August 6, 2005

Well, this week started up with the kick off of lobster season.  August first is a self-declared National Holiday in the Turks and Caicos.  We walked down to the dock to see the fishermen bring in hundreds of pounds of lobster and drink the free beer that they were providing.  I was attacked by about seven little girls who insisted on braiding or “plaiting” my hair.  They kept this up for about half an hour and I must have made quite a spectacle sitting surrounded by children pulling my hair in seven different directions.  Hey, I was getting free beer.

Summer session two is coming to a close and the students leave in three days.  As before, I will miss the students- some of them are quite unique individuals and they have, without a doubt, enriched my life.  We went on a night snorkel on Thursday and I saw many fascinating things most of which are completely beyond description other than “alien life form.”  I did see five sleeping sea turtles, some huge crabs with claws so big that they had to drag them along, and an octopus!  Very cool.

The barracuda catch and release has continued and we just returned from catching seven.  We even caught two at once, which was pretty exciting and created several logistical nightmares.

Most of the students are away for the night on a field trip to Grand Turk.  However, a few have stayed behind and today I took them on a hike along Long Cay- a cemented dune ridge about a quarter of a mile offshore of South Caicos.  Very scrubby and rough terrain.  Actually, it looked surprisingly like a glacial scree field with all of the loose rubble and no trees.  The cay happens to sit at the edge of Caicos Bank so one side of the long ridge abuts light blue-green shallow water and the other side is next to deep, dark blue water.  This dichotomy is stunning.  This evening, I am going to try to watch the stars.  It’s shooting star season and once you get away from the lights around town, the sky is quite marvelous.

Ok, that’s that.  I’ll let you know how things are once we start up the fall semester in September.