Day 1 (Travel) and Day 2 (Research Symposium)

It’s been a long couple of days for the Hawken Envi Sci Team, but we are all holding strong and very excited about the opportunity ahead of us.  We started yesterday morning early in the morning (4am) when we met for the bus to leave for the airport.  There was only one late wake-up, but Courtney made it to the airport in time and all went well.  We made our way to Akron-Canton airport, checked in and made our way through security.  At the gate, we had some time to grab a bite to eat and relax before the flight.  I am not sure how… but the guys found a way to get Cinnabons and Arby’s Curly Fries before 6am.  Flight #1 to Atlanta was smooth… Atlanta airport was a nice little break where, once again, the guys found foods I wouldn’t expect to see in the morning, but I suppose Fried Chicken Biscuits are a common item in the South.  I feel like after these first two ‘meals’ the girls were all a little disturbed.  Flight #2 to Nassau was fine – once there, we navigated our way through customs and over to the ‘Domestic Flights’ section of the airport.  Another 2+ hour layover was a great opportunity for some of the guys to get burgers from Wendy’s where they could get Chicken Nuggets as their side instead of fries.  Wow.  Rest assured, parents, that the string of poor dietary decisions quickly halted once we got to Eleuthera.

We arrived in Eleuthera safely with all 12 students, but unfortunately only 11 bags made it… Rachel’s bag was missing along with the luggage of about 4 other passengers.  She filled out some brief paper work and was assured that they would deliver it to us when it came in.  We hopped on the two vans that awaited us and drove 40 minutes south to the Cape.  The kids were all so excited and exhausted at the same time.  We finally arrived at the school by 530pm, which was about 14 hours after most of us had left our homes to begin the journey.  When we arrived at the school, we briefly unpacked and made our way over to dinner.  It was a great experience at dinner to join up with the Island School students who have been on campus since the end of August.  They were all very welcoming and helped our students navigate their way through the dining hall.

After dinner, I was very impressed and proud of our students.  There is a group of students who help clean up after each meal (dishes, pots & pans, sweep, mop, etc) and our students jumped in and started helping them with their chores without even being asked to do so.  I received many compliments from many of the faculty down here for their small, yet large, gesture in helping out. 

Post-dinner, we watched a brief and informative talk about conch and their importance to the Bahamas. After this we talked about some basic rules and expectations of the next couple weeks and then hit the hay for the night.

This morning, we started our day with a nice swim/snorkel as our morning exercise.  All of the students jumped right in the water and we so excited to finally get going!  For the next half hour, Jennie and I heard so many ‘Ooohs’ & ‘Aaaahs’ as the kids got to swim around and navigate the waters.  We saw starfish, grouper, sting rays… All of the different tropical colors and fishes were very exciting for us to see!

After our swim, we got a chance to clean up and head to breakfast.  I have never had grits and fish stew for breakfast, but I wouldn’t be opposed to having it again!  It was more of a gravy-like consistency, but the flavors were good and it was a good meal to jump-start the day!  The rest of our day consisted of watching presentations put on by the Island School students about their research projects that they have been working on over the past 14 weeks.  It was a great chance to expose our students to different environmental issues that are being researched here along with showing them how students can do some great and impactful research.  Some of the topics included… “Physiological and behavioural response of nurse sharks to longline capture”

“Effects of predator and prey densities on lemon shark growth rates in mangrove creeks of South Eleuthera”

And

“Assessment of queen conch population density in Cape Eleuthera Sound”

The presentations were very well done and the research that the students did was very impressive.  We got to hear a keynote address after the presentations from the Minister of the Environment in The Bahamas.  The Ambassador to The Bahamas was also on campus along with many other researchers and professors from different universities.  It was a great day of introduction to research for the students and a good way to prepare us for the research we will be doing this upcoming week with some of the different groups.

After the symposium ended, we all took a bike ride down to Sunset Beach and got to relax, swim and catch some rays.  It was a nice way to wind down and rest before our evening festivities.  When we got back from Sunset, Rachel’s bag was waiting for her as it had finally arrived from Nassau!

The evening festivities included a slide show put on by a student camp that was on campus all week sponsored by National Geographic.  The students, a group of about 20 Bahamian teens, got to work with photographers from NatGeo and take pictures of The Bahamas and express what The Bahamas means to them.  It was a powerful experience for the students who got to get a real sense of how delicate and precious their homeland is.  The pictures were beautiful and impactful.  After the slide show, we went to the local park in the town we were visiting and watched the end of an inter-town basketball game and once it concluded broke into an impromptu Junkanoo.  Music, Dancing, Costumes, Lots of Drums and Whistles…  Good times.

I will post pictures and hopefully some videos if I get a chance.  Keep looking back for more updates!  The next blog will be posted by Zack Whiting who is our first student leader!  Congrats to Zack and also to the whole group for doing a great job of mingling, trying new things and absorbing so much information each moment that we are here!

Thanks for reading – please post comments!  =W=