Today marks one week since we arrived in San Salvador, and it is also my birthday! I am super excited to be spending my 21st birthday in such a beautiful place. The past week has had its ups and downs for everyone, including myself, but so far, my time spent in San Sal has really shown me the natural beauty of the island and of everywhere in the Bahamas. Being able to see all this in person has truly made me care a great deal about the people and environments here. The daily routine for us students has been nailed down pretty good by this point and our days are generally split into a few parts. We have one session in the morning, one in the afternoon, and one in the evening. They are all split up by the scheduled meals we eat at the research center. Our morning activity follows breakfast at 7:30 am and we usually get rolling out of the research station by 9 am. Our morning activity is usually either a snorkel trip to one of the reefs on the island, or we travel somewhere to do a hiking activity and explore the island further. We come back to the station to have lunch around noon and then leave around 1:30-2 pm. The afternoon session is usually a snorkel trip to another reef somewhere on the island. We then make our way back to the research station for dinner at 5:30. This is followed up by a meeting on the station around 7 to go over what we did during the day. We typically try to then take what we see throughout the day to go over different scientific theories and really connect what we see and what we learn in the classroom on a deeper level. Today was a bit of an off day, as we have been snorkeling and hiking multiple times per day and it has been taxing on everyone. This morning we went and explored Cockburn Town on San Sal, to get a little more experience of what it is like to live on the island, and to look at and learn more about some of the plants that are found there. We stopped at the house of an important local on the island, Juanita. She and her husband are prominent members of the community and Juanita also has a garden with many edible plants.
Juanita is super knowledgeable about plants on the island, not only for food but also using them as bush medicine. In the afternoon we stayed at the research center to help with chores to thank the people working there for letting us stay on the base with them. It was nice to give back to the people who have been letting us stay with them. Even though it wasn’t required I still felt like giving back to the station, since it was giving me a chance to stay on and explore such a beautiful part of the world.
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