I just want to know.......

The classic question--I just want to know....that seems to be a recurring theme here--no one knows what is going on. The students don't have a clue what to do or where to be at what time, the interns who we have direct contact with don't have a clear picture of what the schedule is and what needs to be done, and the top most level staff (the professors and office staff) are not present enough to help the rest of us get through the program, or change the schedule at will. It's been a chaotic first few days, mainly because of the fact that the schedule has been constantly changing and that things that need to get done are constantly pushed back. The mentality is that it will get done at some point--if not today, then tomorrow or the day after. I get the laid back attitude of the island, and I am all for that. But when it gets in the way of efficient running of a program, that becomes a problem. Take, for example, the whole debacle with purchasing gear. My understanding was that students were not supposed to bring any gear whatsoever because it did not mention it anywhere in the orientation packet that gear was a necessity. However, upon arriving, I happened to be one of the few students without gear. This wasn't a problem, they told me, since hey would go out and help me buy gear in the free time we had between Saturday and now, when classes had started. When questioned about when they would actually take us to these dive shops to get our gear however, it turned from a "we'll definitely get you out there" to a "sorry, we don't have time to do it--can we push to tomorrow?" deal. We finally got to go to a wholesale dive shop, but were only given 30 minutes to find (unaided) all of our gear. And let me tell you: buying gear,even just snorkel gear (mask, snorkel, boots, fins, and wetsuit) is not a cheap task. So of course I was not ready to invest over $100 on gear that I was haphazardly trying on in the 30 minutes before class that we were in the dive shop. Not only was it frustrating for the students there, but it was equally if not more frustrating for the interns who had to take us. All in all, it was a pretty bad experience. Long story short, I ended up biking to a place myself after lunch today to get my own gear and to get help one on one by the store manager, and I had a much more pleasant experience...It's small things like this that are getting on the nerves of myself and all the students here. The fact that we're hearded around like cattle from one place to another. The fact that the schedule is constantly changing--things getting pushed back to accommodate a late lunch delivery or a dive that lasted longer than it should have. The fact that there is so little communication between the different levels of management. These points of tension are only going to get worse as the program goes on--it is very obvious the ways that the session 1 students are tired of being a part of the CIEE program already purely because of this. I know a part of this is coming from my J personality--I am very much a person who likes to have a schedule and stick to it. But its just not fair to us, as students paying to be in this program (which, by the way, has been running for 6 years prior), to be in the midst of disorganization and non-communication amongst staff without any idea what to do, especially because we are in a new country and new environment. We still have three more weeks, let's hope that the next few weeks improve upon this shaky beginning. 

Yesterday, I spent some time down at the 7 body beach (named that way because it's so small, it only fits 7 bodies) in the morning, looking around before heading back to the house and eating lunch. We were supposed to leave at 1 to get our gear (refer to above story), but class got pushed to 2 so we ended up leaving at 1:15. To make matters worse, our lunch, like most of our meals, was delivered late to us so we couldn't start eating until 12:50. We made it to Palm Trading, a wholesale dive shop at around 1:30 and had about 20-25 minutes to roam around the shop and figure out everything we needed. Needless to say, it was one of the more stressful and hectic times of my life trying to figure out which masks fit, which equipment was good, how to get the wetsuits on, etc. Of course, I ended up buying anything, and we hurriedly drove to the CIEE research station to have our first class. The class itself went pretty well (a three hour science lecture...), but afterwards we got to go out to the waterfront for our swim test. We had it easy (our Dive Safety Officer (DSO) only wanted to know we could swim), so we did 400m of swimming in open water. I am certainly not the fittest person, but I managed to pull my body through the whole test and made it back in one piece. We headed back to the research station to dry off and talk to the DSO about our goals for diving and snorkeling, and what needed to be done in order to accomplish them. After that, we drove back to Hamlet to have dinner, and I basically hung out at the house doing homework for the rest of the night. I must admit--not having a cultural portion to deal with in this program is a bit nice, but at the same time, I feel like I am missing out on so much on this island. All it is here is class, homework, dive, snorkel, eat. That's the vibe I am getting from everyone here. 

 (Kids in the water ready to do their swim test)

 (Sunset over the water)

 (The rocky beachside sunset)

 (These trees are perfect)

 (Look at the color on these clouds!)

(The pool at night--looks great for a swim)

Today in the morning, our DSO came to get us early to help us get equipment. We went back to Palm Trading, this time with an hour to select what we truly wanted. I ended up getting a wetsuit and boots (basically the underwear to my snorkel gear), before heading to class. We had three and a half hours of class, and within that, three completely different lectures on marine biodiversity, AGRRA fish identification, and coral reef ecology. I don't think I've had any class so intense before--the amount of information packed into those three lectures was mind boggling, and I definitely needed time to review after the lectures were done. That was so much information that was given compared to the three hour lectures Salud used to give us in Palma. The educational pace has definitely been changed here in Bonaire. After class we were driven back to Hamlet to eat lunch, and as soon as I finished eating, I took my bike and went to GoooDive, a nearby dive shop to get the rest of my equipment. I completed my snorkel gear with the purchase of my mask, snorkel, and fins, and happily biked home. Since the other students were doing a dive check, and we did not need to complete that, we decided to go snorkeling ourselves near Hamlet. I ended up going into the water for two hours, snorkeling around and trying to use my newly acquired AGRRA identification techniques to identify fish. The water was certainly not as clear as in the Mediterranean, but the biodiversity was so much greater--the number of fish species here were amazing, and they let me swim up close and almost touch them. It was really fun to snorkel just around Hamlet--I am sure I will get to see some other really neat things when we snorkel in the future. After snorkeling, we went to the supermarket to get food for the upcoming week, and then headed back for dinner. It's been a really relaxed night since--I have been sitting here trying to memorize the AGRRA species for the last few hours before tomorrow's dive, while at the same time trying to relax and enjoy my time in Bonaire. It's a weird feeling; not quite relaxed, not quite focused. 

[Sorry, no pictures from today--I don't have an underwater camera to capture the cool stuff underwater yet :/]

Anyway, I am rambling. Tomorrow, we have a biodiversity dive for class early in the morning and hopefully some jellyfish hunting (for fun) at night! Definitely putting that new gear into good use. 

A new adventure awaits.

PS--there aren't many pictures to take, since we're constantly moving back and forth between the same locations. Also, the island is pretty barren--only small houses and buildings line the roads. Most of the magic is underwater. I am in the process of trying to get my hands on an underwater camera--that would be really cool to work with, and it would allow me to get some great shots of what I am seeing the times I am not on land!