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Location: Grenada

Hi everyone! After long passage days, today was a great, mellow, but exciting day on the boat. We, of course, started the day bright and early at our traditional 7 a.m. wake-up time and ate a delicious Turkish egg breakfast courtesy of head chef Selin. After breakfast, we hopped right into classes for the day, first up leadership! Today was the first of a student-led leadership class, and we had a wonderful intro to our textbook and chapter summary session, then broke into small groups and talked all about different leadership styles and what makes a great leader. Class ended, and we had some much-needed free time while lunch was being made. Group fish ID quiz study session, some quiet essay writing time, and, of course, some music, games, and swimming.

And most importantly, and to everyone’s delight, CLEAN laundry was delivered from shore by Heather. We ate lunch, moved into our leadership class, pt. 2, for the day, and learned a little bit about the lovely island of Grenada, where we are spending the next few days. This class session wrapped up pretty quickly, and we moved into an oceanography lecture. We went over a few key points regarding our upcoming semester-long research projects, then opened up one of the bilges to find a wonderful heap of lab equipment. We then spent the next few hours learning how to use this equipment and testing everything out. We learned about some pH, salinity, and visibility measuring instruments and got to look through fancy microscopes. Lab finished up, and we moved into a mellow evening of swimming, swimming, and more swimming. Oh, and some deck/water soccer brought to us by Gigo and his 5-condition soccer ball. We all took showers, did some flips, jumped off the bow, and watched the sunset as dinner was being made. Dinner and clean-up time now, then probably a mellow evening in store for us. We are all very happy to have a down day after long passage nights and in anticipation of a shore hiking excursion tomorrow.

Down days here definitely mean something different than at home! Happy days…