Boo-ooo

Nights are cooler these days, about 18 degrees, and the cool breeze is lovely - especially in early morning when I get up and make coffee. Yesterday the sea was very calm and the tide was very low, so the four of us went out for a snorkel witht he intention to make it to the barrier. There is so much reef between the shore and the barrier that we never make it, and we didn't make it there yesterday either. Every time we go snorkeling we see something new. Yesterday we saw 3 beautiful French Angelfish - they are big and graceful, and they don't seem disturbed by our presence. Tim and Dylan saw a Green Moray - the biggest of the Morays - and it was about 8 feet long! I take the time to show Léo all the vegetation and now he shows me interesting corals, not only fish. Big Brain Coral, lots of purple Sea Fans, Black Sea Rod, and a lot of Anemones, and hundreds of Queen Conch. Dylan and Léo are both inspired by what they see underwater, and make drawings when we get back to the house. Tim goes snorkeling every day in the afternoon, it's part of his routine now. It's the first time in his life that he enjoys swimming with the gear on - he loves it. To enjoy snorkeling one must be able to relax and float around while observing the life forms all around - it's a very serene state of mind.

Today the boys and I were supposed to go to the Xcalak elementary school, but we decided to skip it. It's Jane and Judy's new ESL program and I just got the line-up last night. I wanted to prepare this morning but a rather upsetting discovery turned off all my enthusiasm for a couple of hours. All the little sea treasures that we had gathered in the last 3 weeks have been thrown to... the garbage! While we were in Chetumal last weekend, the owner of the house decided to come up and take a look at the upper unit. Hey, this is her house after all! But she decided to tidy-up a little... not sure why - Martha had cleaned the place very well. Upon our return I noticed that a couple of things were moved around, but nothing strange really - a chair in a different place, the ashtrays put away, etc. Then this morning Tim asked me if I know where our little treasures went. We had a collection lined-up on the wide railing, and Tim had put the smaller ones in a glass container on our bedside table. All gone. A sad mistake, she feels bad of course. She offered to take some from her husband's collection - but this was a collection of little treasures we had found along our first 3 weeks here, nothing can really replace them. And the memories of the reaction of the kid's finding their first piece of coral, or choch shell, etc, you know... So I took 4 plastic bags and the four of us went for a long walk on the beach - hunting for interesting treasures again. I was upset and so was Tim. We did find cool things, but it's not the same.

We got back and had lunch, and worked on our song. It's inspired by the sea, and our goal is to record it before we leave Xcalak.