Certified!

Today was truly spectacular, and it's only 5 pm. That's saying something! I was roused out of bed at 7 am because I overslept and quickly had to grab a bathing suit, towel, and sunscreen to head off diving! We got down to Sam's and after getting together our diving stuff, headed off to the first spot. I was the only one left who had to do confined water III so Kostas took me down alone while the other's got to snorkel. We practiced taking off mask underwater, taking off gear, taking off weight belt, and then all of those again at the surface. When I was done all of that, the other three got in the water so we could do our next skills. It's funny how we started off with 9 divers, and today we were down to 4. Anyway, we learned navigation and buoyancy and other fun things for a while, and then we went swimming around the bay for open water II and saw a barracuda. I thought it was a shark, so when it swam close to me I just eyeballed it and didn't move at all. Everyone was practicing controlled emergency ascent one at a time, and while we were waiting we saw a very scary, very long, black and white sea snake. It didn't bother me so much when it was on the bottom, but then it started swimming up to the surface. It was just swimming and skimming the surface, which made my heart pound because it was almost right above me. After I decided that it wouldn't bother me, I went back to looking around. Seconds later, the sea snake shot down, speeding just inches from my face. I literally could have stuck out my tongue and touched him. Of course, that just terrified me and gave Chris, Victor, and Carl a chance to laugh at me for being "such a girl". IT WAS A GIANT SEA SNAKE THAT ALMOST CAME DOWN ON MY HEAD! I think that is a legit reason to freak out!
Anyway, after we did controlled emergency ascent, we took a small break and ate lunch with all the snorkelers. In case I didn't mention, there is a past SM here from 3 years ago and her friend as well. They are both from Germany and are very nice and friendly. They came along with us on the boat today and Vanessa, the past SM, even went scuba diving. After lunch, Kostas took us out to the complete middle of the ocean to our last open water dive! The spot he took us to was a beautiful Japanese cargo ship that was covered with coral and fish. We saw a lion fish which was fantastic! It was really neat getting to see the wreck, and do our deepest dive ever- 65 feet! It was so much fun and after about an hour under the water, we went back up to the top and were officially certified! It is such a great feeling to know that I have this new, and amazing, skill. When we got back to the dock, a bunch of us signed up to do advanced diving, which includes things like wreck diving, cave diving, night diving, and lots of other things we could do.
When we got home, Tami and I went out to eat because Jeanine still wasn't feeling well. There was the cutest dog by the Burger House and I just couldn't help but share my burger and scratch his cute little ears. After that we explored the WCTC, which is like a big shopping center that we'd never been in. We found that they have TONS of food, a lot of it American. Some stuff is even cheaper! I bought some blueberry muffins (oops, we don't have a muffin tin) and aloe juice. Sounds interesting right? But oh my goodness, aloe is DELICIOUS! I'm going to try to ship some home, but who knows how that will work. Hopefully I can find aloe when I get back to the US, but if not, I'll drink plenty here!