Scuba Murph!

That's right folks...."usually-found-on-dry-land-Murph" is now a board certified scuba diver! I just completed my open water certification today. Minnesota's own Jacques Cousteau. It's really quite amazing and would recommend it to all! The past 2 weeks I've seen a nurse shark, reef shark, two barracudas, huge stingrays, and a ginormous turtle! I mean ginormous! Not to mention the thousands of exotic fish. Mike from Scubaqua was my instructor. A native of Denmark and a big baseball fan. Now....what else has been going on? Last week we had our second lobster feast. Matt, from Golden Rock....a native of North Carolina.....invited us over for some more Caribbean caught lobster. He had a bunch of buddies down from his home state and we all gathered at Matt's abode. It was interesting meeting some folks from back home who were just down for a vacation....and diving of course. One of the guys had his underwater camera along and took some amazing photos. I'm working on getting my hands on those and will post them when I do. As for photos in general....hopefully I can get them up here shortly. Ella, Heather and I are going to share photos and they both have some great shots. I've taken a few but as I've stated before....I'm no photographer. Other than that things have been going great. The weeks have flown by and we've all gotten into our routine now. Mondays are spent at the Garden doing maintenance work....or weed whipping for myself. Every other day after is spent either at the Quill & Northern Hills or at the Botanical Garden. Joe, our mountaineer intern broke his hand last week in the Quill and will be sidelined for a while. That means I'll be spending a little more time up there. Which is fine....it's quite amazing. Yesterday we did some trail work down in the crater. It's quite surreal walking along the bottom of a volcano! Apparently there aren't too many volcanos in the world where you can hike along inside. This week we welcomed in our 2nd Garden intern...Analisa from Virginia. We treated her to a Statia Welcome by eating out at the Ocean View Terrace. Spicy grouper for myself. Not too shabby. We also ate at Sonny's last weekend as well. Chinese bar & restaurant. There isn't necessarily a "Statian cuisine" here, but they have a little of everything....and it's good! Well....time has run out for today. I might actually have some time tomorrow to post as well. The internet has been down the past week due to Hurricane Thomas that just passed south of us. We had our contingency plan all set even! Heavy winds and sideways rain is all that we got. But the tent held up! Until next time America....

P.S. Haven't read or heard much, but doesn't sound good in Viking Land?!! Oh well.....the Lakers start up here shortly!!!! Feel free to ask any questions if you're interested in something! I'll do my best to respond in a timely manner!