Finals are almost done!!

This is a picture of right after this creepy guy named Freddy asked me for a kiss. When I shot him down, he asked Katie, so these are our reactions. Gabe saved me by saying he was my boyfriend, and Kenny did the same for Katie. From left to right: Liz, Gabe, me (yes I got cornrows), Katie, Kenny.
This is me and Scott at Baller's, and Katie is picking my nose.

This is me, G, and Katie at Baller's. G is one of the locals. His wife works so he stays home to take care of the kids and then goes out at night. He's really nice.

This is most of the gang. From left to right, and top to bottom: Scott, Ashley, Juston, Nick, Rachel, Lacey, Erica, Britta, Colby, Liz, Christina, and Danielle.

Since it's mid term time, I've pretty much been studying and chilling. I did, however, go on a snorkel on Saturday. The highlight of that snorkel was seeing a school of like 200 blue tang. Saturday night we went out for Danielle's 21st birthday. Sunday we just studied, laid out to tan, and watched movies. It was pretty boring.

Today we had our resource management test. I didn't think it was too bad, but some people thought it was the hardest test yet. After the test, I went snorkeling. First we went to Tucker's Reef and I saw 4 squid lined up in a row swimming around. Devon, one of the interns, tried to make them ink, but 2 of them just ended up going after him. It was quite funny. We also saw 3 jellyfish there. Since it was so wavy today, we only spent half of out time at Tucker's, then we went to Shark Alley which finally lived up to its name. Britta was my snorkel buddy today and we were swimming along and all of the sudden we see 4 GIANT barracuda. Naturally we both started to panic, and then one of them started swimming straight at us, opening and closing his mouth. After screaming and gripping onto each other, we decided to take action. We swam at the barracuda as fast and as splashy as possible and we scared it away. After that little incident Britta and I were both on edge. Then we saw two porcupine fish playing together so that made us feel better. We also saw like a 3 foot tiger grouper which was really cool. So Britta and I were swimming along, minding out own business, and I see a 5ish foot reef shark like 20 feet ahead of us. It was just chillin there so I calmly pointed it out to Britta, as soon as I did that, the shark turned and faced us and started swimming towards us. Once again we panicked and booked it out of there as fast as possible. We were both screaming and laughing and swimming away so once we were surrounded by other people, we had to get all of the water out of our masks and snorkels. After that we decided that we had had enough for one day so we swam back to the boat.

This reef shark was the first one I have seen since being here. Upon seeing it, I realized that I like seeing them on TV much better than I do in the water that I am sharing with them. Luckily for my research project I will just be dealing with baby sharks, if any.

Tomorrow we have our last test, it's on directed research. It's only half as long as our other tests have been so it won't be too bad. After that we have site clean up, then homework time since we have a little bit due before break. On Wednesday I fly out to Provo to meet up with Mom and Dad until Sunday. I hope all of you are doing well!!

-Michelle