So it's day 4 in Bonaire and I already never want to leave. This week has been jammed full of orientations to the facilities, the classes, the dive shop, and the island. So far we've done 5 dives for refreshing skills and working on underwater navigation and buoyancy. We are diving with Yellow Sub, the Kralendijk branch of "Dive Friends," which is right around the corner from our house on the waterfront downtown. We did three dives yesterday, one today and will do one tomorrow. On saturday we're going on a boat dive to Klein Bonaire. Each dive for the next few weeks are geared toward a specific goal: mapping out a site, identifying corals, working on rescue skills, etc.

Today was the first day it hasn't rained since I got here. Apparently the rainy season is just ending, so it's been very humid and the visibility has not been that great (for Bonaire). We spend a lot of time with the interns (who live on the second floor of the house and help out with classes) and also with our professors. It's a very diverse group of people from all over the world and everyone is extremely nice and insightful. Oh, and the director of the program is from Huntington, PA... weird. Last night we attended a lecture by Ramon de Leon, manager of the Bonaire National Marine Park, on the health and status of coral reefs in Bonaire. Although Bonaire is consistently rated as the most pristine reef in the Caribbean, there was a drastic decline in health and abundance of the reef in 2011. He projected that if things go on as they have been, only 5% of the reef in Bonaire will be around by 2053 :(. The speech was very informative, depressing, and a little bit hopeful, because there are new management plans in the works. I will get to learn about this a lot more through all of my classes.

Other than that, our days are really busy and I've been exhausted at night. A local man named Gibi cooks us lunch and dinner and brings it to our house. The food is great, but due to the limited resources on the island there seems to be a lot of chicken and rice. Nothing to complain about though!