All Shook Up

So, we´ve been here for 3.5 months and i´ve finally finished my divemaster. To be fair to myself i have only been working on it for two of those months. I could have finished it faster i´m sure, but that doesn´t seem to be my style. Two year college took me four, it took me 7 years to get my bachelors so half pace seems to suite me quite well. I did partake in the snorkle test, which if you don´t know what it is, ask me when you see me. lets just say i don´t remember much about that night but i apparently flashed an entire room full frontal and slapped my best friend on the island in the face. It was a good night. The last thing i really did for my divemaster was to lead a dive. i had done this before but never been graded on it. I went to my instructor and asked if i could lead his dive to the halliburton (the wreck here on utilla), it would have been so easy, descend to 120 ft. swim arround the wreck, follow the chain back to the surface and there´s the boat. Thats all you have to do to pass your lead, check everyones air once, don´t loose anyone, and find the boat at the end. Unfortunately my instructor wanted to lead that dive and insisted that i lead his night dive that night... not so easy. I had only ever been on one night dive before that, but i did know the site quite well.

We got on the boat at 5:30 and were at the sight by 5:35. we had to wait while the sun went down. i sat on the roof of the boat and watched the Advanced Openwater diver students that i would be leading get ready. Its funny to realize that you are suddenly that guy that just a month or two earlier you were looking to for advice. As i reveled in that feeling the sun hit the horizon behind me and cast a bright pink light onto the clouds infront of me which reflected a brilliant purple on the surface of the dark blue water. All i could do was take it in. I managed to find the boat at the end of the dive and even found a small sting ray to show the class i was leading. i got a perfect score and my mentor told me that it was generally not a practice to make a DMT do their lead on a night dive because no one usually passes. I felt pretty proud.

Ahnna and i are flying home on the 6th. we will be at the airport at 5:30pm. i woke up the other morning and suddenly and intensly wanted to be home. we are now just hanging out and hiding from the sun which has become oppresively hot this past week. to make life more fun, our landlady decided to jack our rent for the last few weeks we will be here, so we decided to move out of that place. we decided to move in with Harrison, the aformentioned best friend on the island. we packed up over a few days and then settled in for out last night in our first appartment we have ever had as a couple. little did we know...

i love that phrase, ¨little did we know¨, its so ominous! anyway. we had been out drinking that night, not alot. i had maybe 3 drinks. I mention this because thats exactly what i thought, i had like maybe three drinks tonight, what the fuck!, as i stumbled excessively crossing the floor to join Ahnna huddleing in terror in the door frame. As i huddled there with her and my sleep addled head started to clear i realized that i was quite sober and that the floor had been moving about two feet between when my foot left it and when i attempted to put it down. The earthquake measured 7.4 on the rictor scale (spelling?) and lasted almost a full 5 minutes on Utilla. It was an incredible and humbling experience. Afterwards Ahnna was shaking like a 5 year old after a quad shot latte . I was more tired than shaken having gone to sleep 1 and a half hours before. I tried to sooth her and eventually got her back to bed where she sat and started to pass back out. about 15 minutes later with a ominous creek and a huge BOOM, the entire buiding settled about 2-4 inches and Ahnna was out the door again before i could even get up. it was a long and tireing night after that. We evacuated to a school on the hill in case of tsunami and then lugged all our stuff down to Harrison´s. we have had 17 official aftershocks, but they have been pretty insignificant.

so there you have it. another trip, a few adventures. i wonder what will happen next year. maybe i´ll keep up the blog as Ahnna and i road trip across the USA this summer. we´ll see. Thanks for reading.

More photos posted!!!!

Ok so I just spent another two and a half hours posting pictures so I don't really feel like typing a big long blog (this is Ahnna). The pictures I posted are mostly of our two days and one night at Sandy Caye, our own personal island. Also there are pictures of when we rented a couple golf carts and went exploring around the island. We found tons of picture opportunities! We found a creepy mini golf course that was completely empty of all people and not completely finished yet. We raced our golf carts on the airstrip (no planes fly on sundays). Chris and John climbed out to the sea over a bunch of sharp rocks. Over all tons of fun! We also made some new friends. I started and finished my open water course and am now a certified open water diver...though I'm not sure if I like it yet, still makes me a bit nervous. Hope you all enjoy the new photos, love you lots and miss you!!! :o)