A Squid's Ink: SCUBAfreshed

Hello all (Mom)!

I am back... my apologies for taking over a week off from blogging. It's been a busy two weeks!

I took my refresher SCUBA course last Tuesday evening at a dive shop in Bellevue (about 30 minutes north of Seattle), and it was super fun- I am so excited to get back into diving. I have been extremely lucky in that the people I currently nanny for (the Duncans) are huge divers, and the mother (Lesley) can no longer dive due to some complications during her pregnancy, so she has been urging me to use all of her amazing equipment and dive as much as possible before I head to South Africa. The Duncans even bought me a Drysuit course for my birthday so I can learn to dive in cold water. SO, last Thursday night was my Drysuit course and it was craaaazy- you literally feel like you're being vaccuum-packed in the suit once you go underwater. The neck and wrist seals are extremely tight and made of latex, and to even get the suit ON you have to sprinkle powder all over the seals and stretch them REALLY wide to get over your head and hands. Once you have the suit on you look like you're about to push a button and take off for the moon.

THEN you go underwater with all of your equipment on and you experience what is called "suit squeeze"- the entire thing suctions to your body suuuper tightly. The best word to describe the feeling would have to be "violating". Then the trick is to figure out how to maintain your buoyancy using the air in the drysuit (controlled by two different valves) instead of using the air in your BC, which is what you'd normally use when diving in a wetsuit. WHEW! It's nutty. But soooo cool. And I am so happy I'm now certified with a Drysuit so I can see all the amazing stuff that the Puget Sound has to offer. Plus, the waters off the coast in Cape Town will also be pretty cold, so it'll be a great thing for me to have once I arrive in S.A.

Speaking of S.A., below is a link for the program that I will be participating in, called Volunteer Abroad Corps. The first one is just a general link to the overall program, and the second and third links are for the actual internships that I will be participating in. Nothing has been confirmed for sure yet, since the staff at VA Corps are really busy getting set for their biggest group ever during the World Cup this summer, but hopefully these positions will be confirmed over the next couple of weeks so I can get even more excited about it! Here are the URLs for the websites; I couldn't get the links to paste correctly:

http://www.vacorps.com/

Save Our Seas Shark Research Centre, where I will be doing shark research:

http://www.saveourseas.com/sossc-za

Cape Centre for the Rehabilitation of Wildlife, where I will be doing wildlife rehab work with baboons and a few other species:

http://www.baboons.co.za/

Besides the SCUBA courses and doing some more planning for South Africa, I have been up to the normal shenanigans.. hanging out with babies, hiking, maintaining my tolerance for alcohol, and annoying brother-in-law Dave as much as possible. Oh, and the Duncans are in Hawaii this week, so I am house- and pet-sitting for them, with the amazing added benefit of unlimited use of their backyard hot tub. Even nanny jobs come with some sweet perks!

Here are a few photos from the last two weeks or so, enjoy and I will blog you soon!

Me in front of an absolutely amazingly massive tree on the Middle Fork Snoqualmie River Trail