Part Two : Scuba Scuba Scuba!!!

I am so sorry this is so late!!! This week has been crazy and I have not made enough time for doing everthing I need to do. But it has been a great week overall, so the craziness has definitely been worth it.

Onward with stories!!

Probably my favorite part about last week was that I had the time and the perfect opportunity for the first time in my life to learn how to scuba dive! This has always been difficult for 2 reasons; I live in Kansas and 2) it does take 4 or 5 days of diving and lessons to get it done (thus difficult with my job).

This adventure I got to begin with 3 friends; Marie (Norway), Sandy (NYC), and Poonam (our teacher from India) and they were the perfect combination of people to do this with! Marie and Sandy are both excellent swimmers (Marie is a surfer and Sandy swam in college) and Poonam and I are not so great (to say the least) so we ended up being paired up a lot. It was nice to work with someone who went the same speed as me :)

Our teachers were Don, from England who is a paramedic in real life, and Medz, from Australia-also a paramedic. Their accents were incredibly fun to listen to, and it was nice to know that if I swallowed too much sea water and passed out, they would probably be able to keep me from dying. We started out by meeting them for the first 2 days at a swimming pool at a hotel in downtown Abu Dhabi. We definitely got some weird looks from the people spending their holidays lounging beside the pool. We learned everything from basic diving rules (always have a buddy, no matter what we cannot hold our breath while diving so our lungs don't explode) to what all the equipment does, how it works, and what we have to do in case it malfunctions while we are underwater.

In the pool we practiced all basic skills along with troubleshooting diving problems and how to communicate and interact with whoever our diving buddy happens to be. It was so much fun!! Probably my favorite thing I learned was how to clear my mask of water while underwater. Getting water in my eyes has always been one of the most painful things about being underwater, for me, and it is so cool to be able to control that and not have to freak out even if my entire mask fills up with salt or chlorine!! Also, for the record, fins and a mask are not to be confused with "flippers" and "goggles". Medz kept on telling us that we were going to have to buy him a beer for every time we messed up with our diving terminology. I believe I owed him eight, when the course was finished. :)

Have 2 days and 5 pool dives, I got to go to the open ocean for the first time! We met at the dock early last friday morning, had a donut or two, then put together our gear, loaded up the boat and drove out about 45 minutes into the Gulf. It was so beautiful! The water is a comfortable temperature and it is lovely and blue. I did get pretty sea sick the first day we went out, but as long as the boat was moving or I was bobbing about in the incredibly salty water, I did ok. My favorite part was just getting to go 18 or 20 feet down to the coral and swim around with the cute fishes and large amounts of coral for 30 - 45 minutes at a time without having to come up! I've heard there are other places where the coral is more beautiful and there is more wildlife, but I definitely enjoyed my first dives. We were able to do 2 dives on Friday, then 2 more dives on Saturday morning, without incident, in order to actually complete the training. Both days we took turns buying some snacks, and our teachers brought fresh pineapple, watermelon, and drinks for all of us. By the end of the 2nd day I was so exhausted that I am surprised I didn't pass out in the cab on my way to pick up Adam at the airport!

So yes, now I am certified to scuba dive anywhere in the world!!! I definitely plan to do more of it in Malaysia. I've heard there is some nice coral and really cool shipwrecks around our area. I think the only downside I can see to actually becoming more involved with this activity is that if I ever decided to start getting my own equipment (which I don't see as being likely), it becomes kind of bulky and inconvenient because it involves so much stuff! Wetsuits, scuba tanks, regulators, dive computers, fins, masks...so much stuff.

It was definitely an excellent way to spend my week off (because we I wasn't scuba-ing, I was sleeping because I was tired from scuba-ing), and it helped make the time pass really quickly until I got to see, Adam! Which I will talk about in the next post (which should be up really soon as my mother pointed out to me that I have been lax in my posting this week).

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and enjoyed a piece of pie for me!!

Love you

Becca