This past week for spring break, I decided to go to Roatan, Honduras, to learn how to scuba dive. Originally, I had planned a trip to Mexico to help build a house but unfortunately I couldn't get enough people signed up to make the trip happen. It did occur to me a couple times throughout the week that I really should be in Mexico serving someone, but sometimes a vacation isn't all that bad, is it?
It was wild to see God provide on this trip, particularly during the first part of it. You see, there are times when I travel that I don't go with much of a game plan, except to get there and see where life takes me. My grand scheme once I arrived in Roatan was to sleep in an airport for several hours until a bus left for another city and then catch a ferry eventually to Roatan which is in the Bay of Islands and is their biggest island. Thankfully, God knew my tendency towards idiocy and placed a woman on the plane that was sitting next to me in the exit row with an empty seat in between us. She suggested that I get a room at her hotel that she was staying at when we landed rather than stay in the airport, probably a good idea. So I did that, then caught a flight with her to Roatan.
When I arrived in Roatan, I was supposed to meet my couchsurfing host at 5pm at Sundowners, a local bar. Earlier on Friday she had notified me she wouldn't be able to host me for 3 nights like we had originally agreed on so I was kinda screwed as to where I was going to end up staying the last part of the week while I was there. God showed up again and provided me with a person whom I asked what time she had since my couchsurfer was running late and I wanted to make sure I had the right time. It turns out she was a couchsurfer too and had a place for me to stay for the rest of the week! It was really humbling to see God's hand at work in my life, especially those first couple of days.
The first night, I went to my original couchsurfer's studio apartment and stayed on her futon. The next day she took me to her dive shop to start my lessons on scuba diving. Long story short, there is way more involved with scuba diving than I had ever before imagined. It was quite the role reversal for me since I'm usually the teacher and this time I was the student. I enjoy situations like that as it helps me become a better teacher I think as I see how it can be so frustrating to learn a new skill and not just want to give up after a few unsuccessful tries. I hung in there though and caught on finally, so that felt pretty good to get that under my belt. The coral reef was truly beautiful, and I got to see a ton of cool fish as well as lobster, a spotted eagle ray, and a turtle on top of all that! I don't think I'll do a lot of scuba diving in the future though as it seems like it's pretty expensive to get into.
While I was in Roatan, I must have caught a bug of some sort. At first I thought it was just some bad food that I had one day but when my stomach was upset the next day and day after that I suspected that I had a bug of some sort that I had caught. Today, I finally took some imodium ad so hopefully that will work its magic for me. I didn't take any prior to today because I wanted to give it a chance to pass but I have to get back to work tomorrow so now I'm more concerned that I have my 'movements' under control a little better before I go back to work with an upset stomach.
Yesterday, a couchsurfer requested to stay with me for today. Usually, people provide you with a little more heads up but I've been in the same spot as this guy was so I gladly said yes. Especially since I just stayed with some couchsurfers in Roatan for 5 nights. It's a really neat opportunity to pay it forward.
