June??????

I can’t believe it’s already June!!!!! I also can’t believe I leave St. Maarten NEXT MONTH!!!!!! I will be flying home on July 21st. Phillip flies home August 14th. I’m going home earlier than him so I can look for an apartment, set up my classroom, and begin WORK…that’s going to be weird!

I was crazy busy the past week. I studied whenever I could squeeze it in, but there doesn’t seem to be much time for studying these days! I’ve been busy cleaning, doing laundry, and reading manuals for scuba diving classes! I read the night diving manual and the deep diving manual!

Saturday morning, the 5th semester girls (Julia, Willow, Alicia, Danielle, and me) went out to breakfast together. Sure was nice hanging out with all 5 of us there! Oh and I can’t forget Kendall…Alicia’s adorable baby girl!!! We had been meaning to get together anyway, but we had something to celebrate this time! Willow and Scott are expecting their first child! We are so excited for them!!!!! We surprised Willow with flowers and a card with money, so they could buy something once they move home! I also took sea glass necklaces and let everyone choose one. They seemed really excited to get them! It was a fun morning with the girls! I am really going to miss those girls!!!!!!!!! It actually makes me sad just thinking about it!

Phillip had exams yesterday!!!! Since their schedule is different this semester, he had the morning free to study and then had exams from 12:00-2:30. After that, he quickly looked over the night diving manual, answered the questions, and then we went to Octopus for a night dive!!!! We went to Shark Point for the night dive this time and we really liked it! There was a lot to see!!!! When we first got in the water though, we had to do a navigation drill. Phillip and I were partners. We had to use a compass to complete a square search pattern. You go a certain number of fin kicks in one direction, turn, swim the same number of fin kicks, turn, etc. till you complete the square and (hopefully) end up back in the same spot. We did great and ended up within a few feet of our starting point. It was pretty cool!

We got to see a lot of sleeping fish on this night dive! That was really neat!!! They just lay on the bottom. Weird to see! We also got to play with two little squid!!! They were sooo cute! They kept playing in the light beam from our flashlights. NEAT!!!! At the end of the dive, we all turned out our flashlights and swam in the dark for awhile. That was cool!!! (Don’t worry, our eyes adjusted so you could see enough to stay in the group!) It was a fun dive!!!

Phillip’s parents and brother arrive tomorrow afternoon! We are excited for their visit! We have been busy the past week trying to find them a place to stay and are so happy with the place we got! They will be staying in a two bedroom apartment in Tradewinds. That’s our apartment complex! It will be great to have them close to us. I don’t think I have written about this, but there is now a huge gate around our whole apartment complex. That makes it super safe, which we love! However, it’s also very difficult for us to get in and out!!!! If they had stayed somewhere else like last year, it would have been difficult to walk back and forth between the two! So this will be perfect! We’ll be busy the next couple of weeks, but I’ll try to post pictures of some of our adventures!