Today, I woke up to the sound of chickens. My cabin members, Hank Shotland and Matt Horvath, and I quickly got dressed and ready for our long day. We met all of our other classmates at the front entrance of the Guavaberry hotel. We were then picked up by our bus that took us to breakfast and class. We arrived at breakfast, which was delicious, and then started learning about the British Virgin Islands. Casey then started many different discussions about how we actually view everyday things. For example, would you eat dolphin or turtle even though they are an endangered species? She raised many good questions and really made us think. All of these different discussions led to debates from different students.
After this part of class, we made shark hats to take a little break. After the break, we started to look and analyze different types of fish so we can point them out when scuba diving. We played some memorization games and had a good time. After this, it was already time for lunch. After lunch, we all jumped in the pool right before we went to the boat.
We then got on our boat and got in little groups; my group consisted of Ryan Brooks, Luke Kelley, Hank Shotland, our instructor Casey, and me. We got scuba ready and headed to the Dog Islands. We jumped in the water and began our first dive of the trip. We went to the underwater chimney and saw so many different types of fish. Once we finished with our dive, we hung out on the boat for a couple of minutes and then headed back towards land.
When we got back to the hotels, we got ready quickly to head for church. The church was on top of one of the mountains on the island with an amazing view. Father asked Hank and I to read during mass; I read the first reading which was about putting other people before yourself.
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After a 30 minute mass, we headed back to the hotels to change into comfortable clothes and grab our iPads. We got ready for a nice dinner on the beach. After having lasagna for dinner, we all swam and played frisbee on the beach until we went to the hotel office to write our Day 1 Report.
Thanks for reading, I will talk to y’all tomorrow.
-Elliot Hartman
