Where have I been?

Since January my life has been a whirlwind of travel and new experiences. In the last five months I have been to Fairbanks, Alaska to help the next round of PolarTREC teachers get ready for their expeditions and to Denver, Colorado twice in search of a new job/career. I also went home for the Michigan Science Teachers Associations annual conference and to see Averi before she turned one year old, I attended the National Science Teachers Association conference in Indianapolis and National Afterschool Association Conference in Dallas, and I went to the International Polar Year Conference in Montreal, Canada. It has been a busy five months of travel.

Some of my highlights over the past five months include being invited to the White House Summit on Environmental Education and being asked to present on a panel in front of a very intimidating audience of people, meeting an amazing group of teachers at the PolarTREC orientation and getting to see them and many of my old PolarTREC friends at the IPY conference in Montreal, and organizing and accomplishing some great professional development workshops for teachers in the DC Public School System.

Lots and Lots of School Visits

Over the last 2 weeks we have visited 8 schools and our last one is tomorrow. It is sad to think that I will be heading home in just 3 days. It has been amazing to see all the different communities and schools throughout Dominica. Some schools were small and some were pretty large. In Portsmouth we had over 50 fifth graders and in Morne Jaune there were only 23 kids in a combined 4th - 6th grade class. Some schools were very primitive and other schools were very modern because they were given as gifts from other countries (Grand Bay - Canada, Salybia - Venezuela). I question whether any gift of that magnitude can be just a "gift" but that is politics here. Other countries are constantly giving smaller nations "gifts" as a way to encourage then to vote one way or another. One vote that is in high demand is Dominica's vote at the IWC in favor of commercial whaling. Hopefully our gift of education will encourage the people of Dominica to appreciate whales instead of wanting to kill them. So far the results have been pretty positive, we will just have to wait and see.

Regardless of votes and gifts, the kids in Dominica have been incredible. I have never had so many hugs in my life. They are all fascinated by my hair and light skin. At one of the schools a couple of days ago a kid touched my arm and said "you are white". I couldn't help but to laugh and say "yup I am". The chaos that erupted at each school when we inflated the life size whale will be forever ingrained in my mind. The kids would get so excited and ask tons of questions. It was pretty cool to see their excitement and fascination for the ocean. Even though they are an island country, most of the kids haven't even been in the water or on the boat. That will change in May when our team returns to Dominica to take all the students on a boat trip at the end of their term.

Snorkeling + Hiking = Sniking

Sunday was our day off this week, so a few of us enjoyed the day by going to Scott's Head. It is a pretty cool place because it is the southern most tip of the island and there is a spit that you can walk out on where the Atlantic Ocean is on one side and the Caribbean Sea is on the other. It is amazing how different the two bodies of water are. On my left there were huge waves crashing in the dark waters of the Atlantic and on my right the Caribbean Sea was calm with turquoise water and beautiful coral reefs. We started our adventure by hiking to the top of the point at Scott's Head and the view was beautiful as we looked down and back at Dominica and the coral reefs below. Then we hiked back down, put on our gear, and snorkeled around the reefs below. The reefs we incredible and there were so many new fish to learn just a couple of feet from the shoreline. We also swam out to where the depth drops down dramatically and all you can see is deep cobalt blue all around you. You can just sit there and watch the bigger fish swim past the drop off looking for their lunch. In just the short time I sat there, I saw a big barracuda, spotted eagle ray, and a sea turtle. It was pretty amazing to be swimming with these animals instead of viewing them in an aquarium.

After our snorkel we had lunch at a small restaurant/stand where the man who ran the place swam out and speared the fish, cut it up into big chunks, cooked it, and that was lunch. The fresh fish was amazing, but I had to share it with the tiny kitten that was stationed underneath my chair begging for food. After lunch we ventured further inland to Trafalgar Falls. Trafalgar Falls are actually two falls the "mother" and the "father" and they both are around 200ft tall. One of my favorite parts about visiting the falls was that you could climb on the boulders at the base of the falls and there were several pools of water to soak in. The cool part about it is that some of the pools had cool water from the precipitation fed falls, but there were also warm pools fed with geothermally heated ground water.

