Scuba Day 1

We signed up for a 4 day training certification course in open water scuba diving. Today was our first day. We woke up with enough time to grab a breakfast sandwich from a street vendor (baguette, veggies, chicken, things I can't even begin to decribe) and made it to our destination (Rainbow Divers) at 8am to begin training. For 3 hours, we watched training videos and completed 3 of 5 quizzes. We broke for lunch, had a cup of coffee, and wandered out to the streets to find pho.

Quick sidenote about today. It rained like nothing I have seen before, nonstop streaming water which quickly filled the streets with 4+ inches of standing water. Now I understand why all the shops have a step or two from street level to the interior.

We found a good (read: cheap) pho place and settled in to watch the flooding. Content with our meal, we put on our ponchos and went for a wade around the block. Arriving back at the dive local, we boarded a bus and went to the public swimming pool to start learning the basics. The pool was originally built by the navy and is quite deep at one end. Our trainer mentioned that they can't keep the pool filled to capacity because the locals would drown. Guess swimming isn't taught often. Because the pool isn't filled all the way, the filtration system doesn't work, so the visibility can be limited. We were lucky today and could see almost to the end of the pool.

Today we learned about our gear, how to properly check it, set it up, put it on, navigate with it, and use it. We spent a few hours in the pool learning to breathe through the snorkel, regulator, switching back and forth between the two, finding your regulator when it falls out of your mouth (perhaps if someone kicks it), and flooding/clearing the mask. We know how to safely decend and ascend. The hardest part is flooding the mask with water. Because of our contacts, we have to keep our eyes closed during this process. One thing we worked on was taking our mask off completely and breathing through the regulator for 1 minute...with our eyes closed. It's a bit strange.

Overall, I love the experience so far. I adore being in the water and can happily spend hours learning this process. I think we're off to have a beer and dinner, then off to bed so that we can do it again tomorrow!