Scuba Diving

To start, my luggage is here and not in the hands of some Hong Kong triad member, which is sweet. My first weekend in Phuket has been pretty amazing...and exhausting. On Friday, I started my PADI Open Water scuba diving certification course with Phuket ScubaCat. The first day of the course consisted of five 40 minute lessons in a classroom with short quizzes afterward, followed by a "fitness test" which is a 250 meter swim and 10 minutes of treading water (waaay more challenging than it sounds, or maybe I'm just out of shape?), then practicing about 30 different skills in an enclosed pool of water. Then on Saturday we finally got out into the open water for three practice dives, and I finished the course today with another open water practice dive and then two exploration dives.

In a way, diving reminds me of yoga...or at least some sort of underwater meditation. You're just taking very slow, steady, deep breaths through your mouth and if you don't relax you will overexert yourself and use too much of your air tank too quickly. And apparently, fish love to eat bananas.

On the first day, I discovered that I'm not very buoyant. But once I was in the open water I definitely got the hang of it and made a pretty significant improvement. I guess seeing all of the amazing fish and coral reefs serves as better motivation than the bottom of a swimming pool.

So many fish.

That's all for now...I start my TESOL course in the morning. Good times in Phuket.