Meghan On Amelie- May 2014

 

Hello everyone! In case you don’t know me already, I am Meghan the youngest of the "4Ms sailing" family and many people have suggested that I start a blog myself so wish granted! Welcome aboard the “Meghan On Amélie Kids Blog” (our adventure from my perspective)! I will try to do a blog about once a month for all the kids out there (this blog is mostly meant for kids, but adults are certainly welcome to read too).

As the youngest aboard Amélie IV (4) I am known (sadly) as swab! Yes, swab is the lowest class you can be on a ship but hey, I didn’t get too bad of a deal considering I have the most comfortable room in the boat with the most storage!

On board Amélie, we all do different things so I am here to talk about what I do aboard. 

Homeschooling

As you probably know, my mom home schools me and Matthew which is what takes up most of my time. The big question everyone always wants to know is: “Do you like homeschool?” so I will answer that question once and for all. I enjoy what we are doing in every subject but it is not exactly what I expected. There are both ups and downs to homeschooling rather than regular school (in my perspective). 

One of the ups is (without bragging) I only have school until noon! That can also be a down though because I sometimes feel sometimes rushed through my work that I’d like to take more time on (but I am a huge perfectionist which affects that too!). Another up is definitely that I can really experience things I am learning about (or extra curricular things like scuba diving, museums, etc.) that I couldn't experience in a classroom. For example, when we went to see a volcano (Dominica Boiling Lakes-see blog: Week 3), I learned about how a volcano erupts while standing right beside one! The most obvious down though is that I don’t have my friends with me in class which was a hard thing to leave. It still is pretty cool though to meet up with other boating kids and ask what they do for school and if they like homeschooling. I hope that answers the question (by the way, here are some random pictures from the past month of school)!

                                                          

-Language Arts:            

Treasure brainstorm before we commence the awesome: "Treasure Island"!

                       Science: Paper Airplane Test Flight- Meghan vs. Dad!

Chores

Another thing that the “swab” has to do aboard Amélie IV is chores. I do actually (most of the time) enjoy doing chores, mostly because I know I get a pretty good amount of money at the end of the week but also because I know it helps keep our beloved ship clean inside and out. My chores are in categories of: Daily Chores, Weekly Chores and Twice a Week Chores. There are some nice easy ones in there like making my bed but there are also some trickier ones (that yes I sometimes avoid) like washing the heads (bathrooms). 

-Newly PADI diver going to go scrape the bottom!

Hobbies

Hobbies I like to do on my free time (especially in the evenings) include doing art, reading or doing creative writing. I have just started to really like watercolour so I have done one painting so far. Right now, the art project I am working on is something that looks like stain glass but is really just a drawing with many pieces that has oil on it (I will post in a future blog when I am done). 

My watercolour painting of cuddle fish I saw snorkelling in Les Saintes.

I also (as most kids do at my age) enjoy doing these elastic band bracelets called Rainbow Looms. I have even (as you see) made my own Rainbow Loom Shop (all bracelets are free!)! If you would like a Rainbow Loom bracelet, I will try to send one to you (wish me a lot of luck though!)! 

                                       

                   One of my books I am writing: Gabreaella Gobbles

                                                                                                                    

It is true that I don’t particularly love (but I still do like) reading but about a week ago, I looked at all my dozens books and decided that at least one has to be read! So I picked up a book called: Ella Enchanted by: Gail Carson Levine l  which is actually a really interesting book. It is about a princess who gets a curse when she is born and every order she is given she has to obey whether it is eating something she doesn’t want to eat or even cutting off her own head! As well as reading books, I also like to write them. They are just for fun but I do have a dream that one day, they might be published! And then of course, there is swimming which has no need for explanation (just pictures)!

Walking the plank!-j-Underwater Selfie!

Now that you all know what my role is aboard, I will tell you a bit more of our adventure “not on board” (on land or not everyday things).

Scuba Diving

As you heard in the last blog (from my mom) I took my open water dives down in St. Maarten and am now officially an open water diver (PS: If you read this, thanks mom for letting me explain the dives and for advertising my blog!) I had a very funny and enthusiastic instructor named Henry who was my teacher through all 4 open water dives (in my pool dives back in Calgary I also had an excellent instructor so thanks to Ginny too if you read this!). On the first two open water dives, we saw some really cool wrecks like a sunken helicopter, boat, plane and merman figurehead (sadly I had no camera with me so I have no pictures). But after seeing a sunken sidewalk with white plumbing tube railings, I figured the dive site had sunken it all for us! We saw other cool creatures too though. While we were swimming and looking at the wrecks, my instructor stopped and picked up this type of weird sea urchin (do not worry, it was not a spiky one like Matthew stepped on-see blog: The Moments in Between-March 2013). He let each of us hold it (oh right, I was with 2 others who were doing their open water dives with me) which was really cool because all the little tentacles stuck to your hand. One of the hardest skills I had to perform was taking my mask off for 30 seconds (trust me, it is a lot harder than it sounds!). Imagine this, you take your mask off, your eyes are closed in water while you are thinking: what if my instructor lets go of me, what if I get water up my nose, what if he goes more than 30 seconds, how long do I have to stay in this darkness! It actually was more like that in my pool dives so I was more used to it this time.

On my two final open water dives, it started with a very bumpy ride over (not to mention… WET!)! When we got underwater though, there was fortunately no current! We saw some really amazing creatures on these dives (ones that I thought I’d only ever see at the most twice in my life!)! We started by seeing a sea turtle which was amazing for me since they are my favourite animals! Here is a very important note though, if you ever see a sea turtle, don’t go too near to it (stay a couple of metres away) because if you don’t it will scare them and they will forget to swim to the surface (which would kill them). Probably, one of the coolest things (if not the coolest thing) I have ever seen was the rays. They were hiding in the sand at first so all you could see was their tail. Then my instructor shook some sand near it which made it realize it was found so it shook off and swam away. To give you the full picture, it was about the size of me (probably bigger)! We also saw a miniature cleaning shrimp (like the one in Finding Nemo), a non-blown up puffer fish (also like in Finding Nemo), a big (around 3 feet) trumpet fish and a moray eel (who was not too happy about us visiting his home! No harm done though!)! 

Just to end it off, here are a few random pictures of life aboard in the past few weeks!

-Big Cheese in St. Maarten!

Aargh! Me's a pirate!                                                                                    Funky Tree in the BVIs!

-Fire dancers at the Full Moon Party, Virgin Gorda!

-Caves, Virgin Gorda

                                                Just relaxing!

Painted "Recess!" the dinghy!

I hope you enjoyed Meghan On Amélie blog #1 and please do give me your feedback about things to improve, things to add/change or anything since this is my first blog and I am looking for any way to make it better every time!