swimming with sharks

I've been in bed the last three days with pneumonia, a partially collapsed lung, and the flu. After a 2 AM visit to the ER on Monday night, I've been sleeping 24/7 and for the very first time in the last 72 hours I have had the energy to get out of bed and eat something besides crackers. Holla! (or as my Dad would say, "hola")

Max stopped by the store to pick up some gatorade the other night, and surprised me with our developed pictures from Hawaii too! With all this free time on my hands I wanted to share some of the pictures online. We're no underwater photographers, but I was so excited to see how the pictures turned out. You should know that I was a naysayer the entire time about this swimming with the sharks thing, and if Max hadn't just spontaneously booked our tickets, I don't think I would have worked up the courage to do it. I'm the Monica-from-Friends-type, so even after Max talked me through how amazing it was going to be, I was still freaking out a little bit. Okay, a lot a bit.

Luckily, it ended up being one of the neatest things I've ever done in my life. I was soooooo seasick on our ride out into the ocean; sixteen foot waves that day and within five minutes, I lost my lunch (IT WAS SO BAD). The upside was that I entirely forgot about the fact I was about to swim with something that could bite my arm off. So maybe it was a good thing? In fact, by the time we were far enough out into the ocean and we saw a group of sharks, all I wanted to do was get out of that dang boat and into that water!

It was amazing.

Swimming with sharks, if you're any sort of fan of shark week especially, is honestly surreal. The only thing that made me a little bit nervous about the entire experience was looking down below the cage and not seeing any end in sight. Something eerie about being so small in something so vast. It makes me uncomfortable even thinking about it now.

Anyway, thanks to Max I can now cross off swimming with sharks, though that was not on my bucket list before. I'd highly recommend the experience to anyone (especially if you're near Haliewa!) and if you tend to get sea sick, take a million zillion katrillion Dramamines beforehand.