Sadly, we have entered our last week here. I know I say this every post, but I seriously just cannot believe how quickly the time here has passed. The last four weeks have gone so quickly, but at the same time, it feels like we have been here waaaayyyy longer than just four weeks. I don't want to leave yet! Though I am ready to have some real food other than rice, bread and slop.
The last couple of days have been busy, but not as stressful as last week. We are quickly reaching the end of our project, now that we cut out some of the aspects and made it actually manageable. We were feeling pretty depressed this weekend cause all the other groups were doing super cool stuff like bike riding around the island, hiking to waterfalls and getting ice cream from the agricultural school (apparently its delish), while we were stuck doing work all day. So on Saturday our TA let us come with her to the hardware store in the "big" town of Maharepa and we stopped at an ice cream parlor. When I got back, I went on an afternoon kayak with my friend Jackie. We headed out around 3:30 on a rickty old kayak that she MacGuyvered to not leak with a rubber band and ziploc bag, and paddled our way out of the bay. We ended up going way further than we had planned and kayaked all the way to the next bay over, Opunohu!!! On our way there we passed the Hilton, and it was pretty funny since we kayaked right underneath the bungalows over the water! We headed back around 5, and the sun started to set pretty fast! We weren't planning on doing a night kayak, but it turned out to be pretty nice to watch the sunset from the water, especially since we never see the sunset from Gump due to the location of the station.
Yesterday we surveyed one of our sites, and had about an hour to kill before our professor was picking us up, so we layed out on the beach soaking up the sun once we finished. I haven't really been getting sunburned lately, so I've gotten lazy about putting on sunscreen, but yesterday I definitely got a bit lobstery! Luckily it had mostly turned into tan today, so now I look super tan (especially since my hair is bleaching really light)! In the afternoon, my group and I went to this site called the Sailing School to collect some algae and we went on SCUBA since we barely ever get to dive for our project. The visibility wasn't all that great, probably only like 60 ft, but it was fun and we saw a lot of fish and eels (but still not turtles!). Around 8 pm, a group of about ten of us went on a night snorkel along the reef crest in the bay! It was really fun and I finally got to use my new dive light that I bought for the trip! My friend Katie and I lagged behind the group a bit since we kept poking around in cracks and shining our lights to find all the fun stuff in rocks! We saw several small lionfish, a bunch of eels, lots of crabs with anemones on their shells, tons of gigantic sea urchins just hanging around (my questions is where do they go during the day!? I've never seen any of them!), lots of sleeping fish, a large puffer and a super weird lobster!!
Today our group had another busy day (surprise surprise), but I think it should be our last super busy day. The rest of the week we have just half days and then finally, a full day off on Friday!!! We spent the day putting out experiments and pulling in experiments, weighing algae and surveying sites. Basically a typical day in Moorea for H.L.T. (Oh, I forgot to ever mention that each group has a team name, and ours is Hot Lil Thangs, or HLT for short, which is all of our first initials- Hayley, Lindsay, Theo. hahaha.) Our day was pretty hectic from 8 am till 5:30 pm, but luckily we usually have pretty laid back nights. (Whereas one group is outside at the watertables right now breaking down one of their experiments- ick.) Tomorrow is a chill day for us, we will just be doing some surveys, and then I predict an afternoon off!!! Perhaps I will walk to Maharepa and buy some of you lovely readers some souvenirs!!!
Love to you all!!! <3
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