Mr. President playing games. Hearts and hearts and hearts and hearts. Such an amazing creature. The guys on the boat reported this fellow as the biggest loggerhead they'd ever come across and all he wanted to do was play! Heck, that's really all I wanted to do too... so we were quite a good match.

I still can't get over how unbelievably fortunate we were on this trip. On a night dive, just a day or two prior to this meeting, we were also graced with the presence of a stunning manta ray. Now these creatures are just about as elegant as the ocean gets. Spanning about nine feet in wing-span, the ray just wanted to come check us out, you know, see what the source of light in a dark ocean was. Neither of us had a camera, but in many ways, I am so, so glad. We just stayed perfectly still in the water as the ray floated back and forth about a foot away. It was such a heart-stopping experience that I really just did a crap job of relaying it. I honestly don't know how to accurately recount what I saw. With the music in my headphones as I write and recall, my eyes are getting a bit watery with overwhelming happiness (I'm cheesy, leave me alone) and my brain just doesn't want to put this into writing. Maybe that makes me a poor writer, but I could tell it to you for hours and hours with a light in my eyes, though can't for the life of me convey that expression over the internet. I don't really know if that's a bad thing or a great thing.

You often wonder why you are able to experience these things. Why that moment? Why you? Is it your energy? Is it the animal's? Is it a compatibility of the two when neither of you feel the least bit threatened? Is it the attitude on life that enables you to jump into the Coral Sea at night and travel 70 feet below surface? What's the worst that can happen? A cool epitaph? Guess so.

I cannot stress enough how frequently perspective can change when you let go of everything that makes you hold on tight to things you think are your thing, as Mr. Matthews would say. To step out of your microcosm you've become attached to and continue to grow. Never forgetting where you came from, but always building upon it. Before I left for this trip I had the habit of concerning myself with the behavior of people who really didn't care at all about the things I found to be most beautiful, trying to keep them close, when really, there was nothing to be kept close to. I convinced myself that strong faith in who I saw in many of them was who they really were or who they would eventually become. Dear Alli, who they choose to become has nothing whatsoever to do with you (duh) and your opinions (again, duh), Love, the World. It's not a matter of which is right or which is wrong, but a matter of preference. I seem to desire a distance from the familiar, while others wish to achieve and maintain it. One way is certainly not better than the other, just different. I suppose you just want for them to see the beauty you are seeing, but it is absolutely something that cannot be taught, just experienced firsthand and often, solo. Besides, they undoubtedly are seeing their own form of beauty as it is, as they say, in the eye of the beholder.

All legs of this trip so far have retaught me that there is a great big gorgeous world out there. I want to do everything one human can possibly do to peer into every nook and cranny, to never ever ever stop learning about absolutely everything. At the rate I'm moving and learning, I'm going to have to dip into other languages to continue to find synonyms for beautiful, gorgeous, wonderful, stunning, amazing etc., etc., etc. or else this blog is going to get redundant pretty soon. At the moment, I'm truly a vagabond and once again homeless, but I couldn't possibly imagine a better life.