AURITIUS WAS AWEMAURITIUS WAS AWESOME! A whole group of people decided to go on catamarans and lay out and drink all day, but a group of us decided to go scuba diving. We only had 12 hours in Mauritius so we had to do everything in such a short amount of time. We got off of the boat around 10:30 to meet with our scuba group and we all got into taxis to go to a beach. We went to this slip of an island called flic-and-flac where we went to a BEAUTIFUL resort where we met with the Dive Masters and got suited up to go scuba diving. We scuba dove at a place called "the aquarium". It was called the aquarium because there were so many fish all around, it looked like I was on the inside of the aquarium. It was weird getting back in the water and being able to breathe, it has definitely been a while. There were times when I was so in awe of the fish that I forgot to breathe. There was a moray eel that was easily five feet long with a head the size of mine. Fishes swam all around us and were so close to us that we could touch them, but if we tried, they would swim to be just out of our reach. There were shells and clams that were opening and closing. You could actually see them open and close! We went vertically up and down the reef, and swam all around. A second moray eel popped out of the reef and snapped at us, freaking all of us out. When we were finished scuba diving, we went to the resort and had lunch on the chairs. Sitting on the lounge chairs and eating cheeseburgers (I haven't had a cheeseburger since the summer,  it couldn't have gotten much better than that. The beach was so gorgeous and we were pampered by the staff at the hotel. We all drove around the island and got a taxi car to the harbor where we took a water taxi to the ship. There was a relatively long line to get back on the ship, and we had to get back on before 6:00 or we would have gotten dock time, so we got there at the perfect time. Once we had gotten onto the ship, we had a big meeting with the entire shipboard community- one of the students was in a coma from drinking too much, and the ship handled it so well. Luckily all of the cards had played in his favor, and when it was realized that he was unconscious, they turned him in to the Dean who was luckily at the front of the bus, who called the medic and was able to plan an ambulance to take him to the Mauritius hospital. It has been an entire day, and last night was insane. All of a sudden we are going full speed, and we weren't sure if it was because of pirates, or if it was because of a different reason. We really thought that it was because of somali pirates because they had the staff on full attention, on each deck, and all of the heavy duty water guns were pulled out. It was ridiculous. As it turns out, a girl had internal bleeding so we stopped right by an island. as it turns out, it is called Diego Garcia and is an american military base? we were forbidden from taken pictures, but the military men that came on pilot boat were all decked out with navy uniforms and HUGE machine guns. they were waving to us and taking pictures, so that was pretty cool.   came on pilot boat were all decked out iwth navy uniforms and had MASSIVE guns!! word on the ship is that MONO is going around! good thing mom prepared me with tons of hand sanitizer and that i will be in INDIA IN FOUR DAYS!!