Tuesday 3/21:

Beth woke me up at 7:00, and I then sort of napped for another half an hour, then lazed in bed for the next hour. Quite a nice start to the day, except for the fact that my bug bites seem to be worse. Still not much in the way of sunburn, which is something. I’m going to have to take another anti-histamine, I think, to see if that clears things up a bit. And then there’s some anti-itch gel to use as well.
Caught up on writing this journal, sitting in bed listening to the sound of the waves and watching the curtains fluttering in the wind. It really does feel like a tropical paradise. In a little bit we’re going to go to a bakery where you order the bread in the morning and then pick it up in the afternoon. Should be exciting, and Beth wants to get some cinnamon rolls, which should be very tasty indeed.

The bakery was an odd little place run by a woman in her seventies. She wasn’t going to be making any wheat bread today, but she was able to get us half a dozen cinnamon rolls; we picked them up on our way to dinner.

Beth and Peggy and I started working on a puzzle, which has been fun. It’s made a little harder by the fact that we don’t know whether all the pieces are there, and we’ve also found at least a couple of pieces that belong to a different puzzle. Still, it’s nice. It seems a little odd to be doing a jigsaw puzzle outside on the veranda and being able to just leave it overnight. But it should be ok.

Then I went for a nice long snorkel. I saw quite a school of jack fish, maybe ten inches long or so, and something like thirty of them altogether. I also found a number of blue angelfish and saw the queen triggerfish again. I also saw another couple of triggerfish, less colorful, but enormous. They are apparently ocean triggerfish.
All the triggerfish swim using their dorsal fin and a matching one on their belly, rather than their tails. It looks rather odd, but sort of cute. I also saw a bunch of other things like banded butterflyfish (shown below) and a number of blue-headed wrasses. They don’t seem to swim in groups, though, and you tend to find them individually among various other fishes. Also saw the stingray again. He was just lying on the seabed shaking up some sand. I’m not sure if that’s a “beware” sort of signal or what, but I was hoping to get to see him actually swim. No such luck today. The blue tangs are really pretty and seem to come in a variety of sizes.

Then when I came past this one reef, there were a group (maybe four or five) of really big fish. They were tarpons, I think. Probably four to five feet long, and extremely fishy. One of them looked at me and gave me sort of a dirty look. I’m not sure why these guys were more intimidating than the barracuda, but I ended up heading off in a different direction after that. I guess it’s partly just running into something near the size of me that I find a little unnerving. I tend to get a little bit lost out there in that I’m not quite sure which reefs I’ve looked at and which I haven’t. If I could just tag them somehow. Same goes for the fish really, as I tend to forget what they looked like by the time I get back to the house and look at the book on them.
Here’s a picture of a tarpon. Keep in mind that it’s like four or five feet long.

For dinner we went back to the place we went last night. They had a buffet and a guitar and steel drum player. I can’t quite decide whether the steel drum player was just really bad, or whether he was consciously playing something that sounded like a Phrygian or Locrian or something weird scale, or maybe a diminished blues scale of some sort. It seemed like there was method to the madness, so to speak, but it was a little hard to tell at times. He could just also have been rather inept. The guitarist was also rather entertaining, singing calypso versions of a number of non-calypso song. “Dream Dream Dream” was rather hard to recognize (at least for me), and it wasn’t until the very end of it that I realized he was playing The Wind Beneath My Wings. In calypso form. Accompanied by strange steel drums. I could say you haven’t lived until you’ve heard this, but that would probably exclude most people from ever having lived, so I’ll just content myself with saying that it was rather surreal.

The dinner itself was extremely tasty. There were cracked crab claws that were enormous and exceedingly tasty, along with cabbage, macaroni and cheese (spiced with jalapenos), ham, peas and rice, chicken and fried plantains. I mainly stuck with the fried plantains and crabs, along with some mac and cheese. I think Beth and I are going to have to start spicing out mac and cheese with jalepeno sauce or something. It was very tasty. No room for dessert, although I was more tempted to just have some more fried plantains than anything else.

Feeling rather overstuffed now and quite ready for bed. Played a game of chess with Mary using the surreal chess set in the house. It seems to be made of drift wood and various kitschy little ornaments: plastic sea shells for the bishops, little wooden sea-horses for the knights, and so on. The Kings are topped with a bottle-cap held in with a phillips head screw. What more can I say?

Monday 3/20:

Got up fairly early so we could go out and look at the coral reefs while the sun was shining on the Atlantic side of them. Beth and David and I went out there, but Beth had a lot of trouble with her snorkel and kept swallowing a lot of water. I think it was choppier than it had been the day before; I had quite a bit of trouble as well. We ended up going back in and sitting and relaxing on the beach. I found that swimming with other people was a lot more stressful and difficult than doing it by myself. I think it’s because you have to try to see where everyone else is, which means going up above the surface and then you have to be careful that your snorkel doesn’t dip in the water, and treading water and trying to talk and things is just a lot more difficult.

