Thankful for dorm sex and ghosts

Waking up the entire building with our mid-morning and uncontrollable laughter, my four dorm mates and I recounted our absent roommate's botched attempt at getting laid on the weekend. The Sri Lankan man who was on the top bunk of the ill-preforming man reported that a similar, successful version was taking place above him on the next floor. 'It was like aerobics lessons. I was sandwiched!' The South Korean in the bed adjacent to the non-action was told by the man attempting to play pool with a rope if he could turn over and pretend to be asleep. Arriving in the morning after working through the night, the South African shrieked at a pitch reserved for dogs when he learnt that his bed had been host to the randy, sloppy couple. The French man, who would later reveal himself an engineer and then proceed to fit every engineer stereotype I have, clearly wasn't following despite the tears running down his face managed to spot the note I left in the inconsiderate offender's actual bed: If you bring another girl back tonight, so help me god, I will castrate you.

That was my first morning in Cardiff. I later had to leg it down a canal away from the French engineer when he thought we were insta-bffs. (To my engineer friends, I actually like you and would never take off running evasively down an inland fresh water channel even if your pinky ring initially made me question your socializing abilities.)

Parting ways with Robyn and later (and admittedly tearily) Orion, I have been making my way south through England to London where I'll fly out of next Sunday. No longer tied to a calender, I mistakenly landed in Newcastle on a Saturday night where to say they party on an epic and irresponsible scale barely does them justice. Clearly unable to beat them at their own game, I joined them. Free pints from unsuspecting freshers on what was likely their first night out ever and later an honorary member of a hen party when one of their original members spewed out, Newcastle sits hazily and happily in my pickled memory.

Happy and hungover, I made my way to Hadrian's Wall on an Australian girl's recommendation the next morning. Blissfully downpouring, I settled into an afternoon of novel reading and napping until the weather cleared. I did a small walk along the wall before checking into the hostel - but not before securing a pub night invite from a group of English men twice my age walking the wall. I had taken their group photo, after all, and the resulting flowing beverages were a mere token of their appreciation.

A quick pop into the Lake District where my car-endowed roommate insisted I join her up Scaffel Pike (highest hill in England?) and then off to historic, haunted York to catch up with a friend from the Sharklab. I was later in backpacker heaven at her parents house where I not only had my own bedroom, but my own double bed and my own en-suite bathroom! The ghost walk we took the night before in York ensured I enjoyed the bed too, as I was unable to sleep for the better part of the night.

I'm off to London tomorrow until I fly out. A few errands to sort out, some more Sharklab friends to call in on and one uni friend to visit and I'll be off for another winter in Sun, Place Else.

Even though you're all unable to pop over to the pub down the road and entertain and scandalize me (I've a good one for a few of you when we're next together!) I am deeply thankful for your quiet and occasionally boisterously loud kindness, love and support.

Home and dry

Never a fan of big last nights, my last night in Bimini appropriately was an animated games night at the kitchen table while the sky cried torrentially. These meterological tears were a precursor to my own the next morning as I said goodbye to the Sharklab and the amazing team of staff and volunteers that it housed.

A function of living, working and playing together for three months, we were a tight-knit group that often sounded like a gathering of the United Nations at a comedy club.

When not sharing vulgar, side-splitting laughs about sex or poo, we discussed at length the food items we would give our left breast/nut for. Failing to find common ground there, conversation reverted back to sharks - and almost always to their claspers or cloacas. Those four topics exhausted, chatter turned to taking the piss out of someone either for their accent or where they called home.

Home and 700 meters of elevation removed from sea level and four plane rides away from Bimini, my mental state is beginning to settle down. Emotions thoroughly all over the spectrum from leaving Bimini, part of me was ready and glad to be heading back to Edmonton - even if only for a while.

Departure downs

It's nearly time for me to once again roll on. After being minorly fucked over on my departure flight, I'm leaving Bimini on Monday.

I'm ready to move on, which is likely the result of 6.5 years of a dragged-out university degree. My uni terms were compartmentalized into four month segments and I seem to have developed only a four-month attention span.

The Sharklab further built on carefully controlled intervals.

We checked the gillnets every 15 minutes, changed tracking duties every hour, looked to first, second and occasionally third lunch to break up the day when on the boat for nine hours.

In my three months here, I was constantly awed by the diversity of the sea here, yet continually shocked and amazed at how filthy shark biologists are. I thought my summers working in the forest industry had exposed me to every rude comment imaginable, but it is outrageous what leaves, or occasionally enters, mouths here.

Conversations are quickly reduced to innuendos about sex and poo with remarks about sharks and food thrown in for variety. These four topics bind all of us together into a tight coagulation of what sounds like a gathering of the United Nations at a comedy club.

Amidst all the filth and occasionally trying tasks of manually clearing out the septic tank with shovels and buckets, being defecated on by pelicans and working through the night fishing for juvenile sharks over an entire tidal cycle in 20 mile per hour winds and sporadic downpours, assisting a PhD candidate collect her field research has been extremely rewarding.

Expectations more than satisfied, I have also learned and done things I would have baulked at in January such as accept a dinner party invitation from rowdy women claiming to be pirates driving a golf cart and consuming pink drinks, snake hunt and nearly daily handle sharks.

Five days left until I am back on Alberta soil and the rotating and often revolving cast of volunteers and staff along with a plethora of elasmobranches will ensure a second Bahamian stamp in my passport.