Turning Ten and SCUBA

 Maia has been a cruising kid for just over two years now (well, at least of the years she can recall...). In that time she's sailed over 10,000 miles, visited seven countries, learned a smattering of several languages, started the ukelele, made friends with kids from hundreds of different towns and many different back grounds. She's hiked through varied terrains and shopped in stores where she could barely identify things. She's swum with five types of sharks, stingrays, manta rays, sea lions and dolphins. She's been in storms and watched sunrises that made her gasp in awe.

And she's grown-up.

In a few days she'll be ten. And compared to the seven year-old who only wanted to learn to drive the dinghy and maybe paddle her kayak as far as the boat next door--she's a very different person. She's wise and calm, hard working and helpful. And for her tenth birthday she wanted to learn to dive.

During the past few months she worked through the PADI manual (I think she memorized it...) and learned all she could about diving. Then our friends Mark and Val brought her a Maia-sized rig and yesterday she did her first dive.