Snorkeling in Eilat

It's kind of ironic that the entire day was centered around snorkeling, and I didn't get a single picture with my snorkel on... Well anyway, bless Elyse’s heart.  I woke up to a call from security telling me in a thick Arabic accent to “Run.  Now.  The buses are leaving.”  Elyse noticed that I was missing (out of 78 students) and ran in to have security give me a wake up call.  It’s a mercy my mom taught me to pack my bag the night before, because my eyes popped open, I answered the phone and literally 15 seconds later I had my Chacos on and was out the door.  I have never run up stairs faster in my life than I did to make it onto that bus.  Anyway, I made the bus, and the 4 hour ride to Eilat (southern tip of Israel, bordering Egypt) began.  I went to bed at 2:30am and the bus left at 6am, so I used my towel as a pillow and stretched out in the isle of the bus.  And good news, I only got 2 feet to the face…  We took a bathroom break where I bought a breakfast crissont (I missed breakfast and didn’t grab my sack lunch in the rush…) and watched the teachers and bus drivers fix the broken bus door.

The bus ride felt like forever, and upon first arrival, the beach looked windy and cold.  But what the heck, we came to snorkel, so we all put on our togs and snorkels and swam out to see the cool fish.   I love fish.  But, I guess I shouldn’t have gone in with such high expectations, I mean, Eilat is no Samoa!  If for nothing else, the snorkeling part of the day reminded my of the awesome times snorkeling for several hours a day with my parents and Ali in the clear, warm, and cool-fish-infested waters of Western Samoa.  Good times!  Well, the water here was freezing, and some control freak manager guy kept yelling over the intercom “BYU Jerusalem group.  You must stay between the two bridges.  Do not swim out to sea.”  And when I say “kept” I mean we heard that announcement over 30 times… Yeah, iras.  But other than that… we had an awesome time chillin’ on the sand and playing games.  Oh, and watching kite surfers and parisailers J

Oh, and debating whether the couple beside us was a male and a female, or two males.  What do you think?

And we ate popsicles and pretzels...

And took pictures with windblown hair:

And we did a little yoga/ballet:

And We ALL got sunburnt!

Then we went to my favorite kibbutz for dinner, with ice cream included!  And back to the bus for another 4 hour ride back to the JC.  This one was actually super fun!  I stood in the isle for at least 3 out of the 4 hours telling funny stories from our childhoods, and from church (sacrament meeting in particular) with the 6-7 people around.  It was dark and we were tired, and the stories just kept getting funnier and funnier.  How did I luck out to get such awesome friends?