Happy Easter!

Creative title, I know. But it is Easter, after all!

This morning, after I finished helping to make brunch, three other girls and I walked over the local Baptist church for their Easter service (I had the rest of my kitchen crew put aside some food for us for later, since we would be missing brunch!). It was so wonderful. Everyone was so glad to see us, and asked us where we were from, and everyone was wishing everyone else a very happy Easter. All of the kids (and adults, for that matter) were in their Easter best, with the little girls practically wearing princess dresses. We felt a little underdressed in our sundresses and salt-water-washed hair! One of the little boys gave us hymnals and Bibles, and the pastor came over to say hi and welcome us to the service.

The service itself was great. Two hours, but it didn't feel that long at all. We sang and sang and sang, which I obviously loved. It being Easter Sunday, we obviously sang Christ Our Lord is Risen Today, Crown Him with Many Crowns, and other standards. A group of women even sang a song for everyone in Creole! As I was sitting in my seat listening, I suddenly remembered a story that an old choir director once told me. When she was in college she had travelled with the college chorale to Africa to sing with a local choir there. No one spoke the other's language, but soon they started teaching each other songs and dances, and only remembered they couldn't speak to each other when it was time to say goodbye. Obviously the situation here isn't quite so extreme, as everyone speaks English and we are here for a much longer period of time, but I think it still applies. We may not understand each other's cultures perfectly, but we can all sing those songs on Easter Sunday. Oh, and the sermon was nice too!

So now that I've finished being sappy about music and singing, a little update on what's going on at the center: we finished finals! Thank goodness! So classroom time is over, and Directed Research data collection has begun. If you think this means that we have more free time, you would be completely wrong. The opposite is true! We're all running around like crazy people, between collecting data for our own projects and helping with other projects, such as turtling and sharking. For my project I'm looking at the presence of the upside down jellyfish around mangroves and how that relates to nutrient levels and the health of the ecosystem. My group of four went out on Friday to one of our sites, which happens to be near the dump, to collect data. It was disgusting. Muck everywhere, and jellyfish literally everywhere you wanted to step! My poor group members had to help me measure them, and we measured over 700! Luckily that is the site with the most, so other days shouldn't be as insane.

I also got to help out one of the other groups with a lionfish hunt! Lionfish are a Pacific fish that are invasive to this area, so one of the other projects is looking at encouraging the creation of a lionfish fishery to get rid of them. So a few of us went diving with nets to catch them. While I personally did not catch any, the group caught five, and it was amazingly fun. And I'll get to help out with that for the rest of data collection time! But tomorrow it's back to the mangroves.

Yesterday we had our recreational dives, and since we are all advanced open water certified now, we could go to a site called The Grotto. Definitely my favorite dive (after the whale, obviously!). We dove along the wall, and saw two sharks, a turtle, eagle rays, and a bunch of queen angelfish. But that wasn't even really the best part. The coral formations at this site are incredible, creating cool formations and passages to swim around. I don't think I've ever felt so thoroughly like I was in another world, it was amazing. Luckily it's a favorite lionfish hunt site!

It's back to work tomorrow, and full speed for the next two weeks, so I'll need to get some sleep tonight! Have a wonderful Easter everyone, and go listen to Godspell or something.