Diving!

So ever since I first arrived here, one of the first questions people asked me was "do you dive?" Apparently in Guam there are a few things everyone should do, and one of those is strap a tank of air to your back and swim underwater with God-knows-what. Now anyone who knows me knows that I have a weird irrational fear/dislike of sea creatures. So the thought of scuba diving had only briefly crossed my mind when I was like...14 and formulating my "things to do before I die" list. However, I'm not one to pass up a challenge, and after enough people harassed me about how sea animals are more afraid of you then you are of them and how I'm probably not going to even see anything scary and how diving is perfectly safe except that one time when my equipment malfunctioned or the time I got the Bends (yeah, way to convince me people) I gave in and signed up for the class. This is normally my technique for doing things I don't really want to do but feel like I should. I sign up, pay the money, and lock myself in.

When my instructor asked on the first night of class "Is everyone excited?" the four other people in my class nodded their heads with enthusiasm. I raised my hand and said "Actually, I'm just scared." He then launched into the normal speech about how nothing bad could possibly happen...and moved on. The first time we practiced diving was in a swimming pool and to my surprise it wasn't that weird to be breathing underwater. I guess since I love to swim (I know, I love to swim and hate the ocean...doesn't make sense) it was just kind of cool to be able to stay underwater for long periods of time. Surprisingly, though, it was awkward. You would think that being underwater would make you a little more graceful because you're all floaty and slow-moving, but it is entirely possible to be clumsy under there. Let's just say I'm a little bit of a mess.

So after the pool dive, I was still not sure about this whole thing. I was a little more comfortable that I wasn't going to drown, but I wasn't sure how fun it would be or that I wouldn't freak out when a fish came at me in the ocean. But the minute that I went down into the ocean and looked around at the reef, I was sold. It was just breathtaking. The fish are colorful, the reef is so cool, and it's so peaceful just floating around under the water. And nothing tried to eat me.

In just two dives, I got to see a sea turtle (soooo pretty), a moray eel, a magnificent anemone with lots of little clown fish, and I got to hold a pufferfish and a sea cucumber (ew). I think I've finally gotten over my fear of ocean creatures, and it only took moving to a tropical island surrounded by ocean to do it. Another one to cross off the bucket list.