In the Water

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Just as my experience talking with high school girls came in handy yesterday, my years of swimming competitively came in handy today. Sort of.

After lunch, we headed down to the beach to meet a boat that Spencer had arranged for us. We were going snorkeling. George and Mina, the electrician, joined us as well. I was thinking some nice big boat with all this gear and everything, but that's not what I found. I'm not going to elaborate on the smallness of the boat we took into the ocean because my mom reads this. There was a 25 horsepower motor, though, so we were going pretty fast!

Our first stop was to go out to the reef. The tide was way out, so we went several hundred yards out and walked around. There were all sorts of animals on it. We held sea spiders (which only have 5 legs) and sea urchins (not the black ones.) We poked sea cucumbers, some the size and color of a rotten banana. It was really cool looking at the various corals and shells and chasing crabs. In the small, leftover pools from the tide going out, the water was super hot!

From there, we grabbed our snorkel gear (the flippers were too small for some people, including me) and snorkeled from the reef. I saw a big orange and black starfish underneath some grassy stuff, which was cool. There weren't a ton of fish- certainly not like last time I was snorkeling in Hawaii- but the rocks and plants and things were cool. There were some big sea urchins too. After a while, we got back into the boat and moved to a deeper part.

There were fish of all sorts of shapes and colors, but still not a ton. Brown ones, green ones, purple, yellow, orange, polka-dotted, stripped, argyle. I saw one that was green, pink, purple, yellow and green, all of the neon sort, with stripes and squiggly lines and checkers. It sort of looked like a 1983 gymsuit. There were big spongy plants on the bottom too, of green and orange, that looked like dorm furniture from the 70s.

At some point, I felt quite a sting on my back. No one could see anything, but it kept stinging. Eventually, I got whatever it was off my back, but it left a nice little line, which went away within a few hours.

When I was younger, I used to swim a lot. My coaches always got mad at me because I solely used my arms to move, not invoking my legs to do any work. (When we timed it, though, I was just as fast.) I noticed the same thing today. Though I had flippers on, I was primarily using my arms, rather than my legs.

We came home, showered off, and just sort of hung out until dinner. The kids here benefitted from my childhood bouncy-ball collection, and were having tons of fun, despite the darkness. It was Faith's 7th birthday, so after dinner, we celebrated with a little cake (which was quite good.)

I was tired, and fell asleep to Sarah talking to me about who knows what.

Nothing too exciting happened before lunch. Just hanging out and chatting with people. But here's the dialogue from lunch.

S: It only has a 45 horsepower motor.
I: That's only enough to have 3 people in a boat and pull a skier.
S: We're not pulling a skier.
I: Yeah, but it's not very much.
R: We're pulling a steer? Why would you do that?
(Sarah and I are rolling our eyes and trying not to laugh at the absurdity of it all.)

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