Hey y’all! Wow – time is slipping away from me. Just like everyone said it would and I can’t tell you how happy I am that it is. Life has been hectic since I returned here from Italy. A day does not pass where I wish I was still in Italy…but we all know how that would go! I would be a wino and weigh about 800 pounds! Ha Ha but wow, just so thankful for such good memories in Italy and the friends I have now from that.
So, the rest of November was quite busy. The day after we returned from Italy they had a nice Veterans’ Day celebration here on base. I used my Holiday for Veteran’s Day as part of my time off in Italy, so I worked all day. I heard the All-Hands on base was very nice. The meaning of such days is so humbling when I am surrounded by so many people that have and continue to sacrifice so much for our freedoms. It’s oh so patriotic. Just appreciate so much what all of the many military people in my life have done! Thank you to each of you.
November was also Flag Football. We had games 2 nights a week, usually 2 or 3 games per night. I volunteered to referee for the games for a couple of reasons. First, it gets me outside doing something fun and interactive; and second, since I had a little too violent tendencies when I was actually playing (tackling other people), it was a safer thing for me to do and I am sure the other teams appreciated the move on my part! Ha Ha I really enjoyed refereeing. I met a lot of people. You got used to seeing the same people out there playing and they got to know us as well. For the most part it went well. A couple of times people were not thrilled with our calls/penalties. But I thoroughly enjoyed whipping my yellow flag out of my pocket and tossing it onto the field when it was necessary and blowing the whistle! Such power! Other issues arose when we moved into the play-offs. All of the teams except for 1 (the PAE Team) were various military teams. For the most part, it was difficult to find volunteers to step-up to referee. So we were mostly PAE volunteers refereeing. Of course that leads to accusations that we showed favoritism in the final games – as PAE’s team did pull it off in the end and won the entire tournament! And that’s another story. But oh well. We are all volunteers. So what can you do? We are not perfect. And in the end, it was just a fun competition! As for the PAE team, they really pulled it out. By the end of the tournament so many of our players had left on R&R or were unavailable to play. So the Fire and Rescue Department stepped up and gave us enough people to play the game! Most of these guys are from various Hispanic countries and had never touched a football before in their lives (unless you call it a soccer ball, like we do)! They did an amazing job for being newbies! It was a lot of fun! I really enjoyed being part of it and I have the T-Shirt to show for it!
On Sunday, November 22, I was able to get signed up to do my first Scuba Dive in Djibouti! What an amazing experience. The water here in Djibouti is so pretty and the reefs and fish give you plenty to look at. The water is extremely salty – so much so, when you get out of the water you can wipe it off your skin! I was able to get one dive in, but was also lucky enough to be able to snorkel out to see some of the famous Whale Sharks that migrate through here this time of year. We head out from Djibouti on a large boat – on this particular day there were about 41 people onboard to either scuba or Swim with the Whale Sharks. So it was packed on the boat. It’s about an hour and a half ride out to where we anchor, so it’s a nice morning journey. Got a little bit of sun on my pasty white Irish girl skin! So I went to see the Whale Sharks with the morning group. We all hopped into a dingie boat and headed out to another cove. We were the whole time on the lookout for any activity in the water that could be Whale Sharks. We did see some Dolphins romping through as well. Anyway, we finally see a Whale Shark. And this is where it gets funny. So the boat heads over and gets close, and the French speaking Capt. tells us GO. We all jump in. The Whale Shark swims away. We all swim back to the boat and climb back in. Which is not an easy task, mind you. No ladder! You have to lift yourself up out of the water and over the side of the boat, all with your fins and snorkel gear on! Not so pretty to see sometimes! And so it continued….we would then go chasing one or more down, the Capt. would say GO and we’d all jump in to see the Whale Sharks. One of these jumps into the water, I came face-to-face with one of them. As I landed plop into the water – it was swimming right for me! I panicked a little, like in the movies when someone is trying to scream underwater! That was me! I frantically swam up to the surface and yelled “Where did it go, where did it go??” it had of course swam right under me. Crazy! They are huge! But fortunately they do not eat people. They are plankton eaters. Just amazes me how a creature can get that big by only eating plankton in the ocean. Maybe the plankton are super fattening??
