Snorkeling Toucari Bay

Aaron is officially done with his 3rd semester of med school and we are on our two week staycation before 4th!  Here are a few pictures from our first snorkeling trip this break :)  Friday morning we met a few other couples at the med school's front gate and negotiated a taxi ride with "Mr. Brun" to and from Toucari Bay [TOO-coddy] (15 minutes north) for $7.00EC each, round trip (~$2.60US).  The water was clear and the jellies were definitely present, but not plentiful or aggressive enough to keep us away!   Good day!

 Megan putting on her son, Owen's, goggles :)

 This is a Smooth Trunk Fish

Balloon Fish

Caribbean Blue Tang (Dory's Caribbean cousin)

  

Cool sponge

 Owen, and his dad, Nate Russell, getting ready to dive

 The Dynamic Duo

 Blue/Grey Tang

The other Dynamic Duo 

Cool spikey vase sponge

Barrel Sponge

Aaron's head at Toucari 

Playing with the jellies

Megan Russell

Blue-Headed Wrasse

School of brown and blue Tang

Squirrel fishies

That is a piece of coral/sponge that I accidentally broke off.  As soon as I put it back down a bunch of fish came to check it out and eat little newly-exposed organisms that were invisible to me

Blue-Headed Wrasse

Coney Fish (Part of the Grouper family)

Pretty reef life (Blue-Headed Wrasse)

A little island under the sea...

 Those things that look like palm trees are called Feather Duster worms.  The top "flower" is the crown of a sea worm that lives in the tube and is both a feeding apparatus and a breathing gill.  If you wave your hand by it or touch it the worm reflexively withdraws into its tube

Laughing fit

Oh my goodness.  I had a good 5 minute laughing fit just now.  I was bawling. Tears were streaming down my face. I read a website of iphone texting auto-correct confusion just now which I can't share on here because some of them were inappropriate but Oh My Gundersnatch. I couldn't stop.  My friends, Sara and Lacey, were looking at me like I had lobsters coming out of my ears.
Laughing is the absolute best exercise ever.  Im pretty sure I was so out of control because I was tired and boy did my stomach hurt when I was done (I had to close the webpage to stop).  That is all.  I love to laugh.  I need to do it more often. :D

She's baaaaaack

   Yeah yeah- It's only been.... oh crud.  a YEAR.  It's been a YEAR since my last post!  In that time we have moved to a tropical island (then moved again due to a rat infestation), Aaron has completed a year of medical school, I opened a bakery, became and expert snorkeling photographer, and we have learned a lot about making do in this third world country!  WE LOVE IT!  We have two more semesters to go here and will be returning around the end of April 2014 for rotations- hopefully in Atlanta, but the location part of it is up in the air.

   There are a few reasons I decided to come back and blog- some big and some not so big, but I'm glad to be back :)  I will be updating the look of it since I no longer have those two little bumpkins in the header picture.  I now have an 8 and 10 year old that are twice that size!  They love it here!  Today at their summer school program they are horseback riding and sand castle building all on the beach. Tough life.  

   Here are a few random pics por toi.

 Octopus- I'll put a video of one coming out of a bottle I trapped it in later...

 This peach beauty is our house

 That's our backyard

 Nana nana nana nana Nana nana nana nana BATMAAAAAAN

 Gale Scouts.

 Random pic of blue tang I took while snorkeling

 Sea floor forest

 Pic I like that I took of my friend while she was collecting a sand dollar

 My logo :)

 Current pic of my kiddos.  Aren't they cute???

My sweet family at Bob's Chinese (They play FOR REAL MahJong here)