In January 2011, my family and I decided to take a vacation and go on a cruise. My sister, Morgan, and I were so excited! We would be able to be in 80-degree weather while everyone else was stuck in the 5 feet of snow we had! As the week finally rolled around before we got to leave, it started to hit us that we were going to exotic islands and were able to do things such as scuba dive, parasail, zip line, bob sled, and even swim with dolphins.
When we eventually got to our new floating house on the water, we start to plan out what we were do that week and what we would see! Our first stop on the cruise was Cozumel but the second stop was Grand Cayman! In Grand Cayman, we were going to learn how to scuba dive! This was the one excursion Morgan and I knew we would master quickly and love! As we were walking to the dive shop in Grand Cayman, we were talking about all of the things we would see. We were imagining the movie the Finding Nemo with all of the different colors and species of fish! Little did we know it would be very similar, without the animation of course!
As we were going through the training process, we realized that breathing underwater was a little harder than we imagined, but eventually we became “beginner scuba diving pros.” Pretty soon the moment came when we had to jump off the dock into the ocean. As we crept closer to the water, the excitement took over and we both plunged into the ocean. As we started our descent on the ocean floor, the ocean came to life. There was thousands of fish! Purple, pink, blue, green, orange, yellow, and even multicolored—we saw almost every color you could imagine! Morgan and I looked like 2 little children in a candy store, we could not believe what we were missing out on all these years.
Eventually our oxygen tanks were running low and we had to start surfacing, but we did not want to leave the whole new world we had just discovered! After I got on shore and took all of my gear off, I knew I had seen things that I would keep with me for the rest of my life. Scuba diving helped open my eyes to the world around me. I have learned since then to “stop and smell the roses” instead of just walking by, because each living thing has its own unique world that we can observe. If it were not for scuba diving in Grand Cayman, I would have missed out on so many opportunities to see the beauty and wonder of the world around me.
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