After coming so close to this one, I hop back, well pull myself back into the boat with all of my might and wait for the next one. I am able to jump in 4 times, pull myself back up with no help 3 of those times, but the 4th time I just didn’t have it in me anymore. I had to be helped up. Sigh… Plus, knowing I was going scuba diving later, I sure didn’t want to waste all my energy, right? At one point, a group from our boat and a couple other boats in the area were all swimming around these 2 Whale Sharks. They are so docile in the water. Just chugging along. They don’t seem to be too bothered by us, certainly not as excited to see us as we are to see them. But at one point I look over to see a man being lifted out of the water slightly before he slides right off of a 3rd Whale Shark. He was too busy checking out the ones we saw close to the surface to notice the one coming up right underneath him! That was awesome to see! A little scary for him, I would think! But cool! Once we are all satisfied with our Whale Shark fun, we head back to the big boat.
We have lunch onboard – a nice put your own turkey sandwich together buffet. Sandwiches are good. We hang out on the boat for a bit. The dive master today is my friend Matt. He went on the morning dive, and of course now needs a break before we go down for his 2nd dive, and our 1st dive of the day. I jump back in the water for a bit to do some snorkeling over the reefs. It’s so beautiful out here. Then it’s time to gear up. It’s been since April in Grand Cayman since I went scuba diving. So Matt is nice enough to remind me how to put my gear together. We are all set! We load ourselves into the smaller boat again and they take us out to our drop off point. We will dive from there basically back to the boat. It turns out to be a really nice dive. There is so much to see in these waters! Who would have thought? All-in-all, a great way to spend a Sunday! And just enough to give me the scuba bug – I am planning to do this more often!
Thanksgiving has come and gone already. Can’t believe it. They did a nice job with the Holiday here on Camp. The day kicked off with a Turkey Trot 5K – which I, of course, ran. It was one of my better runs here so far. Another T-Shirt to add to my collection. Next was a nap and then brunch. After brunch my friend Matt and I went to 11 Degrees North to play BINGO! Wow – they give out some awesome prizes! We didn’t win, but we had fun trying. After that we headed to Matt’s office where we were expecting to meet up with some other diving friends from the Camp and the guy from Dolphin Excursions that we dive with for dinner and a movie. Dinner is quite a spread! The Galley employees are all decked out in costumes and some of the military volunteered to serve all the food for us. This is great! We have turkey, ham, lobster tail, shrimp cocktail, mashed potatoes, corn, green bean casserole, deviled eggs, etc. You name it! We had it! It was an incredible spread! We all eat too much, of course. And it wouldn’t be Thanksgiving if we didn’t over eat. We also snag a bottle of sparkling grape juice to share and toast for what we give thanks for this year. Sitting in that room, I give thanks for all of my new friends who are helping me get through this deployment in Djibouti! I am also always so thankful and grateful for all those people I love back home and who keep me going too! I miss all of you so much! So after eating, we pick a nice traditional Thanksgiving movie – we watch the new Predators movie! It was great! Action packed! And you can’t go wrong with some Predators!
As November came to an end, I spent my evenings refereeing the Flag Football Play-offs. I went on a Swimming with the Whale Sharks trip with some people that I work with here…and brought Flat Stanley with me for the fun. My friend Lisa’s daughter Madelyn sent him to me from her school. So Flat Stanley is having quite a time here in Africa!
The 1st of December I found myself back out on the water for my first night dive! That was something for sure! Really enjoyed that. Hope to do some more of those in the near future too. The water is so different in the dark. What was most interesting, the fish must have liked my soap or lotion or something – they were all over me! Nipping at me while I was swimming. They were not on anyone else! When I turned off my flashlight, they would leave for a bit. It was actually very cool to be swimming so up close and personal with all those fish. We had a nice small group and really enjoyed all the stuff we saw. Different fish come out at night. But we didn’t see anything scary! Whew! No sharks… When I got back on the boat, I had a few small fish fall out of my shirt onto the deck. The nice young Marines proceed then to bet each other $20 to eat the poor little fish. Of course they eat them! Good grief! Take me back to my younger days growing up at Camp LeJeune!
So looking into December I see a lot of scuba diving in my future. I have also made arrangements to take the Commanding Officer (CO), Executive Officer (XO) and Command Master Chief (CMC) of the base on a Swimming with the Whale Sharks tour on December 26. So that should be fun too. Hopefully they will still be here, the Whale Sharks, that is.
I’ll wrap it up for now. Just wanted to stop in and say HI for a minute. Thanks for continuing to read about my adventures in Djibouti! This really does help me feel like I am connecting with all of you back home.
Y’all take care!
Ciao for now!
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