We left Tallahassee after I got off work and started our 7 hour car ride... I brought my laptop and some chick-flicks to watch because I thought Natalie would be riding in the back with me, but David made her drive the first half of the trip (to the Okahumpka turnpike rest stop!... thats home! I mean half way for this trip was a trip home for me!). However we did find other ways to entertain ourselves... we decided around Lake City to play the alphabet game... Pretty much took us allll the way to Ft. Lauderdale, in fact the school "Z"one by David's house, to end the game and find our "z"... I was actually surprised at how fast the trip went by... I really enjoyed getting to know Natalie and David better...
Once we got to Ft. Lauderdale, Natalie, David and I ate some delicious Honey Baked Ham with his family while we waited for the rest of the group to get there... Lance Anderson, Kristin Ladle and Ben Pope weren't leaving Tallahassee until like 6pm so they were like at least 6 hours behind us, and Chad McFerrin and Sara Renion were driving over from Tampa... I MISSED Chad and Sara... They were home from Tally for the summer and Sara is awesome... Chad is leaving for his mission to the Las Vegas, NV missions in a couple of weeks, so this was our last time to get to see him... Pretty much the other Tally kids didn't end up getting to David's parent's house until 2 am because they used GPS and evenutally hit a police road block in Ft. Lauderdale and had to have David come and use his dad's police badge to get them through...
The first dive site was where I got my bearings... I had to learn that for once in your life its ok to be a mouth breather... in fact, if you try to breath through your nose when snorking you might die! Once I got used to that and the fact that I wan't going to drown and that there was sooo many people for the shark, that I KNEW would attack me, to choose from, I started to reall enjoy being in the water... On the second dive site, there was a statue of Christ that they had put down in the water in the 1940s and it stood about 20 ft. tall and was about 30 feet under the water... it was sooo cool because you're snorkling around and the all of a sudden BOOM! so see this statue, and you think that you've discovered some hidden treasure... then you see the hundred other people looking at it too... still though, it was one of the coolest things ever! I even got gutsy enough to dive down and touch the hands like all of the Catholic people were doing on the trip! haha The hands were about 10 feet under, and even though you can dive into a pool 1o feet under no problem, diving down to that was a little difficult and the pressure about kills your ears! I got a rush from doing it though, so I did it three more times! At this dive site I also got to swim with a sea turtle! It was probably my favorite part of the entire trip, getting to swim along side it for like 10 minutes...Then on the last dive site (we got to do three total) there was an underwater cave that you could dive into (about 15 feet under)... when you dive through the cave and come out the other side, you swim through a school of minnoes... you know the fish from Finding Nemo that make the shaped and stuff... well Chad, Ben, and Natalie were all gutsy and craz enough to do it... I know I couldn't have... they said that their ears were totally killing them... 
We had a blast to say the least, and my mom would totally be proud of how good I was at constantly putting on my sunscreen... I NEEDED to day in the sun... working inside all summer has made me ghostly white which is weird seeing that I'm usually abnormally tan during the summer... That night we decided to go to the Cheesecake Factory in Ft. Lauderdale... We didn't end up eating till about 11 pm, but it was soo worth the wait.. the food was great... the entertainment was great (that would be Ben Pope trying to get our woman chef's number)... and of course the Cheesecake was to die for! Needless to say, we all went home stuffed!
Sunday morning we all went to church in David's home ward... It was really cool because their ward is so racially mixed... I mean there was probably 1/3 hispanics, 1/3 african americans, and 1/3 whites... I've never seen it like that... usually the wards I've been in are almost all whites with a few others mixed on it, but it was really cool to get to see... Lance got to practice his Portugese and the rest of us got to talk to one of the elders serving there who was from Montreal and was in Ft. Lauderdale speaking Creole... It was tight and he was a pretty cool guy! We came back to David's house to rest up before we drove home again... There was a coconut tree in David's backyard, so we all decided to try some of the coconut water (no, not milk... this was water, and it tasted like crap!) and we also decided to eat some of it... eating it was ALOT better than drinking it... Then while we were chilling, I asked David's mom if she had a map so I could see exactly how far south we drove... she cracked out this atlas of the US and I literally fell in love with the thing... I was sooo facinated by all of the maps and stuff to the point where she gave it to me because she had another one... lets just say that the atlas entertained me for the good first half of the car trip home, which went by surprisingly fast too...
All in all it was a great trip, even though I had to spend a ton of money, and an expereince I'll never forget... I needed the time away from Tallahassee to get to know new people and to do things I'd never done before... It was so refreshing and relaxing and honestly, its a trip that helped me out a lot... I had a BLAST!
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Thanks for the comment you sweet person you! If it is a question or something for me to reply to, check back here as I tend to answer through the comments. I appreciate all the love!
Love Kaylee