Marilyn and I are now officially Open Water Divers! We finished our course yesterday, getting down to our record and deepest legal dive at 18 meters. In celebration of our success, Marilyn, Irish Sarah, dive instructor Rick and I all passed around the beers and watched the video that had been made of our last two dives. The people there watched it twice! Apparently its somewhat rare for an entire group to dive without wetsuits and when we had to practice taking off our BCDs on the sea floor, it turned into a veritable dive striptease which we had NOT thought about at the time. Ah well. Then there were a couple of just fun-type shots that our groovy Swedish videographer tossed in. One of the 3 of us girls jumping off the 2nd floor of the boat into the water, then at the very end of our last dive, Rick threw us into a Charlie's Angels pose (with Marilyn floating away to the right of the screen) which turned out very nicely!

So. In conclusion, we are not concluding! Marilyn and I have decided to suck it up, shell out the baht and take the advanced course after a visa run over to Myanmar tomorrow. So we start our next class in two days time, meanwhile hanging out on the beach with all of our newfound dive friends.

Also! My dear ex-roommate Carissa (who is travelling all over Australia at the moment to celebrate graduating WWU) is already a certified diver, so when I get back to the states, I have a ready-made dive buddy! (Since M will be back in LA.)

Until next time amigitos! --->Natalie