I'm alive, and I'm in paradise. This place rocks! It's work/play for the next two weeks! :)

My schedule:

7:15 - wake up
7:30 - eat breakfast
8:30 - dive
10:00 - dive
12:30 - eat lunch
13:30 - work
19:00 - eat a fancy dinner, drink a lot of red wine
22:00 - work some more
sometime between 0:00 and 1:00 - go to sleep

Man. I'm soooo spoiled. I went on two dives when I arrived from Tahiti this morning, just after 7am. Unfortunately, I didn't get to see any sunlight while in Tahiti, but I was just happy to have a place to sleep for the night. I'm using steel tanks here, so I don't need to wear any weight while in the water. That's so novel, especially coming from a cold water diving background.

To my friends and family: sorry I haven't been in touch yet. It's been a crazy and tiring few days.

Journals:

Sunday, July 1, 2001 - 11:59AM

I'm sitting with Luke in LAX's International Terminal, waiting for our flight to Papeete, Tahiti. The airplane has two Bora Bora flags painted on it, adjacent to the cockpit windows on both sides. This morning was sort of hectic because my flight out of San Diego was cancelled due to mechanical reasons. Another passenger and I hopped onto a Cloud 9 shuttle up to Palomar Airport in Carlsbad and boarded a last minute United Express flight. I had to run out to the little airplane from the terminal building because I was so late -- the flight attendant was already going through her safety spiel. So stressful, especially because I was flying international. The United personnel didn't know what to do with so little time before the plane was going to leave, so they ended up checking my baggage to LAX. When I arrived, I claimed my bags, took a shuttle to the international terminal (driven by a disguntled hispanic guy) and checked them in again at the Air Tahiti counter, where I happened to be checking in at the same time Luke was.

Tuesday, July 3, 1:31am

Bora Bora is amazing. It's like paradise here! We tried to get up this morning at 4:30am to get to the Tahiti airport, but our wake up call came at 3:00am instead. I got up, took a shower, packed, woke up Luke... and discovered that it was 3:20 -- when I called the front desk (I have no watch here. :). heh... so that pretty much sucked. Anyway, when we finally arrived into Bora Bora, it was 7am. Our take-off was delayed because this plume of white smoke came shooting out of the right propeller (I was sitting right next to it). That sucked, too. But anyway, so we arrived in Bora Bora, and a guy was waiting there with my name on a sign! That did NOT suck. He collected our bags, loaded them onto the boat, and whisked us off, leaving behind tourists who waved futilely at us to come back and ferry them to their respective destinations. We picked up Olivier and Miva (sp?) at their house (I recognized him from photos), and continued onward to the TOPdive resort to meet up with Lucien. I would write more, but I'm really tired. We went on a couple dives, spend some quality time just hanging out and chatting, and got a lot of work done. Angel was in Bora Bora last week (again!), and he told me a few days ago that time slows to a crawl here. I am fully experiencing that. It's amazing how long the day drags on (pleasurably) here! It's winter, which means that the weather is only perfect and light for 12 hours a day instead of 14. It's really just... amazing.