I went out again a bit later and swam around and looked at various fishes and things. Stayed near the shore so as not to worry Beth, but still a lot of neat things to be seen. I saw the sting ray again. I think it’s probably a couple of feet across and maybe four feet long including its tail. Rather impressive, really.

We were sort of out of food by this point, but I had something resembling lunch of crackers and peanut butter. Peggy and David and Margaret drove off to find another grocery store and to look for a restaurant that had been recommended to us. I went out and did another bit of swimming, found a school of jacks, which have sort of a vee-shaped tail. The jacks come in a few different varieties, but they seem to mostly be yellow jacks and bar jacks. Swimming around in between them were maybe six to ten barracudas. I think that’s what they were, in any case, as they were very long and skinny and I haven’t been able to find any other kind of fish that would look like that (in the book that’s here). I was a little disturbed and kept my distance. But still very interesting. I also saw a number of other kinds of fish including something that was possibly a queen triggerfish. There’s a picture of one here which captures the rough feel of how it looks pretty well. Extremely colorful with almost iridescent blues and yellows. A bit more than a foot long. Oh, and I saw a fish that I’d also seen earlier in the day, which is blue with very bright stripes on the front half of it, but then sort of a dullish green-yellow on the back half. Maybe six inches long and sort of oblong in shape. Apparently it’s called a blue-headed wrasse and is the super-male form of it (although they do seem to be very plentiful, which I wouldn’t have expected if it was a more rare phase, so to speak). A lot of these wrasses change gender, apparently, sometimes more than once.
Here’s a picture of a blue-headed wrasse. This one isn’t as colorful as the ones I saw, I guess because in an aquarium it doesn’t eat coral?

I’ve been bitten by a great number of something or others. Not really sure what they are, but they’ve mainly attacked my legs and ankles in particular. I wonder if there are fleas in the beds here? Not sure what else would be the likely culprit, but some of the bites are getting kind of swollen. Kind of annoying.

Took a nap late in the afternoon as I was quite tired from all the swimming, I guess. Felt much more rested after that, and then we headed off to dinner pretty early, leaving at quarter of six or something, which suited me fine since I hadn’t really had much of a lunch.

For dinner we went to this other restaurant, which is at a hotel a little north of us on the island. It had a real menu (quite a change from the other place) and a stunning view of the ocean. The sunset was a little disappointing because it was kind of hazy. Also, we were on the atlantic side of the island and so get the sunrise rather than the sunset. Beth had got up early this morning and watched the sunset while eating breakfast. The food was very good, if a bit heavy and rich. Beth and I both had cracked conch, which was battered and fried, and half a lobster tail. I was tempted by their steak, but it seems silly to not have seafood while I’m here. Also had a margarita, which was quite strong; I felt decidedly tipsy. Decided against having a second, although it was extremely tasty.

When we got home from dinner, I was quite exhausted, but had a fair bit of trouble sleeping, actually. I think my stomach was unhappy because of the richness of the food, and then that was combining with feelings of extreme itchiness, which were definitely not helping. Eventually I did get to sleep, although I can’t say I slept extremely well.

Sunday 3/19:

Woke up fairly late as I was pretty exhausted from the trip the day before. Had breakfast, walked down to the beach. Which is stunning. I guess this is why people come to tropical paradises for vacation. The sand is somewhat pink because of all the coral in it (apparently) and the water is a stunning cerulean blue. And there are coral reefs very close to the shore and no-one else on the beach. It’s really quite stunning.

Beth and I took a walk along the beach and didn’t manage to encounter any other people. It feels like we’re in an isolated tropical paradise, which I guess we are. Stayed out out of the sun during the middle of the day because I was worried I’d get burned, but later in the afternoon I tried snorkeling (borrowing Beth’s, since I wasn’t able to get one myself before the trip). Now I understand why people travel to places like this so they can go swimming. Lots of fish of all sorts and colors, beautiful corals, pristine sand. I had some trouble getting used to the snorkel though, and ended up drinking a fair bit of sea-water, which is very salty here. That’s one reason why swimming is so nice; you really don’t have to do any work to stay afloat, so you can just sort of lie there and look down at all the corals and fish.

Later in the afternoon I went out snorkeling with Beth’s dad and sister, which was also fun, although I had more trouble with getting water in my snorkel. And it’s hard to keep track of where people are, since you can’t really see all that well. We did see a scorpion fish (which is very ugly, and apparently has a stinger on its tail that will deliver quite a dose of venom) and a sting ray, so that was exciting. Other than that, it was mainly blue angelfish and lots of little fish of the type you might expect to see in an aquarium in someone’s office or something.

For dinner we went to Mate and Jenny’s again, where I had the broiled crawfish this time. Incredibly tasty, and I also had a rum punch, but with tequila instead of rum. Still quite tasty.

Apparently managed to get a tiny bit burned on my shoulders and one part of my back, but not very badly. More SPF to be used in the future.

