The Rogue Islander: AKL Part II and Scuba Adventures

So in the last two weeks, a lot has happened. Matt and I got scuba certified...and we went to Ah Lang again.

First the Ah Lang story:

As you know, AKL rocked our worlds with her food, her games, her anger, and her booze (with a little love mixed in there somewhere). We had to go back. We had to make sure she remembered us and still loved us and we had to eat more of that food. Spoiler Alert: mission accomplished. We went for lunch on Saturday and the restaurant was full. We put in our order and, sadly, it didn't seem like AKL recognized us. We didn't give up hope, though. Lunch was amazing:

Stone Pot Bibimbap - rice, egg (over-easyish), meat, and veggies all mixed together and SO GOOD
Fish Jun (pancake) - exactly what it sounds like and also SO GOOD
There are 6 of those little bowls that have small tastes of kim chee, seaweed salad, yummy noodles and other goodies

The best wings I've ever had. Perfectly crispy, not fatty, amazing flavor. I don't even like wings, but I could eat these every day and not get tired of them. In fact, I want them now.

and we ended up being the last people in the restaurant for lunch. We started talking to a girl and her guy friend who were also there and had been helping out washing dishes and serving food. It turns out that she was AKL's daughter, Samantha. While we were talking, our last experience at the restaurant came up and, when Sam found out Matt cut his finger while washing knives, she cracked up, ran to the kitchen, and started speaking rapidly to AKL in Korean. Apparently, Sam helped out at the restaurant the day after our AKL Adventure 1 and AKL had given Sam a hard time all day, telling her to be careful with the knives while washing them, citing a "Stupid Haole" as the reason.

We were back in.

AKL came out with some Tofu for us to try and inspected Matt's finger. We enjoyed the rest of our lunch and brought our dishes to the back and wiped down our table. Sam loudly expressed her gratitude saying that all customers should be like us. Matt and I were totally modest and kept it cool and were about to leave....when...

AKL gave us some soup to-go that she only makes for her daughter at her request. What kind of soup? Amazingly delicious, homemade fishcake soup. We had it for dinner last night and it tasted like victory.

And now, the Scuba Story:

Matt and I had wanted to get Scuba Certified since we came out here. Unfortunately, it took forever for us to take the class because I had to get medically cleared for a variety of stupid reasons. As you can guess, that took a while. Finally, though, we signed up for Open Water Certification. With this certification, we can dive in "open" conditions (read: no caves) to 60ft.

The class went from 2/27-3/4. We had classes in a classroom on Mon/Wed and classes in the pool on Tue/Thurs both 6-9 PM, then certification dives on Sat/Sun from 7:30 am-noonish. Needless to say, it was a packed week - especially for Matt. The low point? Being stuck in the pool from 6PM until 12:30AM on Tuesday. I'll spare you the details, but know that on Tuesday, our group had 7 people in it. By Dive 2 on Saturday, there were three of us...including Matt and myself. I thought we were on some type of reality show.

The high point? Scuba Diving in the ocean for the first time. I've had flying dreams for as long as I can remember and the first thing that entered my mind when we started exploring the reef was that diving feels like flying. When you're neutrally buoyant in the water, you don't have to worry about floating or sinking, you just worry about controlling where you want to go and it is awesome!

We did our 2 dives Saturday, 2 dives Sunday and were certified...and then did another fun dive on Sunday for a total of 208 minutes of bottom time (all at Electric Beach).

Some high points of those dives:
-watching whales breaching and fluking before getting in the water
-a turtle hanging out with us while doing some of our qualifying skills
-riding the current from the giant pipe
-another diver getting porcupined by a banded urchin:

Yesterday, Matt and I tried to dive Hanauma Bay for a change of scenery. Unfortunately, the conditions were too rough, so we went back to Electric Beach for our first two solo dives. I was a little nervous, but had no reason to be because Matt was an amazing navigator and we had a blast! We used the new underwater camera that my dad surprised us with (THANK YOU!) and, while we are not pros yet, we got some great pictures. I have to admit (though I hate to) that Matt was much better at getting a great shot. I kept drifting away from the subject, haha. Well, I'll stop babbling and let you enjoy some of the pictures:

Matt's Robot Part I...that large coral-covered mass in the background is the pipe

Robot II - Oh yeah

He's got moves. This one looks like he's about to karate chop a shark.

Note: It's very hard to look cool in scuba gear. I am so not there yet.

There are two schools of fish here. The first is the obvious one, I got really close to these guys without the camera. The other is next to the pipe in the background, just hanging out.

Fishy fishy

Matt found an awesome coral overhang/cave that looked very scary and intimidating...until we realized that it's where turtles come to rest. We were surrounded by sea turtles. One was as big as I am, but moved too fast for us to get a good picture.

Rocky I

Rock Neck Monster

While Matt was signaling for us to leave, I had my back to this cave. His eyes went wide and he motioned behind me - I thought there was a shark - but it was this guy. Apparently he was coming from the surface and almost hit me in the head, so when I turned, I had a turtle butt in my face that I thought was a shark. I might have freaked a little bit.