OK. So. This week is Semana Santa aka Easter Week, Holy week, Spring Break etc. Basically nobody does anything except drink and go to the beach. In fact, I was told, not asked, by my womens group that there would not be a meeting this week because nobody does anything productive during Semana Santa…. Well nothing except cook a poopload of habichuelas con dulce or in other words sweet beans. Now I know what you are thinking… sweet beans Amanda? Really? But they actually grow on you. They basically cook beans (red, black, any color really) until they are soft. Then they mash/ strain out all of the good bean juices and cook those with cinnamon, milk, sugar, un chin de salt, sweet cloves, and then they add whatever they have available (sweet potatoes, raisins, cookies, bread, etc). My neighbors have also been bringing me (and teaching me how to cook) lots of fresh fish and lambi (conch).On a side note the DR is definitely “domesticating” me. All I do is cook, clean, garden, and take care of my two children (the girls that live behind me… and talk about cooking, cleaning, gardening, and childcare. Bet y’all never thought you would see me doing that!
Now on to the exciting stuff… Some of my peace corps friends and I decided to aprovechar (take advantage of) our week without work and we went to Las Galeras, Samana (gorgeous) to get scuba certified. Again, I know what you are thinking… but Amanda dear, you are deathly afraid of fish why on God’s green earth would you want to go scuba diving??? For those of you who were unaware of my ichthyophobia here is a little background info : When I was a young lass vacationing at our family friends cabin on lake Tulloch I was attacked by a very large blue gill. It bit me in the belly button and drew blood… and now I swear that is why I have a crooked belly button. Anyways, I later decided that I wanted to major in marine biology and be a dolphin trainer in cancun. While I was applying to schools my supportive parents pointed out that I would have to deal with a lot of fish as a marine biology major… I changed majors immediately. Skip to present day… if I jump into a body of water deeper than 10 feet I am out before you even realize I was in (it is a superpower adaptation I have acquired over many years of being petrified of fish).
So back to scuba… If there is one thing I cant say no to it is a good deal, and it was definitely the amount of money I would be saving on this scuba camp that blinded me to the reality of what scuba diving actually is (now the fiscally minded readers are no doubt realizing that if I didn’t do the scuba camp I would have saved even more money… but that is not how blonde Californian brains work). Anyways, we were extremely lucky because the wonderful people at The Dive Academy gave us an amazing peace corps deal, cooked for us, and let us camp there! Diane, Paul, and Amy were all AMAZING. We worked very hard, and played very hard as well (without alcohol of course). Now in my attempt to keep myself from having a panic attack I did not let anyone know how freaked out I was about the whole scuba thing. I mean everyone knew I was afraid of fish, but nobody knew that was all I could think of the whole 5 days I was there. Those of you that know me know that an extremely tired or preoccupied Amanda equals a very blonde Amanda. Usually I can suppress the blondeness, but at scuba camp I WAS BAD. At one point we were talking about hair color and I said “ I died my hair dark and people definitely took me more seriously-er” oh and lets not forget the instructors joking about the fact that for every skill activity we had to do “Amanda just needed to get her "blonde try" out of the way and then she did everything perfectly”. Anyways, all joking aside, we had a really fun week and we learned a lot. I happen to love scuba diving now. I mean, you wont see me purposely swimming close to fish or anything, but we now have a mutual understanding.
In fact, we all stayed the last day to do an extra dive. We went to a shipwreck that was out pretty far. Unfortunately there was a mini storm, and it got super choppy out there. Almost everyone on the boat got sick. I however, thanks to my strong sea legs, did not. I guess my parents putting me under the dashboard of the boat during naptime when I was an infant was a good thing J Anyways, underwater everyone was fine, but there were really strong surges. Now this made our instructor very nervous because visibility was low, and we were so close to a shipwreck... apparently not being able to control where your body is near hard objects can be a problem. Who knew? Of course I loved it. One minute I would be in one spot and two seconds later I was ten feet to the left, and four seconds later I was ten feet to the right. Also, the sandy bottom looked like a desert in a windstorm with little seaweed tumbleweeds. awesome. Anyways, after this dive we all decided we were pros and started a dive club named Scuba Corps. Right now we have four members… Ellen “attitude” parkhurst, Hillary “muscle” Smith, Kali “underwater blonde” Hethorn, and Amanda “Daryl” Appel. (nicknames courtesy of Paul Williamson from The Dive Academy). Apparently Ellen has attitude, Hillary walks like a body builder, Kali thought the whistle on our bouyency control devices worked underwater, and I look like Daryl Hannah from Splash. Oh and all four members of Scuba Corps will be returning to Las Galeras to get our advanced certification in may so that we can participate in reef checks and scientific dives.
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| founding members of scuba corps. (Left to right: underwater blonde, muscle, daryl, attitude) |
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| beach day. |
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| Playita |
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| gearing up |
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| coco rehydration |
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| we did all of our skills here instead of a pool :) |
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| Left to right: Kali, Ellen, Hillary, Me, Tori |
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| duck faces (left to right: Kali, Ellen, Hillary, Me, Tori) |
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| Practicing our new skills |
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| First all girls scuba camp! |
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| Me (or daryl) being one with the fishies! |
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| Laisha making me a yummy dinner before I left. |
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| I found these two lizzards doing "yoga" on my yoga mat when I got home. Ew. |
until next time...
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