The sunset tonight hurts. Really, actually, physically hurts my heart. And somehow it’s coloring the sky to both the right and the left. On one side, to the north, the mouth of the bay leading out into the Andaman Sea is lit up. Just before the hills and jungle block your vision, you catch a halo of orange over the horizon, which is gone a few minutes later. Not to worry, though, it’s replaced by pinks, purples, and, appropriately, corals to the other side. The colors are so peaceful...I can see myself using these as inspiration someday when I have a home of my own and I'm decorating my library (damn straight my house will have a library, straight out of Victorian England). The sky behind the clouds flares to life, causing the water below to fluoresce in a matching hue. For a few moments the jungle is lit with a yellow tone that you usually see after a rainstorm and you think you can see every leaf on every tree in the bay. This is it: the perfect moment that every one secretly longs for and dreams about and searches for. 
Why can’t I just be satisfied being alone, like some of the other women I’ve met on the road? They’re so self-confident and self-sufficient, they make it seem like it would be more rewarding to live life solo. And I certainly seem to be heading that direction, so it seems it's just my attitude that’s getting in the way of satisfaction with my life. Maybe it's just that my upbringing and preconceived notions of what life should be like are keeping me from enjoying “the now” (as horrible of a phrase as it is). After all, look at how many happy, single nuns there are in the world; my life is just as full as theirs (I want to say more so, but that all depends on your point of view) so with the right attitude I should be just as satisfied, right?
Maybe I should just shut up and watch the sunset.
And now to switch gears entirely, which is how my mind works, guess who’s a certified open water scuba diver??? ME, BIOTCH! I scored 100% on my final exam and my final two dives were cake. All right, so maybe I had to try to make a controlled emergency swimming ascent a few times, and I may or may not have taken a tiny little breath just inches from the surface, but, hey, that’s hard if you’ve never done it before.
Despite a massive thunderstorm this morning just before we were due to launch, we still made our dawn dive off of Tokong Island at Shark Plateau (near yesterday's second dive). This was supposed to be our first dive down to 18m, but we didn’t stay that deep for very long. Instead, we kept to an average of about 12m; a bit disappointing, but it meant we could have a much longer dive. So you win some you lose some. The other divers went down to 30, 40, and even 50m and saw black-tipped sharks, turtles, and stingray. I, on the other hand, am going home with a much shorter “Sighted” list, although it’s certainly not too shabby. Today I was able to add a new variety of octopus, thanks to 2 very shy specimens, as well as some kind of giant shrimp thing that I didn’t get a very good look at.
There were two absolutely mind-blowing moments on this dive: first, when I was surrounded by massive schools of fish and second, when I turned on my back to swim facing the surface. About half-way into our dive, a school of several hundred silver fish with a single, horizontal blue strip started swimming past. I admired them as they went by then turned my attention back to what was below me. About five minutes later I looked up and realized I was surrounded! The school had completely encircled me and it seemed they were happy just to show off for me. If I weren't about to drift into some coral I would have sat there, frozen, for hours, just watching them do their thing. Secretly I was hoping they would start playing charades with me like Dory in 'Finding Nemo', but I guess they were feeling a bit lazy that day. Later, at another point when we had gone deep, I looked up to see some large, colorful parrotfish going above my head. I rolled over onto my back and for as long as I could and watched the marine life above me go through it's normal routine, blissfully unaware of my presence a few meters below. Since it was a stormy morning, every now and then you would see the flash of a lightning bolt before the surface of the water far above returned to its normal, silvery hue. This really was a special moment and I couldn't have felt more relaxed or in-tune with the environment around me.
My second dive was just me and Salim, at a site called the Sea Gardens. It was nice enough, but a bit shallow and fairly well bleached out, so it was mostly a good place to do our final skills test. I struggled with what's called a controlled emergency swimming ascent, which is what you do when you've run out of air but you're about 6m from the surface. You have to blow out continuously because if you hold your breath the air expands as you ascend and can burst your lung. It sounds easy, and blowing out continuously for 30-40 seconds is easy enough on land, but in the water your mouth is wide open on the regulator and it's harder to control how quickly you breathe out. One thing that I've enjoyed learning, though, is how to float like you're in a chair and just let the current take you; what an amazing feeling! Also, I absolutely loved that many of the fish looked like they swam off the front of my Lisa Frank trapper keeper from 1993 (boys, look this up because you really shouldn’t get it). I haven't been surrounded by this much neon since fifth grade! Today’s pressure group: none after dive one because of 7-hour surface interval, T after dive two (and being a bit generous, at that). And with that, my course is over! I am a diver!!!
To end my time on Weh in style, the Brits and I are having a lovely barbeque dinner: the hotel staff caught barricuda for us and have grilled it to delicious perfection with dark, seared skin and flaky flesh. Barricuda is a surprisingly moist, thick fish and the chef did an excellent job so the five of us pick it clean, leaving only a knobby spine and spindly bones. After our feast it's just a matter of relaxing over (illegal) drinks, card games, and chatter about the England/America World Cup game. Our friend the bat is back and I'm sure he ate well tonight, too, because for every beautiful fish in the sea, Weh has a gigantic, annoying mosquito or fly buzzing through the air. I am SERIOUSLY tired of mosquito bites. PS: The photo on the right is not our dinner and the fish wasn't really that big, I just framed it so that that adorable little kitten looked puny when it was really about half the fish's size. The internet continues to be MIA, so here’s hoping that if I just show up at the airport tomorrow they’ll have a ticket to Jakarta for me. And that Elias will actually be there while I am. It would be amazing to see him one more time! God, it feels good to have nothing to read or study tonight, oh, but I CRAVE a chance to sleep in. That will just have to wait, though, because a few days ago I arranged for early transport to the airport. Our hotel has worked out a deal where a boat takes you to the main road at Iboih then a taxi drives you to the port where the ferries run you back to Banda Aceh. I'm really glad to have that worked out since I have to leave so early in the morning; the only thing I know for sure is that there is a Jakarta-bound flight from Aceh at 11:30 and I MUST BE ON IT!! Wish me luck!
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