Traveling and New Toys

After Christmas break I came back to Friday Hall (where my office is) the day before the semester started for a meeting. As I walked in the building, I saw a flier on the door advertising for a spring break trip to Bermuda.The application was due in a couple days so I filled it out and sent it off, even though the class was just for undergrads. Surprise surprise, I was accepted as one of five people to go on an all expenses paid trip to Bermuda. It includes snorkeling in the mangroves, sea grass beds, and coral reefs. We will be working with students from the University of Southampton in England to collect data and come up with a research project. The trip is 9 days at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (their website).

We leave two weeks from today so yesterday we had to take a snorkel test to make sure we know how to swim, etc. The test was a piece of cake: swim a few laps, tread water for 2 minutes with your hands up, and then show them how to do a surface dive in your gear. Well, all of this is second nature for me but there is a girl going on the trip (who I think is only about 19 or so) who has never been snorkeling. So I ended up teaching a snorkel workshop just like the ones I used to lead down in Florida. Last week I had to tell her how to get a good mask etc. She went to Target and bought a cheap set... So yesterday I got to teach her how to snorkel properly. I was surprised how difficult she made it look. She was trying to do frog kicks in her fins which was pretty silly. We got her straightened out though. She said I should be an instructor and I told her that's what I used to do. It was nice to use those skills again.

But even more exciting than spending the afternoon snorkeling in the pool at school was the package that arrived last night. When I went to Florida in high school for the marine bio trips we took those disposable underwater cameras that don't take very good pictures. I wanted something better for this trip as I may never have an opportunity like this again. So I did some research and ended up ordering a waterproof digital camera. It's an Olympus Tough 8000. It's waterproof to 33 feet, shockproof up to 6 feet, freezerproof, and crushproof (one guy told me you could run it over with your car... I think I'll avoid that). It finally arrived last night. I am so excited and can't wait to start using it. So everyone can look forward to some amazing pictures from this trip.

I'm ready to head to the island, because even though it's pretty much straight east from here, it has to be warmer than it is in Wilmington. Even my office is freezing because the heater's broken in our newly renovated building... So on that note, I'm sending you thoughts of sunny beaches and warm breezes.