coming up on the half way mark....whoa.

This past week has been fabulously amazing. first, i had my 50th dive, which was very appropriately my best TURTLE dive to date. an awesome hawksbill turtle came and hung out with us for what felt like 5 minutes. it was in sanely awesome. Jamie (welsh guy/hut mate/dive buddy) even gave me the "fucking intense man" sign underwater (it came from Corwin, an awesome canadian who gets ridiculosly excited about diving stuff). very cool.

then TEFL, which was so much fun. i taught three classes and participated in a fourth. i taught 1st and 2nd graders, after school kids who were about 12, and adult intermediates (which ended upjust being one guy, but it was great).. the kids got a bit chaotic, but it was such a rewarding amazing experience. i really enjoyed it.

THEN, thrusday night dave and i took a taxi up to limones and hopped on a 22:30 bus to Tulum and arrived at about 1:10 in the morning.
Tulum is a great city. i really like it there. Friday morning we got up early and beat the tourists to the Coba ruins which are all hidden away in jungle and you get to rent bikes and ride around to all the different sections. we even climbed the great pyramid temple thing. then we took a taxi to a cenote a few minutes away which was so cool. we got in through a little spiral staircase into this awesome cave with deep, clear blue fresh water. it was soo much fun. although after being so used to salt water we were all feeling oddly sinky and we had to hold on to flotation devicesso we wouldn't drown! haha.
Saturday  mortning we got up early again and went on a CENOTE DIVE which is the cooolest thing ever. we went to Dos Ojos which means two eyes because it is two big cenotes connected by caves. the water is so clear and amazing it looks like your swimming thorugh air! incredible. and on the second dive we surfaced breiefly in a bat cave!! haha
that afternoon we went to Akumal beach where we went snorkling and saw 12 different green sea turtles in the span of about 30 minutes, not to mention the rays and fish and corals. sooo amazing.

Saturday night we went out on the town and stayed out quite late, so we had a nice chill sunday. tasha dave, amy and i went to the beach at Sian Ka'an reserve which was beautiful, but much farther away than we anticipated, so we hitched a couple rides there and back.

unfortulately it has been windy on base so we haven't been diving the past two days, but we did a bunch of rescue skills today and we're definitely keeping busy. we also learned monitoring methods today and will be doing our practice monitoring soon. that should be fun.

hope everyone there is keeping warm! i'll be thinking about you while i'm laying next to a palm tree in the sand studying coral species!
love and kisses,
tori