Thursday May 28

As mentioned in last night’s entry, this morning started with the students’ first quiz. Everyone seemed a little tired after the quiz, so we took a little break before diving into any new lecture material.
Aaron’s birthday is today, so last night I made a cake for him as a surprise (which was definitely an endeavor) and during the break Dr. L and I carried over the cake with lit matches (used in place of candles because I couldn’t find any on the island) and sang him happy birthday with the class. The cake was a good pick-me-up after the quiz. Dr. L lectured for awhile on pollination and then we got a 2.5 hour break before returning to do a pollination experiment on the cottage grounds. Most people romped in the water for awhile (Larken was diligently finishing “Angels and Demons”), Alex B. and I tossed the football around, and a few others went down to a restaurant called “Banana Boat” to check email during the break.
Around 4:30 or so class was finished for the day and I drove a group of students into Roxoborough to use an ATM (the one here in Charlotteville has been broken for days and no one seems in any hurry to fix it). Some cards worked in the ATM, some didn’t but between Ben and myself, we managed to get TT dollars for everyone in exchange for US $. When we got back to the cottages people wanted to go out to celebrate Aaron’s birthday, so the whole class headed to a little white restaurant located on the beach where Jerome (the cook) told us he would be BBQing and would give us a nice deal on chicken and fish since we were students. SO GOOD! We all enjoyed it. We hung out for awhile after that and eventually broke into smaller groups. Alex V, Emily, Ben, Trip and myself hiked around the town up and down some steep streets getting a feel for the area. Chase hung back to call some people back home. Larken stayed back to finish “Angels and Demons” because she was dangerously close to being done and then everyone else (Whitney, Alex B, Tim and Aaron) lymed around the town.