The Beach

So I think I've finally found my group of friends here! I see them practically every day and we have alot of fun together! They not only are able to make me laugh and are kind, but BONUS they have a car!! Sooo we are not only able to get places faster than 15 minutes, but we are able to travel up the coast to all different beaches. So far I've been able to go swimming in the ocean, snorkling, watch surfing on pipeline, and visit cute shops (...ok ok so not shops, but restaurants... the food was DELICIOUS!) The waves last night were the most impressive thing ever! The report online was showing 35 ft. waves, it was pretty intense! And there were even surfers out there. They didn't actually catch many of the waves though, they'd paddle paddle paddle and then at the last minute bail. The waves were giant, I don't blame them at all! There were a couple boogy boarders that did pretty good though. Well, not for very long.. the wave would destroy them and then before the poor swimmer could get out of harms way another wave would come and throw the boarder around pretty good. They were making all kinds of announcments from the post for even us watchers to be alert for big waves (I guess the waves have been known to take out the beach completely!) It was fun and I came away with every thing I came with. Did I tell you the story about seeing the monsterous waves last weekend? I don't think I did! Lets just say the ocean stole my sunglasses... We had traveled down the shoreline stopping at whatever place looked good and not too crowded. Along the road there was this gorgeous area with what appeared to be a great tide-pooling area! SIKE, not so much! But we climbed downt here and walked around... it looked perfect! We just had to find the "right spot" we climbed up on this big mountain lookin coral thing. Just on the other side of that it flattened out and then dropped off. The waves were coming up onto this shelf thing... nothing too intense so we walked out on it a ways looking for cool stuff. Next thing I know this enormous towering wave is coming up over the shelf... covering anything and everything in its path completely. I see it and hurry to get back up to higher ground, and well I wasn't so lucky! I got completely soaked! Luckily I made the camera (gulp) that I had in my hand a priority so I lifted it up reaching for the sky so that it wouldn't get wet! I succeeded, my camera is just fine... unfortunately my sunglasses and everything else I had with me wasn't so lucky. My sunglasses were no where to be found, well I didn't exactly spend time looking for them either! As soon as that happened we all climbed back up to the mountain and down the other side to where it was guarded and more safe (after a picture of course!)

I've been having a lot of fun (as you can tell), the weather is finally nice and my homework load isn't too bad! My homework load isn't bad... but actually understanding what my teachers are lecturing about, thats a whole other story! I have the same teacher for two of my classes, exercise physiology and kenisiology. He is from Finland and has an extremely thick accent! He's a great teacher don't get me wrong, but him having to use these big long medical terms with his accent, makes it a long hour of me just nodding, pretending like I know exactly what he's trying to say. And then for my microbiology class my teacher is from Central Africa where they spoke french, his accent is thick too! So there you have it, all of my hard classes have foreign teachers. Out of my 6 classes, only one of the teachers is English! Which is funny because thats my ASL class. Did I mention that? I'm taking a sign language class! So far I've learned the alphabet, counting to ten (I know what you're thinking, but no, it's different and more complex than what you think! haha). I've also learned how to say "nice to meet you", and a bunch of other verbs. Overall, my classes are great and everyone here is so nice! This really is going to be a great semester!

I can't believe I've already been here for 2 weeks! I mean that really isn't that long at all, but it feels like it's only been one week!