me and my pee suit.

Its common knowledge that one of the first things divers do when they enter the water is pee, so that the warmness spreads throughout their wetsuit, keeping their body temperature up while they plunge to the deep dark depths of the ocean.

Or so I thought.

Did YOU know that when you pee in your wetsuit, it leaves a funky pee smell, and since you´re renting equipment from your dive center, everyone is going to know exactly whose wetsuit it is?! I didnt know that either. Things that could have been brought to my attention BEFORE FOUR DAYS AGO WHEN I STARTING DIVING AND PEEING IN MY WETSUIT.

My family is famous for our smaller than average bladders. Or maybe they´re of average size, and years of drinking Diet Pepsi and Diet 7up have worn down the linings and obliterated any bladder control. I was really enjoying spending all day underwater and not having to get out and go to the bathroom. Hostel bathrooms are famously disgusting, and I keep having standoffs with giant cockroachesin the one closest to the dock, so its best avoided.

our fabulous team. my boy crush instructor Ben is on the left. Very tall hobbit.

While on the boat, the wetsuit is such a pain in the behind to put on and off, and you never look attractive getting in and out, and I certainly don´t look attractive once in that confining, unforgiving fatsuck, and so I just figured every one else on the boat was doing exactly as I was, and using the biggest bathroom on the planet. I was wrong. And now I am ashamed. No one has said anything yet, but I´m terrified all the staff are talking about me as “the girl who pees her wetsuit.” This would happen to me. This would only happen to me.

watching the circle of life

We went on some fun dives this morning, which were incredible. We had to get up at like 6 something, so last night we hung out at the hostel on the dock and lay on our bellies and watched the fish dart in and out of the water underneath the planks. There were two huge barracudas hunting and making eye contact with us, and they are some ugly, scary looking fish let me tell you. They keep slapping out of the water and killing poor cute defenseless fish, and we would all “awwww soo saaad” but such is the circle of life.

From the hammocks we watched three separate lightening storms sparkle in the distance. Nighttime is magical in the Caribbean; you walk to the tienda or the baleada shack to get a snack, and without warning a tremor shakes the air and its pouring rain, and you´re stuck inside a tiny store being run by a nine year old girl watching “Hannah Montana” on television and charging you 20 lempiras for a Coca Light. It rains every night, thank God because it provides a break from oppressive daytime heat.

Dana takes a dive off the dock.
they chase cats. CATS.

You can only lay out for fifteen minutes before you´re soaked in sweat and forced to jump off the second story dock, a twenty foot leap into crystal blue waters, which is pretty fun anyway. Just like in Livingston, crabs are running Utila. The ground is crawling with them, and they´re huge and scary, and they even chase cats – I´m not kidding. I’m terrified to get bit by one, but my days of walking barefoot are over ever since glass in foot incident.

Oh and I got my stitches taken out! I won´t go into too many details because my mom would lose it. Lets just summarize by saying DO NOT EVER GET SERIOUSLY ILL OR INJURED IN CENTRAL AMERICA. The thermometer they used to take my temperature was sitting in what I hope was something sterile inside a urine sample cup. “Community” thermometer. And my “doctor” was barefoot, shirt unbuttoned, coke bottle glasses, talking about his recent recreational drug use as he was slicing my foot apart. He demanded that I, who had broken out in a cold sweat the moment I saw his trembling hands approach my foot with sharp, once sterile scissors he then dropped on the dirty bed sheet, not pass out in his “office,” which was actually the dentist’s office in the clinic. Wish I was joking. Wiiiish I was joking.

baleada runs!

I think I´m hitting a little wall that makes me miss the comforts of home. Sometimes I wish I could shower just once without flip flops on, or wear a perfume besides eau de bug repellent, or drive myself somewhere, or be alone for an hour straight, or put my mouth under a sink faucet and guzzle some good old tap water….but then I wouldn´t be here! Mostly its just nuts to think about everyone back home, living out their lives and I´m totally removed from it and missing all sorts of important moments for them.

love you miss you wish you were here

Raquel

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