Living the Dream

Sorry its been so long since i posted, life is crazy here! house parties, pig fries, near weekly barbeques, not to mention the diving. The real challenge is making yourself go home and rehydrate when you have a dive the next day. alot of people have been working on their divemasters for several months because they just end up partying all the time and not getting anything done.

This is not the case for yours truely. I'm making slow but steady progress towards my Divemaster. I have assisted on one open water class and i will start on my second today. Assisting on the classes is the most time consuming part of the training. Each course lasts 4 days or so and you have to assist on 2 open waters an advanced and a rescue course. once i get that done finishing up will just be a mater of studying and taking a few tests and exhibiting a few skills. i'm really enjoying my diving. i've seen spotted manta rays, moray eels, sea turtles, tons of awsome fish, and cool coral. i had a meter long baracuda swim a foot from my face the other day, he looked me strait in the eyes and opened his mouth, their teeth are wicked! i've done cave swimthroughs at 41.3 meters, thats like 133 feet. The other day i swam up to one of the northside dropoffs i swam right off the edge of the cliff, expelled all of my air and extended my hands over my head and dove down 60 feet into the blue as fast as i could go. it was awsome!!!

Speaking of awsome, not only are there alot of private parties through UDC, but the bar scene here is incredible. everyone starts at Tranquila where they play a no limit texas hold'em cash game on tuesdays, thursdays, and sundays. its a cool bar on a dock on the water there are usually people dancing under the stars when it gets late enough. from there everyone usually goes to TreeTanic which just got notice that it will be in the lonely planet's list of the top 100 bars in the world. I was there the night they were taking pictures for their spot in the book, so hopefully you be seeing my mug front and center in a lonely planet sometime soon. i wish i could describe treetanic better than to just say its a bar in a tree because its sooo much more than that. its this incredibly huge work of art. you have to see it to beleive it. On Wednesdays and Fridays its bar in the bush night. this place isn't that special of a location, but they have cheep drinks, dancing music and they open up when all the other bars close at about 12-2. everyone is wasted and its basically a shit show till 4 or 5 am. i've been there twice and it was fun to dance with ahnna, but not really my scene. they serve nitros baloons on wednesdays. thats right boys and girls, whipits. a dollar per balloon. kind of a low value way to do brain damage if you ask me, but the kids seem to enjoy it.

So anyway, what else is there to tell??? i'm planning to stay until june. thats something. things have worked out down here rather nicely so we don't see any reason to rush home. I'm still loving my apartment and missing my friends. I hope all is well with everyone stateside and elsewhere around the world. please drop me a line by whatever means available to you, i miss all my friends and family so keep me updated.