I'm here!!

So I arrived here on Thursday evening. The flight from St. Maarten was amazing. It was 15 minutes long in this tiny rickety old plane, and the pilot seemed to know half of the people on the flight. Well, there were only about 15 of us on the plane, but still. We apparently flew a way that’s different than usual. After reading about the flight on the internet I was told to sit on the right hand side of the plane to get the best view. Well this pilot decided to take us the entire way around the island before landing, so the best views were actually on the left side! Oh well, there were empty seats on the plane so I just jumped across.

My living arrangement: The Dolphin Cottage :) I have it all to myself and it's very quaint. The tree frogs are super loud at night but it's a nice loud. And NO mosquitoes!! That's a definite plus.

In order to get internet (which is vital for my survival) I have to hike 20 minutes down the mountainside. It's a very beautiful walk though so I don't mind that much. Plus it forces me to get exercise which is huge. Even though it's always about 80 degrees here, the canopy keeps the path cool. It really is walking through a rainforest. It rains sporadically all day, but really like 2-3 minutes at a time and then it's clear again.

The beginning of my hike down the mountain - this is at about 1,500ft. Then Maskhorne Hill is like another 100ft up.

Photo of Windwardside taken from Maskehorne.

Haha since I'm all alone here I have to balance my camera in a tree to take a photo with me in it :) I'm kind of weird...Beautiful.

Yes I'm strange.

On Monday I went diving :) We went to two sites, one was called Babylon and was about 100ft, and the other was called Tent Reef and it was my favorite.

Oh hai.

View from the dive boat. Stunning.

Again, another view of the island.

The inside of a cool-looking sponge coral I found.

Fire coral!

This is some kind of sea slug, not really sure what it is. But to me it looks like chocolate chip cookie dough... haha maybe it's just me?

There were LOTS of yellow tube sponges everywhere! They're very pretty because yellow is the one color that really stands out underwater.
Christmas Tree worms! If you get too close to these they suck themselves into a hole super fast. It's really hard to get a good picture of them but I think this one's pretty good ;)
Turtleeeee

Lots and lots of brittle stars inside some coral
So I've never actually seen a sand dollar other than hanging in a frame on someone's wall or maybe something someone brought in for show and tell in like 3rd grade. But I finally saw two on this dive!!
More yellow tube sponges

Nurse shark! It was actually a pretty big one. Apparently at this site last week they spotted a 12ft hammerhead!! I'm pretty jealous...

One last view from the taxi as we were driving back to Windwardside.

This is a very beautiful island. The rainforest is stunning, and there are gorgeous views of the mountains and ocean from wherever you are. And people are generally very friendly - they're starting to recognize me in town :)

Working at the Ecolodge is awesome. I help people check in/out and try my best to answer their questions - it's kind of funny how they're asking me questions.. I hardly know what I'm doing myself let alone how I can help them! But I'm learning fast. I've met some really great people as well. The owners of the Ecolodge are very friendly, and seem to like me so far :) I managed to get the two other couples I was diving with to make dinner reservations there tonight! haha - onthe boat with me there was a couple from NY and a couple from the UK. Both were very friendly and intrigued by what I'm doing here for the summer. The 6th diver was a woman from the French side of St. Martin and she wasn't all that friendly... Anyway. haha

I also met two people from NY who were staying at the Ecolodge doing research on the lizards. They were super nice - the woman even left me here magazines when she left haha. So now I have an Economist, The New Yorker, and an InTouch to keep me occupied :)

There's really not much of a night life here, which I'm totally fine with. Apparently quite a large portion of the population starts drinking at about 4pm. Woah. It's because there aren't all that many lights that burn all night on the roads, so people have to start early! When we're sitting up at the Ecolodge at night, it's about 8pm but always feels like midnight haha. Oh and when the clouds clear, I can see more stars here than anywhere else. It's amazing. I didn't even know there were that many stars! There's such little light pollution so it's very beautiful.

I'll try to keep this updated as much as possible but it will be hard because of the fact that I have to hike 20 minutes to the internet haha. Although the managers of the restaurant I'm currently sitting at (Scout's Place) gave me the code to their internet so right now it's free :) Hopefully they don't go and change the password any time soon!