scuba diving in thailand

well, first christy had to get her padi certification to see if she would even like it! prone to liking control and not being scared or nervous, i wasn't quite sure, but she came through the course with minimal discomfort and was a trooper the whole time. while she was in class for 2 days i was roaming the beaches, getting massages, exercising, riding around on a scooter and just plain chilling. her first dive was nerve wrecking, but she got through her skills and moved on to her second dive with a little more comfort. day 2 i joined them and my first dive i did with a cool guy, paul, from ireland...love the irish! and then the second dive when christy only had a few minutes of skills to do, i joined them for the fun dive. the photographer who took all the photos is phil north of liquid lense out of england. he's great and i only included a fraction of photos he's given us. i put a lot more on facebook if you're a 'friend' of mine, but in general, the photos are fabulous and he makes us look a lot more graceful than we are! christy describes her underwater pose as something resembling a frightened kitten...while you're supposed to be streamlined, arms up under you and relaxed! lol...she did great and i was so happy to be back under the warm, turquoise water. the coral's beautiful, the fish are fantastic...some of the things we saw are puffer fish, clown fish, lion fish, scorpion fish, eels, nudi branches, barricuda, cuttlefish and tons more. it's such a peaceful feeling to be breathing underwater if you can get past the horror of it all! ha ha...the breathing from a respirator is almost meditative, i feel. and, believe it or not, you can hear the fish eating off the coral--it makes a crackling noise. good times and beautiful water! i'm so fortunate... love, j

as for the photos in the next posting, the first one is of us...me on the left, c on the right. 2nd one is us swimming, c in foreground, me farther away. 3rd one is of me doing a boat entrance and the 4th is of the islands we dived around called koh haa which means 5 islands in thai. stunning!