Shark bait

A month ago (pre-blog), Nathan and I went scuba diving in Belize with the Texas A&M Scuba Diving Club. It was so amazing! We left for an entire week of nothing but diving, shopping, eating, and lounging around on the beach (well, what little there is of it --- let's just say people don't come to Belize for the miles and miles of sandy beaches). Here I am on the beach in front of our hotel.

We went scuba diving for 5 days with 2 to 3 dives a day. Here we are underwater. Pretty goofy looking. I hope we don't scare the fish! Since my only previous diving experience was the Blue Lagoon in Huntsville (basically a glorified swimming pool, only 30 feet deep, and no fish whatsoever) and Lake Travis in Austin (not really known for its wildlife since I was thrilled to have a couple of perch fallow me around, a little bit creepy actually), I was totally unprepared for the amount of things we would see and how clear the water was. We saw angle fish (all kinds, even a Queen angel), butterfly fish, grouper (yum), parrot fish, damsel fish (my favorite, oh so cute), trumpet fish, porcupine fish, sea turtles, sting rays and spotted eagle rays, moray eels (both green ones and spotted ones), lobster, crab, coral, sea sponges, sea fans, ... I never dreamed I would see so much!

Sea Turtle	(Rare) Spotted Drum
Yellow Sea Sponge	Queen Triggerfish
Spotted Moray Eel	Vase Sponge
Brain Coral	Sting Ray

As promised, here is hard evidence that I actually swam with sharks. (And no, I know what you're thinking, I didn't just overlay a picture of me with a picture of a shark in PhotoShop. Sadly, I don't even know how to do that. I am a disgrace to all techie kind.)

	"Hmmmm... look at the pretty sand and coral...", I think, totally unaware of the stark looming nearby. Way to keep those survival instincts primed!
At least in this one I'm actually looking at the shark!
	You may think I'm crazy, but I'm definitely not as crazy as the dive masters that pet the sharks. My theory is that all that compressed air finally went to their brains.

Finally, I couldn't resist putting this next picture up. Aggies are usually the subject of harmless jokes like "How many Aggies does it take to screw in a light bulb?" and "Did you hear about the Aggie kamikaze pilot? He flew 22 missions." But, I must say that we are not helping ourselves out when we pull stunts like this. Let's play the game "What's wrong with this picture?"

Give up? The brilliant Aggie taking the picture never noticed that the flag is backwards! Oh well, I guess we need to give people something to laugh about! We seem to have quite the knack for it. (I suppose I could fix this in PhotoShop, but it wouldn't be as funny then, now would it?)