Tag Archives: Study abroad

“Hi, my name’s Leah Shamlian and I haven’t showered in three days, do you mind if I ask you a few questions about your eating habits?”

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Grace Bay is the center of tourism on Providenciales, which is in turn the center of tourism in the TCI. Conveniently accessible by beach!

Grace Bay is the center of tourism on Providenciales, which is in turn the center of tourism in the TCI. Conveniently accessible by beach!  Photo courtesy of Patsy and Larry Stout.

Unfortunately for the olfaction of the swanky tourists on Providenciales, the SFS students administered seafood consumption surveys immediately after a three-day camping trip.  There is nothing like talking to a well-dressed and well-groomed couple to remind you that your clothes were washed in saltwater and your hair was last cut by a woman speaking an unidentifiable language wielding a thinning comb.  (At least we got showers and a night in a hotel before touring a $3.6 million penthouse.)  Surprisingly, the swanky tourists did not appear offended by our presence, and actually asked us quite a lot of questions about what exactly we’re doing here, attending school on a Caribbean island.

People on South don’t need to ask who you are – besides the fact that the island only has around 1,200 inhabitants so there aren’t too many  unfamiliar faces, it’s a pretty easy assumption that if you’re white and/or around 20 years old, you must be here doing research with the School for Field Studies.  It requires a bit more explanation for people on the other islands of TCI.  Tell tourists you’re studying abroad on South Caicos and they laugh at you for having such a lavish life.  Tell locals you’re studying abroad on South Caicos and they ask you why on earth you would choose to do that.  (Turns out that South is like the West Virginia of the TCI.)

The swanky tourists have only taken over a part of Providenciales, though.  I ventured outside of their sanitized area and spent my mid-semester break with an American couple who had moved to Provo two years ago.  I’ve never been thanked so profusely for an hour of sightreading on a semi-broken keyboard as I was after I played the piano for our church service.  And you know what?  Even though I wasn’t in the scrubbed and polished tourist zone, I had a fantastic time and I was able to meet some locals and help them out.  Despite my lack of sundresses, stylish floppy hats, and normal hygiene standards.  Take that, materialism.

Fun fact: there’s a parking lot here with more spots than there are cars on this island.

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My first view of South Caicos - fresh off the plane, coming into the dock via ferry. The locals were waiting to greet us - on an island this small, the School for Field Studies is a pretty big deal.

My first view of South Caicos – fresh off the plane, coming into the dock via ferry. The locals were waiting to greet us – on an island this small, the School for Field Studies is a pretty big deal.

 

I was sitting at my computer, trying to think of how to turn the past six salty weeks into a decently readable blog post, looking out past low stone walls to the flat and sparkling turquoise Caribbean Sea… and I realized that my time here is halfway over.  Which is kind of a sad way to start my first blog post, so I’ll go back to the beginning of this adventure and start there.

 

I began looking into study abroad programs last fall and, me being me, didn’t want to do any of the obvious things and go to London or Rome or Paris.  At first, thanks to Bill Bryson’s In a Sunburned Country, I wanted to go to Australia (I already go to school on the other side of the country from home, why not study abroad on the other side of the world?).  And then I found a better way to be obnoxiously atypical: I was going to do an intensive field research program, spending three months at a remote field station in a foreign country – as an English major.  Several visits with Puget Sound’s helpful International Affairs Office staff, seven months, and lots of expenses later, I found myself getting off a delayed flight in the Charlotte airport with four minutes to change terminals and make my connecting international flight to the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI), British West Indies, Caribbean.

 

And now here I am on South Caicos, taking part in the School for Field Studies (SFS) Marine Resource Management program.  In the months leading up to my departure, my dad would tell people that when Columbus came across the Atlantic he saw the Turks and Caicos Islands, said “Nah, that doesn’t count as land,” and continued on to Hispaniola.  South Caicos, sometimes called The Big South, is a whopping eight square miles with about 1,200 residents.  The small airport’s runway is half of the island’s width.  There is one doctor here (which is one doctor more than some other islands have), an elementary school and high school, fourteen churches, a store called Tasha’s Ice Cream and Toiletries that sells ice cream for a dollar a scoop, and one functioning hotel that must survive off of SFS students going there for drinks and conch fritters because South is not exactly a tourist destination.

 

And what have I done with my time in this luxurious tropical paradise?  I’ve memorized the scientific names of one hundred and twenty-four marine organisms, gotten Advanced Open Water SCUBA certified, sniffed the glorious fragrance of the Salinas (as well as the magnificent perfume of the fish plants, which overtook the salt industry in 1960), helped local third-graders in their composition class, caught two sharks and zero turtles (in the name of science!), been stung by fire coral, seen the spectacular wall of coral at the nearby seven thousand foot drop-off from lagoon to open ocean, tried conch fritters, been chased by local “potcake” dogs, and taken a grand total of two freshwater showers.

 

Tomorrow, the SFS students and some faculty will leave South and travel to North Caicos, where we will be camping for two nights – let the record show that bug spray here is $9.25 a bottle and life is hard – before heading to Providenciales, or Provo, and splitting up for our mid-semester break.  I’ve been looking forward to this for months.  Not because of the break from classes or the new dining opportunities or the tourist attractions.  Not for the change of scenery.  Not because I set up a home-stay and get to volunteer at a church there – although I am excited about that.  Not even for the existence of showers and washing machines.  I’ve been looking forward to going to Provo so that I can post it on Facebook, elicit a reply from various friends and acquaintances in Provo, Utah, and then leave them with the triumphant response: “I’M IN THE CARIBBEAN – WRONG PROVO, SUCKERS!”