choose a topic either about fisheries, tourism, ecotourism, or aquaculture. We are actually submitting this paper in groups of four, which is much different for me because I have never done a group paper. I guess it's kind of cool, hopefully it won't be as challenging. The only problem is my group has a lot of different opinions and ideas so we have yet to decide on a topic. We are meeting again tomorrow to figure everything out, and then it will be time to start researching for it and writing it up. After our group discussion was lunch, and following that I had some time before I went snorkeling to go to the bank. The bank here is open only on Wednesdays from 11a.m. to 2p.m. (the lines are really) so it was a good thing I wasn't in the first group to go snorkeling. It was hilarious to me how different the bank here worked compared to at home. It is definitely obvious they do not have a lot of tourists here. To withdraw from my account I had to fill out a hand written form and my receipt was hand written as well, haha! It also took a half an hour. So after the bank it was time to snorkel, yay time for the exciting part! :)

The snorkel site we went to today was called "Shark Alley", but I wasn't getting my hopes up because there really isn't one particular spot with a lot of sharks since they are wild animals and go where ever they want. But, I got lucky :) Towards the end of the snorkel (after identifying a lot of fish) I looked out and saw a reef shark about 6 feet away from me! My instructor didn't even see it, I had to point it out to my group. It was only about 4 feet (but that still is only a little bit smaller than me, haha)! It was so cool and was just minding it's own business, we didn't even seem to have an effect on it. I watched it swim away until I could no longer see it anymore, and then I periodically looked back from time to time to make sure it hadn't turned around LOL. I saw a lot of other cool fish throughout the snorkel too! There were about 4 or 6 (I couldn't tell if it was the same one or not) barracuda fish, and it is kind of creepy because they totally like to stalk you. They are just curious, and no body here has ever been hurt by one, so I don't even get scared when I see them. I also saw 2 flounder fish that swim completely on their side (so cool!), and a really large and beautiful angel fish. We also swam through a school of needle fish which was really neat. There was also a cute spotted eel, and 2 cow fish (which are CHEETAH PRINT!). I really enjoyed the snorkel today, not only because I saw a shark and other cool organisms, but it was also really pretty and had a really cool reef that extended into the water. I'm excited to go back there again later this week! :)

When we came back from our snorkel I studied some fish names and then it was dinner time. I just got done playing a really fun game called Celebrity with a group of the students and staff also. It was really fun, we had to draw "celebrity names" out of a bowl and for the first round we could say anything we wanted to get our team to guess. The second round we could only say 2 words (but we already had an idea what was in the bucket from the first round), and the third round we had to act the celebrity out like charades. I definitely plan on bringing the game back home, it would be hilarious to play with family and friends!

So now I'm just going to study some more so I am really prepared for our fish lesson tomorrow while we are snorkeling, and hopefully I see another shark! Good night everyone! :)