Underwater Adventures

Good Morning!

I had quite an exciting weekend here in Australia. I took a crash course in scuba diving and got my open water certification in just one weekend! I'll start from the beginning though. . .

Thursday night a friend on my deck (or hall as we say in the States) asked me to go to an Asian restaurant in town with her. She's from China so I was pretty excited to try some Chinese food that somebody from China recommends. So, my friend Lisa (from my deck), her friend Vicky (also from China), and my friend Justin all went to a little Chinese restaurant in Wollongong. We ordered a ton of food and had a really nice time. The food was excellent and they both said it was similar to the food they eat at home. (I would say that the food at Ming Wok was just as good though). The girls were really funny because they told us all about how they LOVE American boys. Apparently they think that American boys (especially ones from Colorado) are a lot more attractive than Australian or Asian boys. Vicky is talking about traveling to the US and I can't help but wonder if it's just to see the boys!

Friday morning Justin and I headed out early (7 am) for Sydney. We arrived at the scuba shop around 9:20, but it didn't open until 10 am so we got ourselves some breakfast and walked around the town. We were in a really little town called Ramsgate and so we made it around the town in about 15 minutes. At 10 am we tried to get in the shop, but the closed sign was still up and the door wouldn't open. We parked ourselves on a bench about thirty feet from the door and decided to give them some time. Periodically we would go back and check the door and each time we weren't able to get in. We finally decided that the shop must not open until 11. We spent some more time on the bench and then we checked the door again at 11, but it still wouldn't open and the closed sign was still up. I figured we better call the shop and ask them what's up. . .they answered right away and said they were open and had just forgotten to turn the sign around! We then realized that we had been pulling the door when we should have been pushing it, so it wasn't locked after all. We both felt pretty silly and couldn't believe that we sat on a bench for an hour waiting for the already open shop to open!

We hid our embarrassment though and the instructor, Jaimie, had us take a little test and review some of the information we had read in our study books. We learned how to calculate the amount of nitrogen in your body so that you know how long you can spend under water and we talked about the various ways to deal with an out-of-air situation. We spent about 2 hours with Jaimie and then we began our trek back to Wollongong.

For some reason we thought it would be a good idea to try to get home a different way than how we got there. . .I think you can guess how this story is going to end up. We needed to catch a bus to a train station and rather than catching one to the train station we had arrived at we decided to catch one to the next city over. We waited a good half an hour for this bus and when we finally got on it, we realized we didn't really know where to get off it. Luckily (or unluckily?) the bus terminated its route not long after we got on and we were forced to get off. We were then stuck in the middle of Hurstville with no idea how to get to the train station. We wondered around for another 30-45 minutes and Justin finally spotted some train tracks. We figured if we followed along the tracks long enough in one direction we would eventually find a train station. Fortunately this logic paid off and we ran into the Hurstville train station not too much later. Once we got to the train station we realized that the bus had dropped us off not too far away. . .we had just walked in a big circle.

We finally got on the train around 2:30 and were able to make it back to I-House around 4:15. So for our two hours of scuba instruction we had spent around 7 hours in transit. We were both exhausted from our very adventurous day and so we both conked out on the train. We met up with our friends when we got back and ate a quick dinner at I-House and then we were off to a local Rugby League game. It was our hometeam (the St. George Illawara Dragons) versus the Panthers. I loved the atmosphere at the stadium. We sat on a grass hill surrounded by young people and families and everyone in between. Everyone was dressed up with their team's paraphanalia and there was a lot of energy coming from the crowd. I was shocked to find out that there were cheerleaders at this game. . .I was under the impression that cheerleaders were only an American phenomenon. I thought the actual game was not as exciting as an AFL game because it basically consisted of 1 guy running with the ball and being tackled by 5 members of the other team while his entire team stood around and watched. Once the guy got tackled the entire process just started again. I will give the guys props for tackling and being tackled without any pads whatsoever though!

The next morning Justin and I had to catch an even earlier train (6:15!) so that we could start our scuba training promptly at 8:15. Luckily we didn't have anymore mishaps traveling to the shop and we arrived right on time. We spent the entire morning in the local pool completely outfitted in all of our scuba gear. We practiced setting up our equipment, breathing through our regulator, taking off and putting on our mask underwater, sharing air (in case someone ever ran out), and other important skills. It was a little scary at first learning to trust the regulator to let you breathe, but after a little while I started to forget that I was even breathing through a regulator. By early afternoon we had both passed all of the skills tests and we headed to the ocean for our first open water dive. We put on all of our gear (wetsuits, air tanks, bouyancy devices, and regulators) on top of a hill and then hiked down to our entrance point. Our dive was about 6 meters deep and we spent about 40 minutes underwater. The visibility wasn't great because there have a been a lot of storms recently, but we still got to see some cool looking fish that lived on the reef. Our first day of scuba diving ended around 4 pm and we both felt like we could go to bed right then, but we had to get to our hostel in Sydney first and make some dinner.
We grilled burgers and made potato wedges for dinner and then relaxed in our hostel for the rest of the night.

Our day started early again on Sunday since we had to get three open water dives in. We drove to "The Monument" which is a diving site right in Botany Bay. We did three half-hour dives (the deepest was 10 meters!) throughout the course of the morning and afternoon and were tested on the skills we learned in the pool. It was a little unnerving practicing the out-of-air situations underwater and I really had to work to keep myself calm. But in the end we passed all of the skills with flying colors and by Sunday afternoon we were both certified scuba divers.

We're hoping to get one or two more dives in before we head up to the Great Barrier Reef to do our big diving trip with Molly and Chris. But right now I am busy writing papers and lab reports because the semester is quickly drawing to a close. This is our last week of class and next week is our study break. Lots of people will be spending the week traveling and some friends and I plan to do a few day trips to areas around Wollongong. Then we have 2 weeks of finals and we're done! It's sad thinking about the end of my adventures in Australia, but I am also excited to see all of you back home!