Palau

This is the view from the balcony on our hotel.

Other side view

The breakfast area

This is one of the decorations by the dive shop when we were waiting for the boat.

Crazy eyes.

Waiting on the boat to leave.  We didn't leave until around 9.  They were really late start times.

Place where we stored our dive equipment at the end of each day.

More decorations outside the dive shop

My tanks and gear getting ready to go.  The yellow thing is a floaty handle for the go pro.  It's going to take a long time to go through all the go pro pics.

Still waiting.  This is the group I traveled with.  The one in front is the one I shared a room with.

It is going to take a while to go through all of the Palau pics.  There are sooooo many of them.  But this is the first entry.  We flew to Palau on Wednesday night.  I worked almost a full day and then ran home quickly and packed in about an hour and flew out.  Work has been busy.  Very busy.  This week was a little crazy.  More on that later.  So anyway, we arrived in Palau at about 930 at night.  We went to the hotel and fell asleep.  The next morning, we woke up, ate breakfast, and then went to the dive shop.  Lexi and I ate breakfast together because we were always up at about 0530.  So we would eat and talk for a bit.  The dive shop didn't pick us up until around 8 everyday so we had lots of time in the morning.  We'd leave for the dive sites around 9.  We'd do three dives a day.  One, then lunch, then two more.  The first day we stopped for lunch on some random island.  I don't know if I have pictures of that because I didn't have my camera until the second day.  I didn't have the SD card.  I have no idea where my SD card is.  So I bought one the first day and then had my camera the second and third days.

Anyway, about this week.  It was crazy.  On Friday I was waiting for John Wayne and Clint Eastwood to start walking through the building because it felt like the wild west.  It's difficult to describe, but there were just crazy things that happened and I was really busy all week.  The only way to illustrate this is to say that Thursday after 5:00 I was still working and three random people came in the office because they were still working, too.  We talked about what a crazy week it was.  One of them started going through what happened each day that week and none of us could remember Monday.  Out of the four of us no one could remember a single thing that happened on Monday.  I looked back at the calendar and said, "we had a meeting."  I sat for a minute thinking that would get the memory going, but no.  It did not.  I still can't remember Monday.  That's how crazy it was.  My phone rang about 6:00 (yes we were still talking) and I was like "who on earth thinks I'm still in my office at this time?"  But I needed to take that phone call, so good thing I was still there.

Recall

My car was subject to Honda's airbag recall.  They won't ship my vehicle if I don't have it replaced, so I did.  Honda came on base and replaced it the Monday between Subball and Palau.  It was not a well advertised event, but that's okay, I still got it done.  The only problem is now my horn beeps sometimes.  They knocked the sensor out of place or something.  So I need to call and get that looked at.  It doesn't happen often.

Subball

A lot of planning went into subball and overall it was okay.  We need to try and bring the cost down next year, but like I said, there is only one hotel with a room big enough for everyone.  It was like any other big gathering.  There was food and dancing and so forth.  There is a center piece competition between the units that attend, so that's what the third picture is, it's one of the center pieces.  It won second place as you can see by the wooden trophy on it.  There was a nice ceremony to kick off the event.  The speech was okay, it wasn't great.  We paid a lot of money to fly the speaker out here and I was expecting a little more.  The coolest part was the tolling of the bells.  They go through all the submarines lost at sea and a bell is tolled as the name of each submarine and the number of sailors lost is read.  That was probably my favorite part.

The free room

SubBall was at the most expensive hotel on the island.  We tried to avoid that due to the cost, but given the number of people expected to come, it was the only one with a room big enough to accommodate.  When you book a big event like that, they often give you complimentary rooms.  We had one extra and they put everyone's name in a drawing.  I complained quite fiercely that the complementary room was a bad idea and who would want to spend the night there.  The rooms were too expensive and it was a ridiculous waste of money for us to have booked this hotel.  Well, I won the room and they all had a laugh.  I got ready there, but gave Lauren the room.  I was going to be sober no matter what, so it really didn't make sense for the person who doesn't drink to get the fancy room.  We used this room as a pre-stage area.  So there were lots of people up there.  I got dressed in the bathroom with about 30 people outside the door.  As you can tell from the top pic, the bathroom is just a tiny area with a glass door.  It was a little strange, but what else was I going to do?

Wardroom Golf Outing

So we went golfing one day.  We had an important visitor (the subball speaker) come to town so we scheduled some fun time the day before subball.  Of course the speaker decided to skip the golfing and go on a tour of the island instead.  So Lauren and her husband took him around and I went to the golf outing we had scheduled.  I golfed with my boss.  It was pretty fun, but I'm a terrible golfer.  I just like how nice the grass is.

New Nails

Grinding down the nails so the glue sticks.

Adding the elongation.

Filing after trimming them down.

Adding this powder that dried made everything smooth.

More filing.

Painting them and curing them.

Some of the ladies had their nails done for SubBall.  I'd never done it so I thought, okay.  It was fun, but I don't know if I will do it again.  First of all, the nails were really thick and it was difficult to use your fingers even though I had them cut down pretty short.  Secondly, the nail polish faded to a gold color and then to a weird yellow.  Thirdly they were impossible to remove.  Apparently you are supposed to go back and get them professionally removed.  I just ripped them off, causing much damage to my nails.  I didn't get a pic of the final product, but you can kind of see it in the last photo.  I will say this, they were really durable.  No scratches or chips for those nails.

SubBall Golf Fundraiser

 

 

For the Submarine Birthday Ball, we held a golf fundraiser.  Lauren and I volunteered to drive the snack/ water cart around.  We would stealthily put water into people's coolers because it was hot hot hot that day.  Lauren drives like a maniac and at one point we almost crashed into two other carts.  We may have sideswiped a few carts while carrying out our mission.  Ignore the poor panorama skills with my phone.  I was in a rush trying to capture those.

Easter

This kid started a little early.  He was really excited.

Getting ready for the egg hunt.

Little kids get to go first.  Most of them found an egg and then were like, "hey, that's cool," and then stopped.

This was the Saturday before Easter.  Our church organized a sunrise breakfast at a local park.  They had an egg hunt and some pancakes.  It was neat.  I forget what I had to do that day, but there was somewhere else I had to be, so I didn't stay long.  It was nice to talk to people and get to know them a little bit.  I don't really talk to people at church on Sundays because we are always doing other things or parents are trying to get their kids to Sunday school.  For actual Easter I don't remember doing much.

Whale Shark Pics

Waiting to go out.  You can see all the boats in the distance.

I thought this guy was cool.  He would dive down to get a different angle.

You can see three whale sharks somewhat lined up here.  You can also see people hanging onto the side of the boat.

Up close and personal.

I thought the fish following was cool.

My attempt at a selfie with a whale shark.  Mostly I missed getting the whale shark.

Gills for days.

There was a moment when I went back to the boat because I couldn't find anyone in my group and the current was really strong.  Then I was like... I probably won't get to swim with whale sharks again.  So I jumped back in.  This is a pic I took while on the boat.

Feed me Seymour, Feed me!