Marine Biology

Hello, my name is ThucDan, I am currently in eighth grade, I have no clue what high school I want to go to, this is quite scary because I have to know in order to take my HSPT (high school placement test), it’s a test that you need to take in order to apply and enroll in a Catholic high school.  There are only 6 Catholic high schools in Arizona: Xavier college prep, Brophy college prep, Bourgade Catholic high school, Saint Mary’s, and Notre Dame Prep, there’s another one but I can’t remember.  So let me tell you about each of these schools.  Xavier is an all girl’s school, and is one of the most prestigious schools you can go to in Arizona, I would like to go here, but it’s a bit far from my house, so I can’t.  Also, the tuition is 15 grand.  Brophy is the same as Xavier only it’s for boys.  Saint Mary’s is at the bottom of the scale, although it”s not a bad school, it’s not the best.  Last of all, Bourgade, this is the school I’m looking at, it meets all of my requirements, it’s affordable, it’s private, and it’s close to my current school, which is where my sisters are going at least until next year.  Anyway, high school is not what I came here to write about, I’m here to talk about my Marine Biology trip.

For those who don’t know, each year, at my school, the eighth graders go to California and get on a boat, we sail to the Chanel Islands, which are a few islands that are part of the national parks system, which means we need to bring a nature specialist.  We stay on the boat for 3 nights and 4 days.  We kayak, snorkel, do a science labs, and hike.

So the bus ride there was 8 hours, since it was in California, when we got there, we took our bags and put it in the boat and went to the beach to play, my friends and I took lots of pictures and played in the water, there were a few sea lions, they got really close and you could touch them!  Of course they kept their distance, the teacher ordered pizza and we went to the boat galley to eat, it was about 7 when we finished eating, we went to the top deck, and yelled at the boys (They were in a different boat and both boats were docked because we haven’t set sail yet.)  We sang songs and took pictures until 9, that’s when we went to sleep.

We started sailing at 4 in the morning, and I woke up when we started sailing, the boat was really rocky, and it took me a while to go back to sleep.  We woke up at around 7 or 8, we upstairs where the galley was, placed our breakfast orders, and brushed our teeth.  That morning, I believe I got scrambled eggs and some meat I don’t remember, it was probably ham.  We then went down to the bunk room and changed into hiking clothes, this hike was 4 miles long, and it was very beautiful, the nature specialist told us about the island, and had an answer to almost every question we asked, her name was Tara.  After hiking, we went back to the boat to eat lunch, and the real fun started;)))  My first station was snorkeling, I got on my wet suit, which was sooooooo hard to get into, I then proceeded to slip on my booties and fins.  My group snorkeled to a rock and saw a ton of things, I managed to collect a shell, but then I accidentally dropped it and so it was gone forever.  On my next station, I dissected a fish.  And the best part of the day started, we went kayaking, I had never kayaked before, so I was pretty bad, but my mistake was was choosing a partner who also did not have any experience, we were always last, we were also very slow, my arms got really tired, it was draining.  But still fun.  In between these activities, we would go on the top deck, sit over the ledge, and watch the waters move,  after sitting there for about 10 minutes, we got salt on our knees!  We went back to the boat and showered, changed into pajamas, and ate dinner.  That night, I think dinner was string beans and steak.  When we finished, we brewed a cup of hot coco, and went to the top deck, we had a concert, one of us would dance one of the platforms, and someone else would sing on the other.  We all had this odd dance, I’m not sure how to really explain it, but it was pretty funny.  A few kids didn’t know how to do it, so we would pause the concert to teach them, we ended the concert and held a dance class.  Then, we went back to the galley for desert, that night, we had brownies and ice cream, it was quite yummy I must say.  I went to sleep that night and woke up at 3 in the morning, it took me a whole hour to go back to sleep.

The next day was the same, but the hike was very tiring, it was also 4 miles, but it was also up hill the whole time, I don’t even know how I survived.  That day was just the same, except for a few hiccups, when we went snorkeling, we found out that some irresponsible person had left their wet suit out and when the boat moved, it flew off into the ocean, that one suit happened to be my size, so I had to downsize, I was very uncomfortable, and it was very tight.  That day we looked at sea water under a microscope, and tried to find plankton.  We then went kayaking.  This was my favorite day because the boys and the girls had a kayak war.  There were 2 seats for each kayak, but for reasons of the war, we would put someone in the middle.  The front person was the rower, the middle person was the offender, and the last person was the defender.  I was the rower, and it was hard, because we kept being attacked.  If you haven’t already picked it up, the boys were climbing on the girls’ kayaks and they flipped us over.  We, of course, retaliated and flipped them.  Of course, there were people who weren’t involved in the war and they paddled around in their kayaks and they picked people up and dropped them off at their own boat, we called these people taxis.  I got flipped over so many times it almost got not funny.  

This is all I will be writing for today, I cannot attach pictures that I took because I do not have access to them at the moment, for pictures of this trip with me in them that I did not take, visit  http://www.simonjudeschool.org/archives/2016-8th-grade-marine-biology-trip-to-the-channel-islands/  I will post the pictures I took in another post.

Update: I have now gotten access to my pictures, which i will insert here.

 

 

 

My friend Bianca has a blog spot on the school website, she also had posted a post on her page about this trip, hers is much shorter, so I suggested you read it if you mostly skimmed over this one http://www.simonjudeschool.org/student-life/