Where are the pictures you ask?
They're being taken, but with all day activities, socializing, night life, and PADI studying, and other, I've been a bit busy :)
Then, there is the small problem that it's hard to edit and gamma correct (i.e. fix the color balance) of pictures when you are on the beach, and you can barely see the laptop screen (besides, there are other things I should be looking at ;-) )

I'll see what I can do as I get a little time if that happens, I barely make it to the internet cafe as is (as it should be :) ), besides uploading pictures when I post my blog through my cell phone is not going to happen :) and my pictures are usually so big that it will take quite a while to upload them from the internet cafe since their uplink is usually a slow 128KB.

What's interesting too, is that I think I've been taking fewer pictures this year, I guess partly because there isn't much of a point to take the same pictures than last year (about 360) which are all here , and also because I'm trying to cut down a bit on pictures in general too (I've gotten the hints, thanks :) )
Well, you're in luck, I managed to upload 3 days worth of pictures, and you can find them here

Anyway, I got done reading the 120 pages of PADI training around 02:00 this morning, and while I was really tired, I only got into a half sleep with weird dreams and eventually got up 30mn later to take an ambiant which took nicely care of that problem (although between Sonata and that, it'd be the 3rd day in a row, not great... I guess it does confirm that my sleep cycles are very picky)

The next morning, I was at least woken up by my watch, confirming that I got slightly more 6H of uninterrupted sleep, and Alain and I went to the harbor for our pickup to the dive site where we studied and practised this morning. The bad news is that when I jumped into the boat (reasonable jump down), I mis-landed a bit and because I was wearing my slipper-like sandals, I managed to somewhat injure the left side of my hip (probably nothing, but still somewhat painful right now). That, plus the blisters, and the soreness from wakeboarding made me feel like an old beaten up man today (at least one person will know what I'm talking about :).

We got picked up in the local harbour to go to the dive center, and I burst out laughing when I saw that (don't tell me I'm the one with a dirty mind, they're the ones who named their island that way :) )


Anyway, we went to the dive center, and Upi, our Dutch teacher told us "ok, let's go study in my office", by which he meant "the bar/restaurant next door" (where his hot british wife happens to work :). I'm not bitter to have spent all that time reading (even though it feels right now that once again, not a lot stuck in my brain), but would I have not done it now, I wouldn't have later either. Either way, Alain showed up without having read much at all, and we went through the review questions and he did fine anyway.
After that, we actually went in the swimming pool for the first time (being by the sea, we had simply done all the exercises there). The funny part was that it was a hotel swimming pool with guests bathing and sun bathing, which was a bit sunreal when we showed up in full diving gear and dove in their pool and worked mostly under them :)

After lunch, we went for another sea dive and more training, as well as a slightly better dive. Since I'm a moron, I forgot my under water camera for the second time, but I did put it in my bag for next time though.


After getting back, and a stop at the internet cafe which took a little while due to blog catching up, and all the mails I had received, we had a tapas party, where each room had prepared finger food that we all shared.
Then, for some reason, we followed part of the group in some sunside bar that was somewhat empty, but I feel like sleeping tonight, so that's just as well.
The good news is that I got all my pictures edited and sorted, so I'll try to upload them next time I reach an internet cafe. I will even try to add a few pictures to the existing blog entries.
Ok, 02:00, time for bed, the next nights will be much later and wilder than tonight, so I might as well get a little sleep now.

Pictures from Tuesday