Aghhh! I had no idea that SCUBA was so freaking awesome! I expected it to be, but geez, this is just too fantastic. When last I wrote, Marilyn and I were sadly leaving Bottle Beach, and I missed it terribly for about 3 hours until we arrived at Big Blue Diving on Sai Ree beach here on Koh Tao. First, I must note that Koh Tao is a teeny little island whose biggest attraction is SCUBA. Every person I’ve met here is connected with the dive business in some way. M and I came to a good looking dive resort thing, talked to a couple people, got the low down, threw our bags in a hotel room and started our first SCUBA class less than an hour later! It was quite a little whirlwind of activity for a bit there. We got to our “classroom,” (the deck of a restaurant on the beach under a bunch of tropical trees,) we found our “class,” (an Irish girl named Sarah, and our AWESOME dive instructor Rick,) and got started. We had a little intro, watched a couple of videos, filled out some papers and were done for the day. And as Rick was very cool, he sat down to talk to Sarah and us for a bit. We kind of figured it was just classy or even required that he spend some time chatting with us, but over the last couple days we’ve all four hung out quite a bit, he’s even gone out to lunch with us. The class itself is part lecture with a bit of fill in the blank homework, then yesterday we got all our gear on and went out into the water in front of the hotel about up to our shoulders and practiced some skills, then out farther, about 10 feet deep and did some more skills on the bottom. Because our group is only 3 people we finished up early and went on a quick little dive just off our beach. Even thought it was supposedly the least exciting dive we will do in the course, I loved it. There were all types of coral, a bunch of little colorful fish and my favorite for the day, the giant clams that, when their “mouths” are open, are bright periwinkle blues and turquoises. It was fascinating. This afternoon the four of us got with a couple other little groups, took a boat out a little ways, and went on our first two real official deeper dives. I think the deepest we got today was about 13 meters or so. We saw so much stuff! We saw trigger fish, clownfish (Nemo!), moray eels, angel fish, blue tangs (Dory!), a pufferfish (Bloat!), little Nudibranchs and my favorite, a batfish. Our next stop will be the shark site tomorrow. Oh dear. Then last night a class of 6 students graduated with their Dive Masters! There was a very diverting party that M and I hung out at for a while. It was really nice to meet the people who are living on this beach with us. But now I totally want to be a dive master! Now that I am over the strange feeling of breathing through my mouth constantly, I am totally into this. I think from the first class, the one we’re taking, through the end of Dive Masters would take about 3 months. I would LOVE to do it. How much fun would that be? To live on Koh Tao for 3 months taking dive classes with other people obsessed with diving? I can’t even imagine. That’s all for now, I’ve tried to put up some new pics, but the computer is disagreeing with my camera. I will get to that as soon as possible. Besitos y abrazos a todos y todas!