December 28, 2005

Dear everyone, well, this is my last, goodbye South Caicos email that you will receive from me.  I am somewhat sad to be leaving my island adventure, but I am also ready to return to California and immerse myself in academic life again.  It’s hard to believe that it is almost a new year.  2005 certainly flew for me.  Well, the students left several days before the staff and we spent our final days after they left scraping paint off of every surface at the center.  It was mindless and rather rewarding work and it allowed me time to reflect and more or less meditate on life.

Our last few weeks at the center were rather full and exciting.  The students had to finish up their massive group directed research projects so, all of us were out on the water all day every day.  One of the projects involved catching and tagging sea turtles.  We discovered that catching them at night worked extremely well since they sleep around the reef at night and one can dive down, grab the turtle and bring it back to the boat where it is measured, tagged and then released.  This activity was quickly dubbed turtle wrangling and most of the students at the center opted to come out and spend their evenings catching turtles for the turtle group.  It was really quite fun.

We also had another very lovely turtle experience- during one of my last dives at South Caicos, a nice hawksbill turtle dove down and swam along with us on our dive.  They are usually quite shy and I could not believe that this turtle opted to keep us company.  It also provided some great photo opportunities.

Live music became much more prominent during our last couple of weeks as well.  A local band by the name of From the Bottom began playing almost nightly at various places around town.  Seeing as the only live music we usually got to hear is the endless singing from the Haitian church, the band was a wonderful new treat and lots of fun to dance to

The Turks and Caicos Royal Police Force band also made an appearance.  This is an eclectic group of  five or six men playing a bunch of instruments including a trombone, small trumpet, electric bass and guitar, and sax.  They played some lively Christmas carols at the elementary school and all of the kids were jumping around and having a great time.  The children even choreographed a dance where they were presents.  I will never be able to think of carols in quite the same way again.

The week before our students left, they were challenged to a basketball game against the local high school varsity champions.  Well, our students had about two days notice, had never played together before, and more or less didn’t stand a chance against the high school team.  However, it actually was a pretty good game and I have to say, our students put up a pretty good fight for the first ten minutes or so.  Regardless of the final score, everyone had fun and hopefully this is something our center and local school will be able to do more of in the future.

The last event that I would like to report was the slew of holiday parties that were held just prior to my departure.  Cockburn Harbor (the town in which I lived) has a large community area known as the Regatta Village and various community members held holiday parties for the entire community here.  This means they cooked food and provided all beverages for hundreds of people.  The area was very festive and I got a chance to dance up a storm and to say goodbye to a lot of folks.  A party thee night before I left was my favorite.  This one was hosted by the chief ministers of TCI– apparently they were traveling from island to island hosting a party at each one.  THEY must be exhausted by now.

Well, that’s that.  I have enjoyed writing all of these emails over the last few months and I hope that you have enjoyed what I have shared with you.  Soon I will be seeing many of you again.  I hope that you are all having a great holiday and that you are ready for a new and exciting year.  If you would like to write to me in the future or if you think you might possibly be dropping by Santa Cruz, here’s my contact info:

Goodbye Everybody!

Brooke