As if our day could get any better, that evening we visited the hot springs and soaked in the warm waters, while listening to the nearby waterfalls, and sipping my new favorite - peanut rum punch.

Youth Vibes

Sorry about the delay in the posts, but we didn't have internet for a day and there was lots going on this weekend. Saturday turned out to be a work day, but it was fun work. We participated in a radio show called "Youth Vibes" on the Dominican Broadcasting Station. Youth Vibes is a radio show put on by the youth in the community and is pretty cool because it gives kids a chance to step outside of their comfort zones and try something different. One of the girls was super shy before she joined the group and now she is outgoing and awesome on the radio. For the broadcast we took the Youth Vibes crew and the Minister of the Environment to a coral reef and did the broadcast from underwater. Jake and Terry put on scuba masks with radios to communicate to the surface and they were able to talk to listeners across the world. We dropped a underwater video camera over the side and they showed the kids what they were seeing and the Youth Vibes kids did a commentary about the coral reef. It was really fun and the kids had a great time. I even got to introduce myself over the radio, but I was was no where near as confident as the kids.

School Visits and Sea Turtle Conservation

The last two days have been pretty busy. We have officially kicked off the Floating Classrooms season. Yesterday we visited Grand Fond Primary School and today we were at Grand Bay Primary School. Both schools are on the Atlantic side of the island, but their schools and communities were very different. Both schools housed grades K-6, but Grand Bay had twice as many students and a much nicer school that was built by the Canadian government. It also seemed like the people in Grand Bay were more apprehensive about having outside people visit their village where in Grand Fond we felt very welcomed as we drove to the school.
Anyways, let's get back to what we were actually doing in these schools. In November Kara and Mandy came down to Dominica and trained teachers in the Floating Classrooms curriculum. In the next week and a half we will visit the 5th grade classrooms in 9 schools and get the kids excited about what they are going to learn in their class over the next couple of months and the boat trip we are going to take them on in May. We brought a gigantic inflatable whale with us and the kids get super excited about it and the entire school usually runs out and attacks us and the whale. The first two visits were pretty crazy. The kids and communities have been incredible though. When we got to Grand Fond the kids welcomed us with a song and it was adorable. The community in Grand Fond also all donated food and they made us a lunch. It was amazing that they were so giving when they had so little to give. People in our country could learn a lot from them.


After Grand Fond we visited nearby Rosalie Bay. It is a leatherback sea turtle nesting site. Unfortunately it is not leatherback nesting season so we didn't see any turtles, but we did learn about what people are doing to protect them. Poaching of nesting sea turtles in a big problem in the islands. Poachers will wait for the turtles to come ashore and then they will kill them because one leatherback can bring in up to $10,000. To protect the sea turtles they have a cabin set up for patrollers that will watch the beaches night and day for possible poachers. They also have set up a hatchery to protect the eggs. When the mother turtle is done laying her eggs, the patrollers will dig up the eggs and move them to higher ground where there is a fenced in area to protect the eggs from the elements and predators.

