wanderlust

i did it! i'm a divemaster! woohoo! go me!

the last couple weeks have been incredibly hectic, filled with lectures, exams and assisting on courses. as part of the divemaster requirements, you have to pass exams on decompression models, physiology, dive physics, equipment and dive skills/environment. i'm a total nerd, so i actually enjoyed learning it all - most of the concepts were familiar, but it was interesting to see them applied to diving. in addition, i had to assist on several courses - enough to get five confined water and five open water sessions.

one of the courses i worked on was an open water course - what made it challenging was that three of the students were from spain and the fourth was from montreal but also spoke spanish. entonces, the course was taught in spanish. i could follow what the instructor said since she spoke slowly, but once one of the spanish guys would start talking, it would be so fast i had no idea what they were saying. however, as the instructor reassured me, once we got underwater, it didn't really matter. i was the only DMT on the course, so i had the joy of sweeping the tarps by myself. at UDC, the confined water sessions are held on one of two tarps (shallow and deep) off the dock at the dive center. silt naturally tends to accumulate, so it is the job of the DMTs to sweep them off before the class starts, otherwise visibility will be terrible. being an underwater janitor isn't especially glamorous, but i found that sweeping the sand was somewhat therapeutic, maybe like a submersed zen garden. my main task during the course was to keep the students together and make the instructor's life easier. things went pretty smoothly, except one of the students was really nervous and during our first open water session, let things get to him. after the first dive, he began to panic, was unable to unclench his hands and complained of tingling. we put him on the emergency oxygen and the boat returned to the dive center, where he was taken to the doctor. in the end, it turned out he had been both dehydrated and very nervous, but was fine overall. i was really happy that all of them came back to finish the course over the next two days - we were worried that after that experience, they would have been turned off completely to diving.

i also had the opportunity to wreak revenge when i assisted on a rescue course. the experience was made even better since it was with the instructor i had from my rescue class as well as my buddy, mark. rounding out the teaching team was my friend claire, who spent the course pretending to be an alcoholic diver (taking pre-dive swigs of beer). mark and i were the klutzes - after the first class session, he took a tumble down the stairs of the dock while i tripped and impaled myself on my snorkel. a generous amount of expo marker fake blood rounded out the scene as other DMTs and instructors played the part of unhelpful onlookers. the open water session was a riot with the students dealing with a 'drunk' claire and mark and i being rowdy, having gotten our dive certifications online in a land-locked country. the class were good sports by putting up with the abuse and passed the course with flying colors. it was generally agreed that mark should get a job as an actor in PADI videos, based on his antics.

the last requirement i had to fulfill was my lead, meaning i had to lead a group of certified divers for a fun dive. the crucial part of this task is being able to find the boat again. i ended up doing mine as part of an advanced open water course - i was a bit nervous to be leading actual students and not just other DMTs pretending to be students. the class also grew in size on the day of my lead, so i ended up having seven students and two instructors behind me - yikes! complicating the issue further, we went to a dive site i'd never been to. the dive went pretty smoothly - everyone stayed at a good depth and i checked people's air periodically. on our way back, we saw another group from our boat headed in the opposite direction and i got worried for a moment - i was pretty sure we hadn't passed the boat yet, but why were they going the other way? decided to trust myself and continued on and was indescribably elated to see the dark outline of the boat above me a few minutes later. and with that, i'd finished all my DM requirements! hooray! i got to relax during the second dive while the students played underwater during peak performance buoyancy and go on another awesome night dive.

the final order of business is the snorkel test, which i mentioned in one of my previous posts. turns out that shortly after that entry, we had a staff meeting where we were told that both the thursday night bbqs and the snorkel tests would no longer happen at the dive center. as such, i've avoided this rite of passage so far, though hints of an unofficial snorkel test have been given..