Happy Wedding Sara!!!!

Well this post is a few days late due to internet issues, but one of my best friends, Sara Larson, was married this Saturday! I wasn't able to be there but luckily got to skype with her for a bit on Friday before her rehearsal dinner. I've also been sent a lot of pictures and got a play-by-play from my friend Katherine, so I practically feel like I was there! The bride looked gorgeous and it looked (and sounded) like everybody had a blast. Congratulations Sara!!!

The second most important thing to note is it is 7 million degrees here right now. Literally.

Even thought it has been about a week since my last post, we don't have a ton of new things to tell you all about. During the weeks we have continued to be extremely busy. We were supposed to get scuba certified last weekend but Eric was feeling a little under the weather again (street food is evil) so we took it easy instead. He was feeling better Saturday evening, however, so we went to our friend Kelly's house because it was her birthday! We had a great time - it was a small gathering of people but she had one of the island chef's come over to teach us how to cook Lion Fish. Eric even got to play video games!

Speaking of Lion Fish, Eric recently got certified to legally spear fish for Lion Fish :) They are an invasive species here so they are constantly trying to fish them and kill them. These fish eat everything on the reef and really hurt the underwater ecosystem here.  Luckily Lion Fish tastes amazing so the people here love to eat it. He has yet to kill one yet but he has been trying! Last night we went night snorkeling with some locals who showed us where on the reef are good places to "hunt." Before we knew it we had all been out there for 2 hours!

Last weekend we also went on an amazing island tour. It started at 9am and went all day long. A local named Billy led the tour, and we went with some other volunteers at the clinic. We started at the West side of the island and slowly moved East throughout the day. It was a great experience to see lots of parts of the island that we wouldn't see otherwise. My favorite place was Punta Gorda. Our driver told us the people in that village have very little but they are very happy- and he was right. They were so welcoming and wonderful. We were served Manchuca there which is an authentic island soup made with white fish, conch, and lobster. We also got to dance the "Punta" or "Point" with some locals. They were so excited to have us in their restaurant they went and got their drums and maracas they played music for us and danced. They they asked all of us to dance with them! We had a great time and were sad to leave there. We don't have any pictures from there though because our camera died :( We also went on a cool boat tour and saw some towns called Oakdale and Jonesville. These towns are only accessible by water - think Venice but it all sits on an ocean instead of canals... and not as nice. There are also a lot of mangrove trees that you tour around.

This picture here at the bottom is my favorite - this is how they fish on the East side of the island. They use little wooden canoes and canoe paddles. Then they just use string with a hook and bait and use that to catch fish - no fishing rod or anything. They seem to be pretty successful at this method - Eric took this picture of a local fisherman.

Tonight we are going to get together with some other volunteers for a lobster dinner :)

Hope everything is going well for everyone at home!! Miss you all and I will try to post again soon!