Hurricane season is about to begin...

and we have definitely seen a change in the weather pattern. These small tornado's have popped up over the past couple of days. Its fun to watch them form and dissipate. I tried to get pictures so everyone could see how they go. The storms blow through here really fast. So it will rain for ten minutes and then be sunny again. Its really hit and miss...Kind of like in Rexburg where it's 95 and then 30 minutes later a blizzard. Anyway tornado's are a common site. They are not big, just little funnels that pick up sand and blow it everywhere. These ones happened just a mile or two down the beach from where I live.

First Tunnel

Second Tunnel is beginning to form.

Second Tunnel Forming

Second Tunnel fully form and first beginning to dissipate and becoming part of second

One big tunnel

I guess this is a very minute experience as what we are hoping that it is not going to be like once the real hurricane season begins.  When hurricane Ivan hit in 2004, the entire island was under 6 or 10 ft of water.  Good thing they have a hurricane evacuation plan!!

ALL BY MYSELF!!

Bryan left on May 1st for medical school and I am holding down the fort here in St. George. Well, Fiona and Roger hold it down too. Thanks to my parents they are renting out their winter house to us for a small price. I have to apologize for the abrupt stop of posts, but Bryan did most of the blogging and I don't take any pictures now that he is gone. We talk every night on our web cam's, we even ate dinner together the other night. He is doing great, but doesn't have a lot of extra time to blog. Maybe I'll take some pictures this weekend when I go camping with Russ, Diane and the girls.

SEVEN YEARS GOOD LUCK!!

Ever since our cruise in January, where our excursion to Sting Ray City got cancelled, I have wanted to do this.  A bunch of students got together and was given a discounted rate so I went.  Its amazing how these sting rays just come up and put their wings on you.  They give you squid to feed them and they just suck it out of your hand like a vacuum.  The of them feel like sand paper and their undersides are really soft.  Anyway, it was a great time.  I am still sad that everyone missed out on it during the cruise.  It definitely would have been the most fun thing we did.  After playing with sting rays we did some snorkeling along the barrier reef.  It was great.  We saw a huge five foot electric eel, some conchs, some huge parrot fish (about the size of my torso) and a bunch of other things.  The great thing about this reef was that it was mostly all still alive.  When we snorkeling in Key West most of the reef was dead.  This was much better.  Anyway here are the picks.  

You get seven years good luck for kissing a sting ray.  Hope its true!!

Orientation and of course....some snorkeling!!!

So its official class is now in sessions, however I did find some time to play today.  This morning we had to get up at 5:30 for orientation.  It was pretty good.  Most of the faculty and administration spoke.  They just explained the school and where we need to go to get help.  Then we had lunch and back to orientation.  It lasted over eight hours.  After orientation we decided to walk back to the residence hall.  Its about 2 miles so it was a pretty good walk.  Since it was still going to be light for a while we decided to go snorkeling.  My room is located right on the beach so its pretty awesome to walk right outside and go.  My roomates parents decided to get new snorkeling gear and donated the rest to me.  So now I can go all I want.  We spent and hour just swimming around and getting a pretty good workout.  Pictured below are my shell findings on the beach near my room and the fish that we saw while we were out.  There were plenty of other kinds of fish but I don't know what their names are...yet.

(The mouth is lettuce from the BBQ they had tonight.  

Clownfish

Nassau Grouper

Angelfish

Trumpetfish

Blue Tang

Parrotfish

Paddletail

Sergeant Majors

This is a triggerfish.  We saw a huge one.  My roomate said that he has never seen one as big as the one we saw today and he has been snorkeling for hears.  It was about 2 feet from head to tail and 1 foot from dorsal to belly.  We had to go around because we think we angered it.  It started to do a defensive dance and apparently they attack and bite when provoked.  Crazy enough as part of the dance you could hear it jaws snapping underwater.   It was awesome. 

Fireworm

The Turtle Farm!!!

Today was a really fun day.  I was able to go to the Turtle Farm.  Its the only place in the world where they breed turtles.  They have released over 31,000 turtle into the ocean since the 80s.  Its a great place to do something unique because they let you pick up the turtles (the little ones anyway).  Most of the turtles on the farm are really big.  Some are over 4.5 feet long.  We also bought turtle food.  It smelled like dog food, which it might have been.  When you hold your hand over the water all the turtle come over to get the food and then they reach out their necks and chomp it down.  Its also really cool to see them breathe.  They gasp for air when they come to the surface and blow water out their noses.   I guess they can hold their breathe for twelve hours.  Anyway, I hope you enjoy the pictures.   

Items in my purse for the bag tag:

1-Coupons (Laralee and I went to the women's expo yesterday.)

2- 4 pens (I can never find one so I have to keep several in there.)

3-Vitamins filled with cow bile to help my stomach problem (I diagnosed myself with a gall bladder problem.-- Laura Taylor RDH ha ha.)

4-Acid reducers

5-Ibuprofen

6-Ice Breakers xylitol mint packs

7-Water botttle

8- Heart shapped make up bag full of "the dog and pony show" touch ups.

9-Camera and case (camera in my hands when taking the picture.)

10-Spry mints and gum

11-Hobo wallet (every woman should have one.)

12-Keys

13-Nail file

14-B and B lemon sparkle lotion (Bryan's favorite.)

15-B and B warm vanilla hand sanitizer

16-Sponge that I got from the women's expo

17-Change

18-Bleaching trays

19-Socks (when I go to to the movies my feeth get cold.)

20-Sucker that I got for the women's expo, saving this for Jackson

21-Ahmm ahmm what every girl has in her purse (I was instructed to include everything in the bag tag.)

22-Earings

Bag Tag!!

I have been bag tagged by my sister to take a picture of everything that is in my purse, no cleaning allowed! I have a huge purse because I like to carry lots of stuff in it. Bryan's parents gave me this purse for my birthday and it has been the best purse I have had because I can fit so much stuff in it... and it's cute.

Laura tagged:

Diane

Lorie

Amber

Meg

Mandy

Stephanie

Show what's in your bag and there is no cleaning allowed!

Strolling Down Seven Mile Beach

Well I didn't really have much to do today except explore the island a little bit. So I decided to go for a walk down the beach. It was really nice and the sand was so soft. I even walked down by where we played when we came here on our cruise. It was just nice to be out and enjoy the sun and the cool ocean breeze. The water here is really clear and blue and the temperatures are in the 80s and 90s.

On my way back from the beach I was walking by this hedge and I could hear some rustling. Looked over and there was this 3 foot iguana sitting there. There are lizards all over the place as well as softball size crabs.

To finish out the evening, I had dinner at Calypso. It is also located on the beach front. I guess its the best restaurant in town. Anyway I had the Calypso chicken, calamari, and Toffee spongecake. It was yummy.