Nassau, Bahamas

Well we just arrived at the Bahamas on Saturday. Haven't done much yet. We went downtown on Sunday to try to find batteries for my camera and bought one under the table out of another camera. Luckily I could convince the store associate at John Bull to give me this battery for a little extra money. That's the good thing about the Bahamas. The bad thing is that there is no Walmart. That would make life much easier. Then we went to the pool and hung out. Margot (my niece) had a blast but is terrified of the ocean. Then we came back to the room and got ready for dinner. We ended up eating at a restaurant by downtown that served mostly meat. Hard to find food and it wasn't very good. The service was awful too. So far the only friendly people were the natives who didn't deal with hotel or food service. Anyway, then we came back and went to bed. Figured out that I could use Skype while in the Bahamas, so that was nice.

On Monday we had our first dive. And for me it turns out it was my last. We left at 8 a.m. and took a boat out into the ocean. It had been a couple years since I last dove so the feeling of breathing under water was a little foreign. As soon as I jumped into the water, I immediately began hyperventilating. I have no idea why, possibly the cold waters. But as soon as I went under, I was fine. It was a beautiful dive, we saw various fish, coral, and a reef shark. But as soon as we surfaced, I immediately became sick and started vomiting. NOT FUN. Lucky for me, they had to go back and pick up some more divers from the dock and they let me off before they went on their second dive to see a sunken ship and plane used for a James Bond movie. It was upsetting that I couldn't see those. But I did find out that a boat near ours belonged to Johnny Depp who was enjoying a nice day on the ocean. So after we came back to the hotel and took a nice hot shower, we got ready to go to the zoo and see some marching flamingoes. That was pretty neat. Then I took a bus back to the hotel while everyone else went and got pizza. I was pretty tired so I just crashed.

On Tuesday we woke up, got some breakfast, and got ready to go to the Atlantis Resort. We went to the Aquaventure which is just a huge water park kind of like Oceans of Fun, but way nicer. We mainly went on the lazy river for a while, which had a bunch of rapids and drops. We also saw a couple aquariums at the Atlantis. Really wish we would've stayed there instead of the Sheraton!! So after that, we went out to eat at a nice Greek restaurant and then took a taxi back to the hotel. We just hung out there and I started packing since I needed to be on the ship Wednesday.

On Wednesday, I arrived at 3 (and was the last one) to get on the ship as a work-study student. It was nice to meet all of the work-study students, get unpacked, and walk around the ship before everyone else was there. We had a meeting and met the rest of the audio-visual work-study students and our supervisor. We mainly work with projectors, tvs, microphones, audio levels, cameras, things like that.

The next day, all of the other students came and I worked helping students get checked in and welcoming them. After I was done working, I finally met my roommate. We went to dinner and had several meetings in the evening. We were supposed to leave around 5 p.m. (1700) but apparently some students had trouble with their visas and we all decided to wait for them. We waited through the night and until Friday evening, when they all finally boarded the ship. We all left and went on our way to Roseau, Dominica.