IS Blog Post #7

Thursday, May 31st

Hi East! It’s been awhile since you’ve heard from me. Our expedition rotations are officially over (as of a few weeks ago), and we are now working on final projects for these next few weeks.

During expedition rotations, I had my Down Island Trip (DIT) and 9-day kayak expedition. On my DIT, I, along with 12 other students (and two trip leaders (one who was my math teacher and the other who was my Literature & Writing teacher)) got into a 16-passenger van and drove the length of Eleuthera, stopping in different settlements, answering the single question: How does tourism shape a place?

Before I go on, I should explain that “down island” actually means going north (the most common theory is that people use the phrase “down island” because the current runs from south to north – I’m not exactly sure if that’s true, but it sounds valid.

While it was an academic trip, it was definitely one of the most fun, interesting weeks of the semester for me so far. We conducted interviews at places like the Ministry of Tourism in Governor’s Harbor and with people like cashiers at gift shops on Harbour Island to figure out their stance on tourism and in what ways they think Eleuthera has benefited or has not benefited from the industry.

After our DIT, we had out 9-day kayak expedition, which was definitely one of the hardest yet most rewarding experiences of my life. During 9-day, we had our 48-hour solos, where we were set on a beach and given limited food and resources to last us three days and two nights. For food, we had a bagel, a chunk of cheese, and some gorp (which consisted of banana chips, raisins, and apricots). Besides hat, we were given a tarp with string, a bug net, a life jacket, a water dram (which could be refilled), along with some selected personal items such as a rain jacket, and of course, our placebooks.

I wrote A LOT during my solo – I’m pretty sure about 36 pages. Besides that, I tanned in the sun (and sadly got very burnt on my back – it’s hard putting sunscreen on your back by yourself, in my defense), sang a bunch of Taylor Swift songs, and tried to sleep as much as possible (which wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be, especially because hundreds of land crabs were climbing over my tarp throughout the night – you can ask me about that story when I get home 🙂 ). While I was hungry, tired, and bored for the majority of my solo, for the most part, I really enjoyed it and found it to be an impactful, educational experience to learn more about myself and be able to process everything that has happened over these past two months.

After all of our DIT and expedition adventures, we just had Parent’s Weekend a week ago, which included our big research presentations. Now that our parents have left, we’ve been working on our Final Projects, which are basically projects we are doing with certain teachers and advisors for the rest of the semester. My final project is focusing on graphic journalism and telling the story of waste on Eleuthera (and more specifically, educating the community on where trash goes and the process behind it). I am very excited for what our group uncovers within this project and how we will communicate our findings at the end of the semester!

Sadly, we have less than two weeks left of this amazing experience, but my goal is to make the best of these last twelve days and to take advantage of every opportunity that comes my way!

I’ll update you guys one more time in this upcoming week as my last Island School blog post.

Talk to you soon,

Nora