Some new photos, some old news, some old photos . . .

No excuses this time, I just haven't gotten around to it. There has been a lot going on, at least the last week or so. Once again Kwajalein has been conquered. The Germans took over way back when followed by the Japanese who later surrendered it to the US. Technically it was some sort of United Nations protectorate for a while, but the US has been here since WWII. Now the Marshallese are falling under the influence of American junk food. Right after I got here, the Three Palms Snack Bar closed. In fact, I may have eaten their last two slices of pizza. As I recall, they tasted as if they shouldn't have been the last, like maybe they were way past being what should have been last. Anyway, since then, AAFES (Army Air Force Exchange Service or System, I'm not sure of the translation, I'm overwhelmed by the bazillion and one acronyms, guess I should be happy I still have a name instead of being PT,E) AFFES has been remodeling. On Thurs., July 3 the new and improved food court opened, complete with the Colonel and Sargent Major behind the counter. Burger King, Subway, Anthony's Pizza and Baskin Robbins have arrived. I can attest that the evening of June 3 there were almost no patrons in the Cafe Pacific, the island dining facility that provides meals at no cost to most of us. I didn't succumb for two, maybe three days. Since then I've had one Whopper and fries, one Rocky Road milkshake and a sub. I can't remember Stateside prices, but it was $6 plus change at Burger King and about $4.50 for the subs. The milkshake was worth every penny of $4. That was Thursday. For whatever reason, we celebrated the 4th of July the next day, Friday. On the 4th. When else might we celebrate, you ask? How about on Sat. the 5th? Because we are on the other side of the date line from the States, we work Tues through Sat to coincide with Mon through Fri back there. We were celebrating the 4th while folks back there were working. We were working - not much - on the 5th while folks back there were celebrating. It's not like we were going to miss any fireworks or anything - due to budget cuts, there weren't any. Corporate + Military = no sense to me. Anyway, that was last weekend. This weekend was a class and the majority of the dives for advanced diving certification. The class consisted of a review of the types of dives we were going to do. Then yesterday afternoon we swam out from Emon beach for a naturalist dive aka look-at-all-the-fish. Our instructor has made a second career of photographing fish so she was able to identify many we saw. I knew some, but there are many - many, many - fish to learn. Plus coral, shellfish, a few plants and various and sundry other critters - think sea stars, urchins, and I-hope-I-never-see jellyfish. Then after a break to change tanks AND spend some time out to prevent decompression problems, we went back for our navigation dive. Among the other gear I now own is an underwater compass. It's more helpful than you might think. A lot of places down there look a lot alike so it's helpful to be able to navigate a bit. Actually, that was probably the most athletic dive I've done, swimming set courses a few times and then swimming directions to end up back at the point of origin. If lost, you could always surface, but it's a lot harder to swim on the surface with that gear than down below. Today we went up the lagoon to Shell Island in a pontoon boat. It's not as fast as the twin engine B boats used for fishing and diving, but it's a heck of a lot roomier which is important with six divers, six divers' gear and a dozen large air tanks. Our first dive was our deep dive. Until now we could only dive to 60' - theoretically. That was our certification after the first Open Water Dive Course. After this course, we are allowed to 130', the maximum recommended depth for recreational divers. Fine by me, 'bout the only things down deep are wrecks and I prefer fish which generally prefer reefs. So we got down to about 90' and our instructor wanted to demonstrate how we might be affected by nitrogen narcosis. The affects can be confusion, disorientation - symptoms similar to alcohol inebriation. Her demonstration was to teach us a knot with a short piece of small string and have us repeat it. Made as much sense to me as sobriety checks requiring people to recite the alphabet backwards. I don't think I can do that either. I tied a knot different from hers. She showed me again. I passed the string on. Luckily we passed whether we could tie the knot or not. We did see a sunken boat, maybe 100' long. It was up right with many openings into the hold. Might have been some inter-island vessel or a fishing boat. Interesting, but not a lot of fish. The second dive was for photography along the reef. That was great. Nate recently got his dive camera and shared it with me. I'm sharing some of those photos with you. Looks like I'll be investing in more equipment. Later this week we are going on a night dive when the moon is full. Already bought the flashlight for that one. After that, we're certified as advanced. I don't expect (at this time) to invest more certifications. That's about it for now. I skipped the movies at the Yuk Theater (under a roof), at the Richardson Theater(outdoor, rain or not), and the big bash, complete with traveling band, at the Vets' Hall last Sun. Gotta save something for the next entry. Have fun, talk to ya, see ya whenever . . .