The terrible test week is over! Last monday (which seems like SO long ago) was our fish ID exam which I aced. Then Thursday, Friday and Saturday we had mid-terms. It's so much harder to study around here when you're surround by 30 close friends and some of the most beautiful water in the world...

We did spend most of the week studying...or talking about studying at least...but they're over now and I think I did okay!

After our last mid-term on Saturday, we had community outreach. Instead of the chaos that is the snorkeling club, I decided to work with one of the other groups that is in charge of invasive pine tree removal. They're Australian pines that are starting to take over the island because they survive so well and kill everything else out. It was really nice, we went to Long Cay and spend a few hours just walking around looking for trees.

After that, a few of us went with Marta, one of the research associates here, and went searching for sea turtles. She's doing some independent research. Basically, what happens is you get slowly towed behind the boat, hanging onto a board, with your mask and snorkel on and look for turtles. When you see them, you're supposed to slowly swim after them until you can get close and then grab them and bring them up to the surface to do some measurements and get blood samples and tag them. That was what was SUPPOSED to happen. It got pretty crazy pretty quick. At one point there were 4 of us chasing 4 different turtles that happened to all be in the same place. They are FAST! I got within a foot of one and just as I went to grab it, it turned around, looked and me and sped off. None of us caught any, but it was really fun and I finally saw sea turtles here!

Yesterday we spent all day at the beach decompressing from exam stress. Life here is back to normal again...no more stress or worries!