Hello from Bermuda!

Living in Bermuda for the past two weeks has been amazing. I really feel like I'm living in a tropical paradise. My first night I showed up at 9:30 on a Friday to what appeared to be a large empty house, but I eventually found the seven other undergrads in my REU program (more about the program later) and we went for a night swim.

It turns out we live in a dorm-style hall and are separate from the rest of the students, who are on a marine biology based study abroad program from two colleges in Rhode Island (there are 22 of them total). Other groups of people come and go, such as a group of Canadian geology majors that were here last week, but the 30 of us are all here for 3 months. My room is way bigger than my little cupboard back in Santa Barbara and has an ocean view. The only problem is a lack of air conditioning, as all of the air conditioned rooms were given to the students. It was such a relief going in to work on my first day and feeling a blast of cool air!

The first weekend was spent snorkeling and exploring Hamilton, the biggest city in Bermuda. My first night out in town was a lot of fun. It started out with us sprinting a half-mile to the bus stop, only to discover that buses, along with everything else here, run on "island time". Punctuality is not really seen as a necessity on this rock.

Since tourist season is dying down we got to meet a lot of the locals, who all have a very cool accent that sounds half British and half Jamaican. They also use a lot of slang that takes some getting used to. Reggae music is very popular, and in fact the only Bermudian I had ever heard of before coming here was a reggae musician I saw in concert in Santa Barbara about a month ago. At the first place we stopped at on Saturday night, I asked the bartender if Collie Buddz (the reggae artist) was the most famous Bermudian. He just responded with, "He's right over there!" Just like all of the other locals, Collie was really friendly and spent a while talking with us and even had his friend take a picture of us.

On Sunday we went snorkeling at a place called Whale Bone Bay, which is a twenty minute walk from BIOS. The water is some of the bluest and clearest I've ever seen, and it was a great experience. There is a lot of purple and yellow coral here and some very colorful fish. 

A few days later I went back to Whale Bone Bay at night with some friends who had an extra dive light. My favorite part was running into a couple of octopuses. I got some cool photos of the huge spiny lobster that lurk around nearby and a fluorescent squid that was hunting. There were a lot of little minnows attracted to our light that swarmed around us the whole night. It was very surreal. When I poked my head out of  the water one even jumped in my mouth, and someone I went with discovered that one stayed stuck to her for the whole walk back. 

Sorry for taking so long to make my first post. I guess I'm on island time! I will try to update with a paragraph or two at least a few times a week. I have to get back to work right now but I have a lot more to share in the next couple of days.