Location: Christmas Island
Todays blog title was inspired by Charlie. Which I will explain later in this blog. The day started slightly unusually. We were at Christmas Island in the Christmas spirit, and yet, we could not make it onto Christmas Island due to it being a commercial-sized vessel with no commercial-sized mooring lines available. So, alas, we had been standing off all night and were puttering around as I was awoken by our head chef of the day, my fellow Amanda, on board. It was not the usual wake-up time. Instead, it was 6:40 am because we had to be up and ready in case customs needed all of us to come ashore for clearance. So, breakfast was served at 7:15 and was delicious overnight oats. To Melissa, your daughter wanted me to tell you about her cooking, and I said I would… It was terrible, and we all starved. Just kidding!!! All three meals were total delights, and the dessert was spectacular! I am uploading a picture of Amanda with lunch, she was so proud, as she should be, it was very good. A few of todays pictures revolve around the meals since they were all delicious and needed documentation. Im getting carried away about food, back to the day. After breakfast, we had an exciting day planned, was it on land, no, no it was not. Only Philip was able to touch land, as he was the lucky winner chosen to help Meg take trash ashore, which was very exciting stuff. Instead, it was deep diving for everyone!!! We split into two groups, the first included myself, Charlie, Drazka, Ali and Philip. Meg was our instructor, but Philip led this dive as a part of his Divemaster training. As we were preparing our gear, Charlie and I were getting our tanks, and Meg said small tanks for those who do not breathe a lot of air, so as my family knows, I used a baby tank, but Charlie asked, and Meg said, yeah Charlie, probably a big tank. During this time, we quoted Davy Jones, and I told Charlie, Do you fear breathing air? He said, Amanda, you missed the perfect opportunity to say, DO YOU FEAR BREATH? For anyone who does not know, Charlie is very good at sounding like Davy Jones, and it was very funny. Afterward, he said that would be a good blog title, and I said, okay, Ill make it mine if that is okay. So, there is the story of todays title. After getting all the gear loaded up in Plaii, Kackie took us to the dive site. It was mind-blowing! We were going on a wall dive on the side of this small cliff that had a beautiful museum on top. It was so alive underwater! There were so many species of coral and fish, and it was amazing to see how healthy the area looked. We did our deep dive and went down to about 80 feet. The water was at a perfect temperature of 81F. After that incredible dive, we hauled ourselves back into Ply and went back to Argo so group 2, which consisted of Ava, Hannah, Juliette, Kiley, Bodhi, Travis, and Ainsley, could go get their minds blown. Group 2 was led by Ben, Kackie, and Will, with Gabe driving Plaii. Before they could go and have their minds blown, it was provision-storing time! Kackie and Allie had taken Plaii, after dropping us off, to get the food that would last us until Mauritius. I was on freezer duty with Travis, Meg, and Allie. We stocked her full and are now the official keepers of the bacon. By the end, we had used all of the sausage space available but had a bit of space left for other things, which was awesome! Then lunch came and went, clean up occurred, and I had some time to read my Theology of the Body book I had brought, an undertaking for sure. After the cleanup, dive group two left Ply. During this time, dive group 1 got a lot of the dive gear prepped for passage, and then we had some free time. For me, this consisted of homework time.yayy. We have our first Marine Biology test in two days, so notes and studying it are important. After roasting in the salon for a while, talking with Travis and Juliette, doing homework, and relaxing, it was almost dinner time. Drazka had been working hard on dinner, she had to hand whip the whipped cream for dessert since our blender broke. She came over to our table and said do you guys want to do a mosh pit? Of course, we all said yes, so she turned on a song, and Drazka, Charlie, Travis, Juliette, Kiely, and I had a quick flash mob and then got ready for dinner. It definitely lifted my spirit after doing homework all afternoon. During this time, Tomer was on the helm and had made a penguin out of drifting around, also included in todays pictures. It was a beautiful day, followed by a delicious dinner and dessert. I could not eat Drazkas dessert, so I cannot say if it was good. But Meg made a delicious dairy-free, gluten-free dessert, which was so yummy and featured in todays pictures. The squeeze question of the day was, If you could trade places with anyone in the world for a week, who would it be? Again, his family, say hi to my nephew for me, please, and give him a big squeeze! I love you all, and I am loving my new hairstyle.