Today was our sixth and final full day here on Virgin Gorda. The morning was routine with us waking up and eating breakfast at the chosen cabin. Once we finished breakfast, we changed clothes and began to walk down to the local high school at 8:45. Our task for the day was to complete a service project for this high school. The school is severely underfunded, so we were helping out by organizing the library and either planting or preparing to plant various plants. My specific task was to help lift dirt and gravel from the ground to another story of the school and lay out the dirt in an upstairs garden. Overall, with all the help from the other guys on the trip, the task was not too difficult. The only problem I had was with rope burns from lifting the dirt. However, I am still very proud of our work that will benefit the students of the school. After we finished our service project, our driver Glenn drove us to Bath and Turtle for lunch. From lunch, we went to the local dive shop, where I was able to get my free hat for winning the beach games. Once we all finished at the dive shop, we returned to the cabins, showered, and went down to the main room to work on and present our final research project presentations. Our group presented fourth, and our presentation went very well. The dive instructors were very interested to see our sponge project and how it worked. They were also very interested to see our final conclusion: smaller sponges process water flow faster than larger sponges. Most of our comments were about how fun the project must have been. I will definitely recommend the project to any other Marine Biology students. Finally, after our presentations, everyone, including the dive staff, went up to the restaurant Top of the Baths. It was an all-you-can-eat buffet, and I ate too many ribs to count. As the night was ending, the dive staff showed us a slide show they made using all of the photos from this week. At the end of the meal, the dive staff and some of us shared a few words and said our goodbyes for the week. Overall, it was a great day and a great way to end this amazing trip.
Today, I learned about the school system in Virgin Gorda and how it is very underfunded. I am glad that the work I put in this morning will benefit many kids when the school year starts. I am also very glad and very fortunate to be going to a school such as Jesuit with as many resources that I have. Tomorrow, I am looking forward to getting home. I want to tell the great stories of the week to my family. Also, it has been a great week, but it has also been very tiring, so I am looking forward to getting to rest back at home.
