oh my favorites

crazies

this week's just been mad. i had my lab report due on wed afternoon and really had to have it finished tues night because i have non-stop class wednesdays. all went smoothly, no worries, but it was just a pain to lock myself away in my room and do real work for the first time this semester :P anyway once that was done i had my dive medical to worry about today - all checked out - and then tomorrow i have to have a pool refresher course with the dive master person because i did half my cert through SSI and i'll have my full cert from PADI and just madness, so i gotta wake up and swim at 9am. BUT it will all be worth it because tomorrow night i hop on a boat and get out to the reef to dive for the first time since i got out here. JOY! i'll be out of touch for a few days and come back with lovely pictures and my open waters :D sara wins. mike is doing his dive master course on the boat as well so he might get stuck babysiting me - and he can't mess with me at depth becasue he'll be working. he'll save that for our next livaboard. fun stuff let me tell u lol.

i forgot there was a weekend between this one and easter, so i have a free weekend - whoda thunk? we'll make it a good one, i'm thinking a trip to billabong sanctuary so i can pet some koalas :)

breathing underwater

OMGZZZZ livaboard! what an amazing weekend. holy crap.

so on friday i had to get up and review my scuba skills with tom, since i was getting the rest of my cert through referal. he seemed pretty impressed by my knowlage - i remembered most everything, even dive tables. so that was cool. i'd picked up my gear on thursday, and mike packed most of my stuff into his ginormous bag so i was free to fill my bag with junk :) julie was kind enough to drop us off at the boat at 8pm and we got on to meet the crew and get settled in for the trip. emily and i shared this tiny little room:and then the night began... o man. keep in mind that i havent been on a boat for like 3 years or something? and i'd never slept on a boat. we cruised most of the night at 8 nots, and most everyone on the boat got sick. poor emily had nothing left in her stomach, and i only avoided getting sick by laying down and sleeping out on the lower deck by all the scuba gear. i eventually got blankets because it was COLD. but i reckon i got more sleep than most that night. we woke up the next morning, and this is what we saw.
so blue!! after a light brekky (=breakfast) we went out for our first dive at keeper reef (on the great barrier reef, obviously) it was a nice reef, but aparently just recovering from a massive crown-of-thorns outbreak - they're a pest that kill off the corals. anyway there were 8 of us doing out open waters, led by this lovely lady, alanaand my buddy was this tall and lankey kid named sean who had hair a bit like scott's :P here he is with dawn. i guess he's a free diver and plays underwater hockey - the kid doesn't breathe! and he could make bubble rings when he got bored on the bottom :) anyway we did 2 dives at keeper before cruising again out to wheeler reef. i took the opportunity to nap on the way there - i think most everyone did. o and of course the chicas decided to sunbathe
this spot had been spared by the crown-of-thorns and was pristene!! we got through most of our open water skills by the end of the 3rd dive of the day, and o it was awesome. here's some pictures of us getting ready - i haven't gotten any underwater ones from people yet so that will be a later post :Pso after the last dive of the day we had a lovely fish curry dinner and watched madagascar, as well as some looney tunes and a movie called the power of one... a little depressing, i was too tired to stay up for it. the advanced divers went out for a night dive while the rest of us chilled inside. one of the best parts about the evening was my chance to shower - nasty salt hair is not my friend! and the showers weren't just in the bathroom, they were the bathroom - the shower head was possitioned right above the toilet! but hey it works :P i got in my PJs and everyone laughed at me, it was great. also there was this cool needle-nose fish hanging around the boat light. he was cool. i slept beautifully that night, i was dead tired and went to bed before i even began to feel sea-sick. we got up for a dawn-dive at like 6am, it was our last cert dive!! here's me just out of the water, fully open waters certified :)
and then we had a fun dive before lunch - it was nice to go down and not have to worry about flooding my mask or throwing away my regulator or anything :) i've got my temporary card now, but i think i'll have my advanced diving cert before my official one comes in the mail :P oh well!

there were so many cool thins underwater - i saw 5 white-tipped reef sharks, 2 giant clams, several kinds of parrot fish, angel fish, and butterfly fish, a cuttle fish, a little bull ray, and so much more!!! i'm hooked if you couldn't tell. i can't wait till our next livaboad. here's all the cool people i was out with!
and now i'm back on dry land. BOOOO! the world still seems to be rocking back and forth haha. i'm sore and bruised and scabbed and bitten and scratched and just generally phisically exhausted and i can't wait to dive back in.

on a strange note, it appears that my belly button got sunburnt. wierd.

american and british TV shows

this week has been filled with watching TV shows with people (not on TVs of course, on computer screens :P) - i must add again that i LOVE the hub. seriously. i just need to say how cool it all is :P and that i love my friends here.

first: Battlestar Galactica = WTF?!?!?!?!?! no more episodes until january and THAT is how they chose to leave the season?!?!?! blaaaaahahahahahahahaharghghggg!! mike and dan and i spent a good 20min geeking out about the last episode. omgz.

second: firefly rocks my face off. it is a beautiful series, and i'll probably finish watching most of it in the next few weeks, it makes me happy.

third: black books is quite possibly the funniest british show i've discovered since coupling. i'm bringing it home to spread to the states.

and lastly, as a completely random note, they don't have squirrells here and its a bit strange not to see them scampering about, so we've decided that these guys are the australian equivalent:
turkeys!! they're everywhere, digging through garbage and making messes and are basically stupid squirrells.

expensive hobbies

so my 2 favorite things to do in the world are now SCUBA and skiing, and i have come to the conclusion that i have an affinity for expensive hobbies. equipent alone for both these sports my contingency plan should my life not go the way i'm headed is now to alternate between being a ski bum and a SCUBA bum. both of which i could concievably do in the southern hemesphere - new zealand or tasmania for a few years, and then cairns/townsville for a few years. not that any of this is appening, certainly not any time soon... i just, you know, have to figure out what i'm doing with my life sometime and i like the idea that i would still be immensly happy if everything falls through :) and now i shall leave you with a few random australia pictures