First and foremost, I want to thank everybody who has wished me a happy birthday via fb, txt, email, etc. I am truly blessed to be able to call each and every one of you a friend. Thank you for helping me celebrate the fact that I am now on the wrong side of 25 >.<;;
This birthday is markedly different from how I have spent it in recent years (although my going away from Boston bash last week was pretty much the epitome of recent days). The only birthday that comes close is my 22nd, when I went skydiving with a bunch of 04 A-wingers from IMSA. There’s no loud music playing and no huge crowds of partiers around. Instead, there’s a lot of nature, and a lulling quiet (I am struggling to stay awake now). I still wouldn’t really consider myself an outdoorsy person—Mother Nature and I still have some beef especially when it comes to bugs, really dirty stuff, and pollen—but I do admit, it was a nice change of pace.
Originally the plan this morning was to go ocean kayaking after breakfast, but Sophia and I were afraid of tiring ourselves out before our afternoon snorkel. Instead, we just lounged about on the beach, so I was able to finish my sketch of the day, read, catch up w/ some friends on gchat, and like a ton of fb posts.
We went snorkeling to Hol Chan and Shark Ray Alley with Belize Pro Dive Center and it was a blast. It was my first time snorkeling and it was surprisingly super easy, aside from the two big gulps of seawater that I accidentally took >.<. I think the salt in the water made it really easy to float and wearing flippers made swimming feel like cheating. While I did get some good footage using the GoPro, the files are a bit too big for me to upload straight away, and who has time for video editing while in paradise?
As a consolation, here's a pretty cool picture I took during the snorkel outing of a nurse shark feeding frenzy. I also promise that I'll compile and upload all the best parts of the videos I take really soon after I return to a decent internet connection.
[caption id="attachment_124" align="alignnone" width="300"]
Nurse Shark Feeding Frenzy at Shark Ray Alley[/caption]
The single complaint I have had about Belize so far is that the food hasn’t been all that spectacular. Maybe we’re doing it wrong and haven’t done enough research, but everything we’ve had has just been kinda meh. The coconut rice is pretty legit though, even if it does violate my diet pretty badly. Here’s a picture of me at dinner.
I am honestly really exhausted right now and have a really early start (on the dock at 6:45 tomorrow morning!) so am just going to pass out now :D.