On Monday I went to my first day of class. Let me tell you I learned right away that I am here in Bonaire to study, not here for a vacation. Right away I got bombarded with work. I had to read a 71 page Dive Manual, 2 journal articals, answer the questions that followed and memorized and be able to properly identify 41 + fish for my dive on Tuesday! Anyways, I went on my first dive of Bonaire today! I had a little bit of trouble hovering but other than that my first dive went pretty well. I saw lots of parrotfish, sargent majors, and I even saw an eel. We then went then came up took our surface interval then went right back down for dive 2. During dive 2 we had a lot of skills to cover like mask removal and replacement, and buoyancy. We then finished the dive with a tour around the reef at 60 ft. I had really bad ear pain on the way up and learned that I am unlike others. Most divers get ear squeezes on the descent but I have something known as reciprocal squeeze which I get severe ear pain on my ascent up...so I now have to train to come up slower. But hey its worth it diving is so amazing, the underwater world is just incredible!

On Tuesday I woke up to another day of intensive dive boot camp and homework. We put on our gear and swam out to the Morey blocks. A few of us were up floating on the surface while the Dive Master John worked with buddies on the CESA emergency ascent at the bottom. As I was floating there I was snorkeling and all of the sudden saw fins! I looked up and saw about 13 dolphins swim right in front of me! My eyes started to tear up because I was so happy. All I wanted to see was dolphins in the wild and right there in front of my face they were. They were jumping and just so happy to be free. Bonaire natives say it is rare to see dolphins that close to shore or even at all. They say you can normally hear them but to be able to see them and see them as close as we saw them is an amazing experience! Then we did some more skills and toured the other part of the reef. I saw some squid and min jellies. It was a good day of diving. I came home did 2 knowledge reviewed and studied more fish!

I will note here that I have been eating rather well here. We get our food catered by a man named Gibi. We get to choose from 3 options a day for lunch and dinner and the options change daily. His cooking is amazing. However, I have been drinking luke warm water... because our ice machine is broken!