My study abroad experience has given me an unbelievable amount of new and amazing experiences. We stayed on San Salvador Island for only one week, but we achieved enough different experiences on that island to last me the rest of my life. I have never had a more intense and exciting week in my entire life, and it will honestly be a difficult level of intensity to meet again. Significant experiences that stood out to me during my stay at the Gerace Research Center were the multitude of snorkeling escapades we participated in, during which we swam up close to sea turtles, barracuda, lion fish, eels, and many other kinds of oceanic life. This was probably one of my favorite aspects of the trip as I love the ocean and swimming in general, as well as fish and aquatic life. Swimming with real wild aquatic life has been a bucket list experience for me for a while, and finally achieving it while along with a multitude of other exciting adventures was truly amazing.
Our main project on the island was to survey and update the trail guide in regard to assigned sections of a trail directly behind the research center with our groups. This was an extremely interesting part of the trip, mainly due to the diverse and untouched nature of the trail itself, which was rough and small in order to reduce human impact on the environment it carved through. I enjoyed studying the environment of the island itself, especially the salt water lakes and ponds that dot the majority of the island. We also had the opportunity to learn about and experience the local culture of the Bahamas. We enjoyed a wide variety of different freshly caught seafoods, such as barracuda, conch, and grouper. I particularly loved the different new foods we had the opportunity to try, as I love to try new things and I think new cultural recipes for foods are very interesting. We also learned a lot about the social and political landscape of the Bahamas, which was surprising and informative. Overall, I loved the trip as a whole and there wasn’t a single moment that I didn’t learn something new about the Bahamas, its ecology, or international travel in general. I greatly appreciated the opportunity I was provided to go on this trip, and I would highly recommend this program to anyone else with the opportunity to participate in it.
Nicholas Perry is working towards a Bachelor’s degree in Economics. He participated in a faculty led trip to the Bahamas during Spring Break, 2018.
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