Busy days...

So the last 3 days have been very, very busy! I am going to try to sum up most of what has happened. First of all Thursday I had 2 men instructor because Joyce had her day off. I have to say I really, really like Joyce much better! Even though both men were really nice they were.... well men.

Standing on the floating bridge looking at all the pretty houses!

Looking down the street we walked on...

Thursday was a pretty mellow day, not to much happened besides my 3rd dive. Friday was rather busy! School in the morning, and then off to diving where I finished up my academic part of the course, (I got 100 on the forth test and 100 on the final test!) Then that night we went to barbeque for dinner yum... yum :) And then we raced home and watched the final monk episode, which honestly I cried during. It was a very sad one, and I am so sorry to see the show go! In this world of horrible shows it was actually a pretty good, nice clean show!

My very yummy Shirley Temple I got at the barbque.

We were up till like 11:30 watching that, so I didn't get up this morning (saturday) till about 8:30 (they get up around 6:30 here every morning) After a pretty relaxing morning we headed out to the town to do some site seeing, and then shopping. We started by walking around and we got to walk across the floating bridge, (a bridge they have that floats all the way across the channel and then when ships need to get through they will swing it back over to one side. It was very cool! I will have to say, the places aren't all to nice around here. They don't really keep up with anything, but the buildings are real pretty! They all have a sort of dutch look (atleast the ones in town...) and are all painted with bright colors. They look very different and make great backrounds in pictures! We passed a really pretty wall mural while walking, I loved it! Here it is:

The floating bridge pulled across, you can see just the tip of the ship that is going through.

Looking down one of the streets we walked down....

J, Z and me standing on the floating bridge, looking at the pretty buildings.

I just wish it hadn't been so stinken hot. I mean it was HOT! I was dying from walking for 10 minutes, the sun, heat and humidity! Most of the stores were junky, and even their "local" souvenir's were mostly imported. So I only ended up with one little thing. Most of what I will bring home will be sea glass I collected my self from the shore! We passed a converse store though, and I just had to take a picture to show everyone!

We stopped for lunch at a not so nice little cafe place, which like 4 different sellers inside. Even though they were not so nice, their food was pretty good!! I got chicken curry, which was not bad but not the best I have tasted. J and his mom got some intresting pancakes which I almost got but they sounded to heavy. All the food was to heavy! I have absolutly no idea how these people eat all this hot food when it is so hot outside! I would be sitting eating ice cream at one of the many ice cream places! I will have to say that my favorite part of the meal was the ice cold coke made from real sugar (i.e. mexican coke.)!!

After that we went exploring a little and went to their favorite ice cream place, and found a hobbie store. The Ice cream place was gelato and was SO very good! ( I got oreo and turtle! The oreo was definitly by far the best!) Especailly in the heat. YUM! Then we went grocery shopping It is so hard to find some things, and yet others were easy. We again went to the biggest store, everyone that works there had no idea what we were talking about when we asked for.. apple cider, rasins, and cornstarch! It was crazy, but we ended up finding it all. Earlier at one of the markets we had passed, we saw pig snouts and ears... EWWWWW!! I didn't get any to take home... sorry mom :)

The gelato.... so very good!

So tonight I got to go to a community center and experience Christmas Curacao stlye! It was pretty cool to see Christmas from a whole different view (today was their' Christmas, St. Nickolas day.) It was intresting, but some of the drums got so very loud, car alarms went off, I AM NOT KIDDING! It was crazy! So everyone is exasuted and in be, and I hope to follow very soon! This is what I have been doing... time has passed so fast! It has already been a week since I arrived! Only 6 more days to go.... WOW!

Games and Scuba 2......

Just another sunset in Curacao!

So...... Yesterday was quite a wonderful day! I had diving again! First we did the academic part of the course, and I got a 90 and 2 100's on the first 3 tests. They were pretty easy, but I had studied all week. Then it was time for my first real dive! We got all geared up first, which I did pretty good at! (Almost no help.) And then we were off! As we started swimming it was so nice and relaxing, because your neutrally buyout you have to do almost no work to swim around. Right as we went under water we saw a really cool crab. Joyce pointed it out, and after we had finished she told me that it was really rare and she had never seen one before (and she has been diving for 16 years!) Then we got to the drop off. At least that is what I think of it as. It looked just like the one in finding Nemo, except it was slanted, and had coral all the way down, (Even though I would not really know because I could not even see the bottom.) Joyce told me to hold her hand and we started out, we swam along the wall of the drop off, and every so often she would stop and point stuff out. I saw all sorts of very cool things, fish and coral. At first I was scared, it was just weird to be floating in mid water, with like 50 feet below you, and you can't even see all the way down. Couple of times Joyce asked me if I wanted to let go of her hand (We can't really talk, we use hand signals.) and I think she got the point that I didn't by my death grip. At first it felt like she was the only thing holding me up, and I felt much, much more secure holding onto her hand. But while I was holding onto her hand, I was also enjoying all the amazing stuff! Down there it is like a whole nother world! Joyce said there was a big storm, about a year ago, that knocked over one of the docks (Well, it was a dock but not one you would think of as a dock, because it was quite a ways from shore with nothing attached to it.) And there were all the pieces sitting down on the slope. It was pretty cool to see! We where under the water for about 40 mins, and the farthest down we went was 10 meters. It was very cool! She kept showing me so many cool things and I would smile, but forget that I had the regulator was in my mouth and it almost fell out. After a while my jaw got very tired because of my smiling and I had to keep pushing the regulator all the way back in so it did not come out. I couldn't help myself! I finally let go of Joyce's hand about 10 minutes before we got back. We got to log the dive when we got out of the water, and she looked thorough the books pointing out all the creatures we saw! So over all it was amazing fun!

This is what my lens looks like when I walk outside because of all the humidity here!

In my spare time at the house, when we really don't have time to go down to the pool or beach, me and J have been playing Checkers or Chess. I have beat him at the only chess game we played so far, and he has beat me at every checkers game! He He, once I had four kings left, and he had one and he still beat me. I guess I will just have to improve my skills!

This is J's focus face, he makes it alot when we are playing :)

Rebekah