Stefani Andrews--Summer Update
7/20/2010 12:00:00 AM | Synchronized Skating
July 20, 2010
Hey everyone,
I hope everyone has been having a wonderful summer. I know I have. I still can't believe we're half way through July. It feels like just yesterday I turned 20 and my summer vacation was starting. Flying home on my birthday is nothing new; it was either that or taking a final for the past three years. However, being bumped up to first class was definitely an awesome present.
The day after my return to the sunny state of California, my mother and I went on the biannual dog walk for the Samoyed Club of Orange County. (Yes, I am in a dog club.) We've been members of this club for 11 years, since I got my dog for my ninth birthday. Since then, my summer has been filled with work, seeing friends and family, working out and, of course, skating.
For the past three summers I have been working for a family, babysitting, which is always nice, knowing I have a job to come back to. This year, however, the job evolved into even more. The girl that I had primarily been working with the past summers also ice skates. I spend my time driving her and two other girls to the rink. I help them warm up before they get on the ice and occasionally help them out with various skating skills. Their coach also asked me to help with an on-ice edge class, and off-ice classes that range from strength training, to air turns, to stretching. Occasionally she has me teach the on-ice class by myself, and I try to incorporate some synchronized skating into the mix. The girls always have a lot of fun with that.
Towards the end of June, I made an almost three-hour long trek to downtown San Diego to visit some teammates. Mary Halling came to town for a few days, so I went down to spend time with Mary and the San Diego crew (Lauren Bracken, Kerrie Wilcox, and Christine Poletto). We had an awesome time. We went to dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory, and then went to Seaport Village.
Fourth of July weekend was also pretty eventful. I went to Huntington Beach with a friend I hadn't seen since last summer and we met the band Allstar Weekend. The guys were really down to earth and I even got a picture with the bassist. Then I went over to my aunt's house and we had our usual Fourth of July pot luck. I spent the rest of the day with my family. We lit fireworks and made smores after the sun went down.
Although the rest of my summer has been fun, the real fun just began. I have been a certified open water scuba diver since 2005. Unfortunately I have not gone diving since then, but this summer I decided to take a class called Coral Reef Ecology through Miami. To get back into the swing of things I decided to enroll in an advanced open-water scuba diving class, being an advanced open water diver means that I can dive as deep as 130 feet instead of just 60 feet, which is the limit for an open water diver.
The certification involves making five dives; a deep dive which is below 60 feet and a navigation dive are required. The other three dives we will be doing are fish awareness, photography, and peak performance buoyancy. This past Sunday I actually took a dive boat, the Magician, out to Catalina and did my deep dive, photography dive and fish awareness dive. For the deep dive, we went to 72 feet. It was pretty amazing and very cold. For the photography and fish awareness dives, we stayed up higher--mostly at 25 or so feet--and it was definitely warmer.
This dive experience was awesome. I had never gone diving off a dive boat before and everyone on it was very nice. The deck hands helped us to gear up and enter the water. They also made sure they knew the amount of time we were in the water and helped us back onto the boat. The boat provided air for our tanks, as well as breakfast, lunch and a snack on the way back to San Pedro. Unfortunately, I did not really eat much; my stomach didn't really like the rocking of the boat. But everything smelled really good, and I definitely had an awesome experience. We have two dives left to do before we become advanced open water divers. We will be heading back to Catalina again next Sunday to perform the last two dives; peak performance buoyancy and navigation.
In August I will be going to an island called Curaçao, which is located off the coast of Venezuela in the Southern Caribbean Sea and it is part of the Netherlands Antilles. I will be there for a week for the Coral Reef Ecology class. I don't know too many specifics but I do know I will be diving three times a day. I will be looking at coral cover, how much area the coral is covering, and Christmas tree worms, little worms that live inside the coral. We are going to be using underwater video cameras to record what we see. We also have a GPS that will tell us our location, which will enable us to draw conclusions based on previous data that has been collected.
I'm very excited for this trip. I know it is going to be an amazing experience.
This is a continuation in a series of updates from some members of the Miami University synchronized skating team on what they've been doing this summer.
Players Mentioned
