Kiyomi Yamazaki from Japan Three years ago, I took a trip to Cancun, Mexico with a friend of mine. There we joined the tour "Swimming with Dolphins." There was a huge park where there were several pools in which dolphins swam. I was excited about what would happen next. We wore swimming suits and were divided into small groups of five to six people. At the pool side, we had a lecture about the dolphins from the advisor who had trained them. All the dolphins had been trained well, and they would do some exercises with us under the control of the advisor. In the pool, we first started by touching the dolphins. Each of us in turn, walked to a place where the trainer told us to stand and waited for a dolphin to come. When the advisor whistled, the dolphins swam to those points and let us touch them. The back of the dolphin was very smooth, softer than I expected. The next step was to be kissed by the dolphin. I waited at the point and lowered my face slightly down to the water. After the whistle, the dolphin swam to me and touched my cheek with his beak. That was my first and last time to be kissed by a dolphin. There were many exercises with the dolphins. For example, I swam by gripping the back fins of two dolphins. In another exercise, we got into pairs and raised a pole over the water at the middle point of the pool. At the advisor's signal, the dolphins swam to us and jumped up over the pole. They were very skillful. But the exercise that I was most excited about was "My Jump." In the pool, I was ordered to float and wait. Soon two dolphins swam to me and pushed the soles of my feet with their beaks, making me jump up out of the water! At the end of the tour, there was some free time. We swam freely with the dolphins, but after a while, they were in a bad mood and began to pat us with their tails. The advisor ordered us to cross our arms in front of our chests and not to move. I was very scared, but there was no way to be safe except obey her. She whistled several times and gathered the dolphins. After that, the dolphins were in a better mood. The long free time was over. When we came back from the pool, we found that they had videotaped our exercises. I bought the videotape to have a memory of swimming with the dolphins in Mexico. More
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