Above and Below the Ocean Surface

Before I came to Dominica I can probably count the number of times I have been in the ocean on two hands. Being a Great Lakes girl I never really had a need or really liked going in salt water. That number and attitude has definitely changed in the last two days.
Yesterday I had the opportunity to take a Discover Scuba class. It was just me and my instructor Brad and he was awesome. He taught me all the basics, I took a quiz, and then he said lets get in the ocean. I was a little surprised at first because I thought that there would be practicing involved, but I was all for it. I learned how to put on and assemble all of my equipment and then we walked out to the end of the dock. I stood at the end of the dock for a bit and then he told me to just jump in with the regulator in my mouth. This took awhile because I couldn't stop laughing. It was such a weird sensation to be breathing through a regulator above land. I finally managed to compose myself and I jumped in and I was perfectly fine, but it was amazing how light I felt in the ocean with all that heavy equipment on my back. Once we were in, I had 3 tests that I had to pass before I could go explore the ocean floor. The first was taking out my regulator, finding it again, clearing it, and then using it to breathe again. I was worried about this one the most, but it ended up being easier than I had thought. The second was filling up my mask with water and clearing it by tilting my head back and blowing air out my nose. I practiced both of these at the surface and when I was ready we headed down to the bottom. We started out at about 20 feet and when we got to the bottom, I did the regulator test and the mask test for real and I did another test where I had to breathe through Brad's regulator. The hardest part of all of those tests was to take the regulator out of my mouth while sitting on the ocean bottom. Once I got over that fear, we were golden and heading on our way. I got all three tests on the first try and it was time to explore. I am so used to looking down at the fish that it was amazing to be actually swimming with them. It was awesome and I saw Burr fish, trumpet fish, sea cucumbers, and even a lion fish. Don't worry, we remembered where we saw the lion fish and Brad went back to spear it later (they are an invasive species that are horrible for reef fish). After doing scuba once, I totally want to get certified and do it again.
That was just my morning, the rest of the day was spent working. We continued to work on getting everything set up for our school visits and a snorkeling trip with a group of college students from the University of New England (UNE). Since it was a hot day, there were also intermittent jumps in the ocean to cool off.
Today we did some running around in the morning to make sure that we had all the supplies to tag sea turtles. If we saw any larger turtles while we were out on the snorkeling trip, we were going to try to tag them. Unfortunately we didn't see any turtles, but the snorkeling was awesome. We took the girls from UNE to champagne to snorkel. It is an incredible place to snorkel because it is located a couple miles from a volcano and warm gases are being released from the ocean floor. The result is that it feels like you are swimming through a glass of champagne. There are tiny bubbles everywhere, the water is really warm, and there are thousands of little reef fish. I loved it plus I also swam a little farther out into deeper water and we saw a large school of fish and there was a barracuda swimming through them eating all the little fish.
As if my day couldn't get any better. I went out on the boat with a group of night divers tonight. It was a full moon last night so the fish were pretty active. I stayed on the boat and watched and helped getting the divers into and out of the water. I also got to enjoy the beautiful stars and the bioluminescence of the little creatures in the water. It was like having stars above me and below me.

Snorkeling, Whales, and Driving on the Left Side of the Road

Yesterday was a pretty awesome first day in Dominica. Since it was a Sunday, we wouldn't be able to do much work so it became a kind of free day. When the sun came up I was excited to finally see what Dominica looked like in the daylight. It is definitely a very green island with plant life everywhere. We are all staying at a dive lodge that looks out onto the Caribbean Sea and the view from my room is amazing.

As for what I did yesterday, It started with a breakfast of local fruits and fresh squeezed juices. We then went out on a boat and my coworkers all went SCUBA diving while I snorkled. The first dive site we went to was called Witch's Point and the depth drops down immediately at the shoreline. I swam along the shoreline and saw tons of beautiful fish. It didn't know what the majority of the fish were, but they sure were colorful. My favorites were the trumpet fish and the burr fish. Our second site was coral gardens and it was really cool. The water was incredibly clear and the coral reef was only about 10ft beneath me. There were thousands of fish of all different shapes, sizes, and colors and it was amazing. I don't have an underwater camera, but my boss, Jake, took lots of pics and here are some of his favorites on his flickr site. http://www.flickr.com/photos/jakelevenson/archives/date-posted/2012/01/08/ves/date-posted/2012/01/08/

In the afternoon I went on a whale watching tour with the same people that took us diving/snorkling. The main whale that you see around here is the Sperm Whale. They are pretty cool when you see them, but they dive really deep and for so long that it wasn't the most exciting tour. You would see a whale and then it would dive and then you would have to sit there for 45 minutes waiting for it to come back up. We did see three different whales and a female with her calf though and of course they served rum punch too.

Today we did more work stuff. We are getting ready for going into the classrooms by the end of the week and there is lots to do. Cheryl and I inflated a lifesize humback whale, "senior whale", to make sure that he didn't have any holes and was already to meet the kids. I think the other lodge guests and employees were amused to see a whale taking over their courtyard. We also went into town to check out the fish market and to meet a group of college students from Maine that we are going to take snorkling this week. Meeting the college kids was the easy part, the hard part was getting there. I had to drive our rental car and they drive on the left side of the road in Dominica. I have driven on the left side before in New Zealand, but their roads were a lot better than here. The roads here are very narrow, with no markings and people everywhere. It was an interesting (white-knuckled) ride to say the least. What does tomorrow bring? I am learning how to scuba dive :)