Where in the world is Brooke??

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New pictures: http://brookeroebuck.shutterfly.com/

Hey, Friends!!
My gosh it’s been FOREVER!!!
Where the heck am I!?!? Haha, good question. SOOOO, I finished fourth semester at the end of August, which also means I completed the basic sciences part of med school. The perks with that are multifold - I’m now doing clinical rotations in hospitals (WOO!) and… I’M BACK IN THE USA!!! Yep! I moved to Miami at the end of the semester and am here now, one week into fifth semester.
First I’ll share with you some stuff about the Bahamas. Since I last wrote, I went on a dolphin dive and shark feeding dive. The dolphin dive - this is a really amazing dive. You get in a boat and take the boat over to where the dolphins live, in a little inlet. Then you meet up with their trainers and the trainers get in their own little boat and both boats go out to the dive site. On the trip to the dive site, the dolphins follow the boats and surf the waves and do tricks. It’s really amazing to see dolphins follow a boat all the way out to the open ocean and not just run away! Then everyone gets in the water and descends about 45 feet to the bottom and kneels on the sand in a circle with the two trainers in the middle. The dolphins then come to each person and you pet them, they kiss you, and they do a rostrum push, which is where you put one hand out and the dolphin pushes your hand with its nose to turn you in a circle. After everyone has done those three things, you go on a free swim with the dolphins, still under the water in your scuba gear, and just swim around with them and pet them while they swim by you. It’s WICKED cool!! Then there was the shark feeding dive… I required some encouragement to do this. First of all, Shark Week was on TV and I was like HECK NO!! Secondly, THEY ARE SHARKS = EAT ME!! Buuut in the end, I found myself descending to 45 feet again to sit inches from about 15 caribbean reef sharks. Let me tell you, this was the LONGEST 25 minutes of my LIFE. So essentially what happens is everyone gets in the water and goes down to the bottom. Now most people go right down, but if you’re like me and have some trouble equalizing your ears, it takes a little longer. SOOO you get stuck in the middle of the water ALL BY YOURSELF thinking SAFETY IN NUMBERS - I’M ALL BY MYSELF!!! until you can finally get your dumb ears to equalize and seek refuge in the large group of people. Then we all kneel on the bottom in front of an old wreck. Then the feeder comes down in chainmail with a PVC tube with dead fish in it. He stands about 15 feet in front of you and at this point sharks are EVERYWHERE. They’re swimming right in front of you, over your head, sometimes between you and the person sitting next to you. So the feeder starts feeding and sometimes a female shark will pay a little extra attention to the feeder. At that point, the feeder holds the shark’s nose and rubs it. This puts sharky shark, we’ll name her Jaws, to sleep and then the feeder, holds it’s dorsal fin thingy and lifts Jaws and passes this wild shark to each person to pet the tail. Yes, that’s right. I will repeat it. YOU PET THE TAIL OF A WILD SHARK. After you gamble your arm to Jaws, the feeder continues to feed. This is really scary because the sharks swim in circles and sometimes it looks like they’re swimming RIGHT at you and then at the last second when they’re about to chomp your face off, they turn and try to get a shark from the feeder. OR the shark decides to swim right up over your head and go behind you. OR you’re kneeling there shaking in your pants and all the sudden a shark comes right over your head from behind you and swoops down right in front of you to try to get a fish from the feeder. ME: I pretty much shook in my wet suit the entire time. After a few minutes I decided that I was scared you-know-what-less and grabbed the arms of the two divers next to me and pretty much did my best to hide behind them. At the end of the dive, I sank to the ground and thanked god for letting me survive this fish-feeding frenzy and made my way to the surface. Will I ever do it again? NO! That was a ONCE-in-a-lifetime experience. Once was more than enough.
So, finally it was time to move back to the good ‘ole US of A. The islands were fun, but I was definitely ready to return to “home.” Miami has been cool so far - I really enjoy South Beach. There’s a TON of traffic here, which is a bit of a bummer, and seems to be a lot of crime. The first week has kept me very busy inside buildings, though, so I haven’t had too much free time.
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I’m going to need to end this update a little abruptly. My dog, Mysti, has been very sick with cancer, which has come on quite suddenly. She has just had her spleen and part of her liver removed earlier today and has been given a poor prognosis. As such, I can’t think anymore to finish up this update.
Hope everyone is well,
Brooke

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