Well, I've finally left Landaa. The last couple of weeks were interesting. I finally got to the point where I really just didn't care so that meant that I started to let crazy Celina out a bit. I became a lot more social during that time which was a bit of a pity seeing as I would be leaving soon and wouldn't be able to hang out with my new friends. There were some bad days and some good days.
I will say that I did have myself a few breakdowns during the last couple of weeks. One night in particular, we had a late football (soccer) game and when I went in to defend, I took a hard ball straight to the face. I fell back onto the pitch and immediately popped back up. Everyone was worried but I said it was okay. It definitely woke me up! But my face was killing me. I almost started crying just from the shock of it. Afterward, when we ultimately lost, I tried to get back to sleep. My face hurt so much, I took some Panadol and was slightly seriously worried that I might have a concussion. It was then that my brain decided that I needed to think about Lucious, so I basically cried myself to sleep, finally, at about 2 am. Not my favorite moment for sure.
We had a few more matches, lost all of them, though one was really close, 4-5. I took some more hard hits, this time just to the torso, but my newly developed Biggest Loser abs helped fight them off. The last game was quite fun as we were only marginally worse than the other team, not incredibly disadvantaged like before. We still had fun anyways.
Another not so good things. I was doing a course with some students and one had a lot of trouble equalizing. To make matters worse, right as we started out descent, I got nipped really bad by a jellyfish or other critter. I didn't see what it was, but my forearm became red and inflamed. I went down anyway. It was going okay, but we spent a lot of time going up and down between 4-7 meters. Eventually, I called it. We already completed out skills, and it wasn't worth it to keep doing this yo-yo thing. Upon heading back, I started to notice my chest hurting. Great. We got out and I was able to keep my composure in front of my students, but when they left, I broke. I was itching and burning everywhere, it hurt to breathe, I was frustrated with my performance and I just couldn't handle it. I fell down on my knees behind the shop and started crying, trying to catch my breath. I tried to control myself and after a few moments went inside to file some paperwork. My manager came over to me and asked if everything was alright, I said no and walked away to finish my work. I found some sting/bit cream and put it everywhere. I snuck in the back again to try and control myself but was fairly unsuccessful again. I headed for the shower again to try and rinse off all the sting remnants, and a coworker approached me and asked what was wrong. I couldn't really speak and she was freaking out, thinking that I couldn't breathe. I could, I just couldn't talk without crying. I slathered on some more cream, changed and sat on the stairs in the back. Still more of my coworkers found me. When I told them what was happening and they could see I was having trouble coping, they made me go to the doctor. He confirmed what I already knew. I most likely had some lung barotrauma from going up and down, that compounded with the stinger and stress of the dive had exhausted my ability to cope and I broke down. Nothing really to worry about, but I was so frustrated with it all, that it only made the situation worse.
Luckily that seemed to be the last of my very troubled days. After losing and breaking bits of my kit and having other things go wrong, I started to have some better times. I finished up two groups of students which was really rewarding. The first group was some of our apprentices and they were super sweet. They wanted photos of us before we headed for our last dive and then thanked me afterwards. One even wants to be an instructor himself, so we'll see how that goes. The other two were nice to do since I did the full course by myself. It wasn't exactly in the order I would have liked, but I did it all on my own, so that was rewarding in itself.
I started to get on with a lot of the staff more toward the end so it was nice to talk to people later. I still couldn't stay out too late due to my workout plan, but it was nice to get out of my bubble for a bit. We had a fun outing to another island one day and that was quite interesting. I just wanted to sleep so bad, and I got a bit in. I ended up drinking a bit too to deal with the bad music, and spent most of the night looking at the starts and trying to nap on the beach as people tossed sand on me. We got back way too late and I was so tired the next day for my workout. I was nearly done with the workout, and when I finally finished, I had dropped about 2 kilos, which isn't too bad over a month's time. But I'm starting to get some tone and definition in, so that is good and will help for the summer.
My last couple of days were quite nice. There were a lot of us leaving around the same time, so we had a couple of get togethers. Once consisted of naming country capitals and choosing who would drink if you got it wrong. Needless to say, I was forced to drink quite a bit and when I couldn't stand it any more, I pretended to pass out so I wouldn't have to taste it all again. It worked. We also had an after work briefing/meeting before they all left and there were a lot of goodbyes in that one. It was like it was a counseling or therapy session. Very strange and funny at the same time.
I had my last two days on the island off. The first one I went out on our manta ray research boat. I got to snorkel with over 15 mantas and it was incredible. I helped them to try and get IDs on some of them. I've only every seen one before and it was a bit farther away, so it was amazing to get so close to them. We snorkeled quite far and long against a bit of a current as well. I was passing out to and from the site. When I got back, I started to clean the rest of my diving gear and went to go back to my room. I had just gotten to the staff area when I saw about ten guys run after me with paint. I had no idea what was going on so I ran toward my room as fast as I could. They caught me and smothered me with paint. They thankfully let me put my phone and camera down as they took me to the beach to throw me in. I had completely forgotten that they do this celebration right before Ramadan. They continued to pelt me with color as we tried to get more people colorful. It was a lot of unexpected fun. I was just glad that I hadn't yet taken a shower. The color stains quite a bit though. It's two days later and I still have color under my nails.
The next day was very chill. My manager took me and the other interns out for breakfast at one of the resort restaurants. I freaked out a bit because I was finally able to have pork bacon again and there were copious amounts of nuts that I devoured. Afterwards, I headed to the beach to try and fix my divers tan one last time. Then it was shower and laundry time. I watched some episodes of 'Playing House' while I packed then I sort of sat around trying to figure out what to do. It was strange, it seemed like I had waited so long to leave and now I was just about to. I felt bad for some of the guys that said they would miss me and wished I wasn't leaving. I managed to stay up a little late to say goodbye to some people. Some were at the after hours hangout while others were at poker night. I attempted to retire a bit early, around 10, but then I started talking to people around and some of the guys stopped by to say good bye. I was attempting to go to sleep when some of my friends who were already back home started chatting to me, so I stayed up a bit talking to them. All in all, I managed to get about 4 hours of sleep before I needed to get up for the early morning flight.
Thankfully my bags weren't as heavy as I thought, and I should be able to avoid any excess baggage fees on my return home. I have completed one leg of my 7 flight journey back home. This one has a 15 hour layover included. Yay me. Luckily, some of the people on my flight, all employees, took me under their wing and we killed some time at a nearby hotel for drinks and some food before they had their afternoon flight. We even popped over to Male for a bit, but that was enough for me. It was nice to talk to them, they were all people that I'd never seen around the resort or even met, but we got on pretty well while we waited. They have since left to go do their STCW training, which is a lot of fun I might add, so it's just me in the airport for another 4 or 5 hours before check in. I was meant to maybe meet up with some other dive team members, but I have no access to wifi, so instead it's journal, music, eating and nap time for a bit. These first 8 hours or so have gone by decently quick, so let's hope the remaining ones do as well...
