a lot has happened i guess

in a week and a half it seems i have done a lot of stuff.
it also will seem when you are looking at these pictures that i am on a romantic vacation with one of the other volunteers named shannon. this is untrue. we are just the only two volunteers in camp.

also, this will be a very long post.

also, i saw a man o' war this week. don't worry, it did not sting me.

so here's the deal, one night we went to see my boss's friends band. they're called the ish. the lead singer had really big boobs. but the music was good.

the band played at a bar in the coral bay called island blues.


there are a lot of crazies that hang out here. for example:



but seriously the band was fun to listen to. for one hole set this guy came up and played the jazz flute. SERIOUSLY.

shannon and i (being the only volunteers) found ourselves being assigned a variety of different jobs. oh sure, there were the normal things like making meals, doing dishes, and doing laundry; but then every once in awhile we would get a gem such as "please go test out all of the masks and snorkels to make sure they work."

ok!

always looking for the most efficient way to do things (kind of), i came up with the idea of paddling a kayak filled with snorkel gear out into greater lameshur bay. great idea in theory, turned out to be fairly awkward in reality...


getting back into the kayak was the hardest.

boy were we excited when that job was done! and boy did i get burned doing it! turns out sunscreen does not function properly when getting seared by midday sun!


after the job was done i decided to do a little stunt kayaking. i only almost wiped out once.

after that job shannon and i had to lay on the picnic tables for awhile.

it was weird, an airplane flew over, which is like the first one i've ever seen here, and it totally caught me off guard!

then after lunch we had to get back and organize all of the snorkel gear that we had just tested. look at the gem (antique that we found)

i'm pretty sure jacques cousteau used it.

you may remember the frog friend that i have in my bathroom here. well interesting story, that frog seems to have found a friend. i'm not sure what they were doing, but it lasted an entire day....

isn't it true that when you see one frog on top of another it's good luck? let's hope so.

so the mongoose is an invasive species that was brought here to kill snakes (i think). in case you do not know what a mongoose looks like it is similar to a ferret. but annoying and EVERYWHERE. here is a great little pic of one.

please do not release mongooses into an area where they don't belong! they kill all the indigenous creatures. sad for the snakes!

another night we went out for a little while in coral bay. it's fun there and right on the ocean. oh wait, almost everywhere in st john is right on the ocean....

shannon, myself, and whitney (a researcher) at the aquabistro in coral bay. they make real strong drinks here...

along with a lot of wildlife, we also have one domesticated animal at VIERS. her name is emma. she is a calico cat. she likes to eat cat food. actually she likes to eat anything: hot dogs, roast beef, cheese, eggs, bacon. she's not very picky, and as a result she is very large. she also does not do very much as can be seen in this picture.


emma likes me a lot. but i think that has to do with the fact that i feed her everyday. and pet her a lot. you know i'm a sucker.

in the last couple days, shannon and i have been very busy, so we have not gotten to the beach at all. a tragedy if you ask me. so we made time one day to go and snorkel and read and relax. don't worry we took a self-timed picture to document it.


you can see a lot of stuff if you just snorkel right off the beach here. my favorite thing that we saw this day was a yellow headed jawfish. they're neat. they live in holes and hover above them. their tails are flourescent looking.

so the robot's friend mitch has people take pictures of the words mitch sucks in different places. i chose to take a pic in front of little lameshur bay with a nice little (not so little) katamaran in the background. mitch sucks.



all for now. a little homesick (i suck i know) but loving it still. and yes my stomach is still about 10 shades lighter than the rest of my body, i'm working on it.