One month from today we will be flying HOME for Christmas! HOORAY!!!! We can’t wait!!!

Friday was fairly uneventful. I read most of the day. Kristy and I did go to the pool for awhile though. Friday evening, we packed our bags for a dive trip on Saturday.

Saturday was the first DOC (Dive with Octopus Club) event! There were 7 of us total. We got an early start to the day and picked up Alicia and Bryan at 7:15am! We drove to Octopus Diving in Grand Case, got our equipment, and waded out to their new boat, the Octopussy! Chris and one of the new workers (no clue how to spell his name…Aurie????) took us to Tintamarre for 2 dives, Japanese Garden and Tugboat. After the first dive, they let us swim ashore to Tintamarre beach while they switched all the dive tanks for us. It was fun wandering around a new beach. Apparently there is a big turtle on the beach, but we couldn’t find it! There were signs warning about the possible toxins on the beach…hmmm….a little scary! But definitely a pretty beach! Oh, I almost forgot! While we were on the beach, we were laughing like crazy when a boat with tons of naked people sailed by!! At least we thought it was sailing by…then it dropped anchor near our boat! We were very thankful that they at least waited till we swam back to the boat, but as soon as we did, they went to the beach! Too funny!!!

Then we swam back to the boat and they took us to the second dive site. It was really neat to see a shipwreck. This was my first one! Phillip and I swam inside it, which was really cool!!! The best part…You will not believe this, but a dolphin swam close to us during the second dive! I didn’t get a good view of it, but a few of the divers did. Chris said it swam around the boat for about 10 minutes! So cool! The dolphins like us lately!

Then we went to Pinel Island for lunch. Phillip and I had been wanting to go here anyway! You can take a ferry there for 7 dollars. It’s really close to St. Maarten. No one lives on Pinel. People take a boat there daily to open the little restaurants and the gift shop on the beach. It was really pretty. Lunch was EXPENSIVE though!!! We ended up paying $25.00 each…yikes! But now we crossed one more thing off of our “to do in St. Maarten list.” We waded back to the boat and headed back to Grande Case to unload used air tanks and load new ones. Then we went to Turtle Reef for what they called an extended dive. We each got to stay down till we were down to 500 for air. The dive site wasn’t very deep, so we were able to dive for 78 minutes! It was awesome! We saw sea turtles and these crazy winged fish that have legs and walk on the ocean floor. They glide through the water with their wings. Whenever something scares them, their wings flare out huge. They are bright blue!!!! So cool! Chris had told us about them before the dive. He said they’ve seen 2 different ones lately, one small and one bigger. We got really lucky and saw them both! Kristy and I liked to wave our hands back and forth to make them flare up so that Phillip could get cool pictures! We also saw something really sad though. There was a huge sea turtle with a big lump on its head and another on its front leg. Chris later told us that those lumps mean the turtle has cancer and that the cancer is believed to be from pollution. How sad!

After that dive, they took us to Happy Bay! This is a beach that Phillip and I wanted to go to, so we did another thing on our list! We got to walk around the beach and play in the water. It’s an absolutely beautiful beach! Octopus Diving brought along a cooler of beer. They floated the cooler to the shore and told us to help ourselves! We drank beer while playing and floating around in the ocean. We watched the sun set, then loaded the boat up again and headed back to the dive shop. What a day! Days like that make it worth it to live in St. Maarten! It was perfect!

Saturday night, Kristy and I met Alicia at the casino to watch Aaron Riley’s UFC fight on TV! (Aaron Riley is a friend of mine from high school. I’ve watched several of his fights in person too! It’s so exciting when he’s on TV!!!) The casino was not cooperating though. They kept saying they would turn on the fight. But they didn’t till after it had already started! Then it was only on for about a minute and they switched the channel back to sports! They told us 3 minutes and they’d turn in back. Well…there were 3 minutes left in the game so we realized it would really be more than 3 minutes. We left the casino and RAN back to our apartment. We started running as soon as we were outside of the casino. A worker started yelling at us…he probably wondered why in the world we were running. We joked later that he probably thought we stole something! We missed the first round of Aaron’s fight completely! We did get to see the second round at least! But it wasn’t pretty! Poor Aaron…it just was not his night! Sure wish he would have won! We were all disappointed and sad, especially after all of that just to watch him!

Phillip studied at the library on Sunday and I worked on a paper at home. Then we went to church that evening. Kristy says our church is definitely different! :-) We went to McDonalds after church and then Phillip headed back to study afterwards. He came back around 8:45 though and we headed to the casino around 9:00. Several students were meeting there to watch the Colts and Patriots game. They are huge rivals! The Colts were losing most of the game! Sad! We left after the 3rd quarter. It was getting really late so we wanted to start getting ready for bed. Phillip and I were also going crazy because so many people were smoking…ugh!!!! But we did watch the rest of the game at home. With 13 seconds to go, the Colts came back and won the game by one point! Amazing!!!! We were so excited! Phillip couldn’t wait to tease his Patriot friends at school the next day! (They were giving him a hard time at the casino when the Patriots were winning…)

Kristy and I went to Great Bay yesterday morning. We walked the beach and found lots of cool seashells! Then we went to Little Bay. This is where we like to snorkel and find sand dollars. We didn’t realize how cloudy the water was till we were already in! We couldn’t see anything!!!!! So much for that! We packed up our stuff and left. One of the guys in the dive shop there saw us leaving so quickly and asked, “Did you get scared, mon?” Kristy and I were cracking up about that later! She said she wanted to answer, “Hell yeah I got scared MON!” Too funny!!!

We ate our picnic lunch in the car and headed to Cost U Less and Grand Marche to go grocery shopping. It was funny watching Kristy’s reactions at the expensive prices! I guess they don’t really affect me much anymore, but I sure do remember how shocked I was in the beginning!!!! It was cloudy and cool all day, but the rain held off until we were almost home. Then it started pouring and we had to carry up all those groceries in the rain!!!!! Kinda funny though! We were really tired and headed to bed early last night. Grocery shopping here wears you out!

I got a phone call at 7:00am today…that’s right…that means subbing! I had high school History and Art classes today. I got really lucky and didn’t have to cover anyone’s class during my prep period. So I had prep second period, then lunch. I had almost 2 hours free, so went home! It’s so nice to get to go home during the day. It makes the day fly by! Kristy got to experience the water and the electricity going out all in one day! The water was out for quite awhile this afternoon! Luckily the electricity hasn’t been staying out too long at a time lately! It started out as another rainy and cool day! The cooler weather was a welcome change for us though! (The temperature last night was only 73 degrees…awesome!) I was quite shocked when I left work at 2:30 though…the sun was out and it was HOT again! And wouldn’t you know it, as soon as I got home, the electricity went out again! I was just getting ready to work on my paper too! Figures! When it came back on though, I got busy writing my paper. Kristy went to BB’s (outdoor bar down the street) to have a couple drinks while I was studying. I finished my paper and then cooked dinner. Phillip stopped at BB’s on his way home for dinner and announced that he was there “to pick up his drunk sister!” Haha! Poor Kristy! (She was NOT drunk...)

I’m getting spoiled lately! I haven’t had to wash dishes for awhile…Kristy won’t let me near them!!! What am I going to do when she leaves????

(The first pic is from when we met The Yoda Guy! He even autographed a picture for Phillip! Phillip was soooo excited!!!)