Saturday 3/18:

Left Beth’s parents’ house at 4 am to drive to Dulles, getting there and checking in around five, in time for our flight at 6:30. Mary and I are traveling together, while everyone else is going in a different group from us so we can come back a day earlier than the others and drive back up to Cornell on the 26th.

Uneventful flight to Atlanta (I slept a fair bit on that flight). Went to Starbucks at the ATL airport to get breakfast (bagel and coffee). Flight from Atlanta to Ft Lauderdale also pretty uneventful. One of Mary’s bags didn’t make it to Ft Lauderdale. We had extra time there, though, because our third flight (to Eleuthera) was quite delayed. We checked in around two (for a 3pm flight) and they told us it would be late, probably leave at 4:30, but we should come back at 3:30 to check. All terminals at Ft Lauderdale have free wireless, which was nice. I checked email, talked to Jess, Josh, Jessie, sorted out more facebook stuff, paid my credit card bill… all useful stuff.

When we went back at 3:30 to check on the status of the flight, we found out that it was about to board! Lynx Air seems to be a very unprofessional sort of airline. The place to check in was in the downstairs by the baggage claim, and then out through an unmarked entryway into a separate little area. They didn’t even seem to really verify that we were the people who had checked in (only 15 people on this plane, but it was still odd). Anyway, take-off was delayed a bit more because of problems getting a surfboard stowed in the baggage area. It was just a little twin-prop plane, so space was quite tight. But we made it safely to Governor’s Harbour on Eleuthera and got through immigration and customs ok, having arrived almost at the same time as Beth and her parents and grandmother arrived.

We stopped off at a grocery store en route to the house, not really knowing what to expect when we arrived. Groceries were expensive, but not as bad as one might have feared. We got some basic things for breakfast and lunch. We then had some trouble finding the house because it was dark and we weren’t entirely sure where we were going. There is one road that runs north-south on the island and we had been told where to turn off that. However, that road then ended in a t-junction and we weren’t sure which way to go. It turned out the first way we tried was wrong, but everything is complicated by the fact that the roads don’t have names, and the houses don’t have numbers, just names (the signs for which were sometimes hard to read). Eventually we found it, and discovered that it’s an enormous old place. There are a bunch of bedrooms here. Beth’s parents have a room which has two double beds, her grandmother has a room with a double bed and a bunk bed, and there’s another sort of suite of two rooms, each with a double bed, for me and Beth and Mary. Each of these suite type things has its own bathroom, which is rather nice. The main living room has a ceiling which is perhaps 20 feet tall and is thirty by thirty feet, perhaps. It feels gargantuan. The decor is somewhat kitschy, and I had assumed that the flowers were fake (I discovered on Monday that they are in fact real). It’s not really how I would have chosen to decorate the place, but overall I don’t feel we’re in any position to complain in any way. We didn’t know what to expect, really, but I don’t think any of us thought it would be this luxurious.

We went out to dinner at Mate & Jenny’s, which was recommended to us by the caretaker of the house and one of the guys at the airport. An extremely limited menu, but very tasty food. Broiled grouper with fries, plus vegetables and a quite nice salad. Service was extremely relaxed, but it was a friendly place and it was all very tasty.

Everyone was exhausted after the long day of traveling, so we basically crashed after dinner (which was kind of late in any case).

I’m going to post the journal I wrote about my trip to Eleuthera with Beth’s family for people to read. I’m hoping I find some pictures of the various fishes to post along with the journal itself. The first installment will be up this evening.

Time for an update…
I didn’t get the GRF position, which is very disappointing. I’m not sure what they were looking for that I didn’t have, but I’m really disheartened. Now I’m stuck trying frantically to find somewhere to live. I think I’ll be ok and will find somewhere fine, it’s just that I’m likely to end up spending more on housing than I would ideally like. I guess it’s good I’ve got some money socked away.
Alice (EARS advisor) seemed surprised as well. The only thing I can think of is that they may have wanted someone who could be there for more than one year, which I, admittedly, cannot. But they could have told me that, I guess. Instead I got the usual “we had many qualified applicants bla bla bla” thing.

I’m reminded of what my mother said when I was talking to her about it a week or so ago. Really, it’s not just a question of who is most qualified and would do the best job. There are so often so many other factors playing in that you (as an applicant) never even know about, and maybe that was the case here as well. I’m not even sure I really do want to know why I didn’t get it… it doesn’t help that I’m also feeling really sick and extremely tired of coughing. Plus having to have even more messing around with meds… not really what I need at the moment, probably. Last time I was sick it ended up lingering for a week or two, which I really don’t need right now. It would definitely put a damper on excitement for the spring break plans if I’m going to be coughing lots then. More realistically, I’m going to feel continual guilt for not having achieved anything work-wise in the past two months, and that will be what stops me from having too much fun during the vacation.

Anyway, depressed posts on a blog no-one reads aren’t really terribly interesting, so I’ll stop this one now.