Got my first dive courses scheduled
Well, the subject of the post says it all really. I sent an email out to the rest of the teachers here in Okinawa advertising my diving courses and I was really pleased with the response I’ve got. 24 hours after the initial email went out I’ve got 6 people signed up for OW courses, 2 for AOW and one for a refresher - exciting stuff. Plus I’m thinking of doing some DSDs with people at the next beach cleanup - that will allow the people who are not too sure if they want to do a full diving course try it out. And I’ve got my EFR courses happening after our annual teaching conference in November, so it’s all happening now. I’m already a little nervous about teaching my first course, but am really looking forward to it. I’ve made a provisional schedule and I’d like my first OW course to take place over a long weekend in October - the 7th to the 9th. Will report back once anything sorted out for sure.
I finally managed to return my Uwatec Smartcom computer to the guy I bought it from last night. He’s going to return it to the shop on base who will send it back to Scubapro in the States to get repaired/replaced. It’ll probably be a couple of months before it comes back, but if that’s the case then it might prove to be a nice pre-Xmas present for myself when it arrives. It’ll be nice to have it back, as I did like the fact that it monitored my breathing and I was able to upload all my dive data onto my PDA (yes - I am a technology geek!). But saying that it is not essential as I do have my analogue gauges which are always reliable (touch wood).
Managed to use the gauge console and the rest of my dive gear at the weekend, with 3 very enjoyable dives. The first was on Friday night after work, and was up at Kadena North. It was a night dive with Brian and 4 students: 2 girls doing an AOW course and 2 guys doing the Night Diver specialty dive. It had been a while, or at least seemed it, since I’d been in the water so I was relishing the chance to dive. Took my usual position at the back of the group, making sure everyone stayed relatively close together and nobody got lost. We headed in a Kadena North but then swam around to Kadena Steps. The dive was nice and relaxing - we saw loads of eels, some stonefish and a couple of octopii too for good measure. We were planning to do a 2nd dive, but it was a tad chilly once we’d got out of the water so we elected to call it a night, and instead I went for a coffee with Brian.
Saturday was a hella-early start, meeting at 6:30am at Kadena Marina. We headed up for Maeda for a couple more AOW dives and they were really good. The 2 guys were also doing a Deep Diver Specialty and so Brian was taking them down to 40m/130ft, and I was in charge of the AOW divers, taking them down to 30m/100ft. That was the first time I’ve actually been in charge of dive students and it felt good on the whole. I could feel I was having to focus hard though, being at a reasonable depth and being in charge of students & doing skills with them took some concentration. But everything went well and I’m sure I’ll be less nervous in the future when I do teaching. The 2nd dive was a multi-level dive, which again I took the instructor role with the 2 students. I led them through a very brief outline of the wheel, what we would be doing and why we would do something like that. Both of the students seemed to pick it up pretty well so we geared up and hopped back in. The dive went exactly as we had planned it: 15 minutes at 18m/60ft followed by 25 minutes at 12m/40ft. We saw a couple of eels and a preying mantis shrimp too - those were probably the highlights of the dive.
No diving on Sunday due to a lack of spaces on the dive boat to the Keramas. A little disappointing, but you win some and you lose some I suppose. It did give me a chance to clean up my apartment and do some chores around the place (Mum will be happy!). The only othe thing I’ve got to report on is my school’s annual Sports Day, unofficially referred to as the “Let’s see how many students we can injure and have stretchered to the nurse’s room Day”. My word… after the morning’s session it looked like the Somme out there - there were bodies strewn all over the place! I was talking to a teacher about why so many kids get injured and we could only come up with a few reasons between us:
1. The kids aren’t as used to doing sports and sporting activities as other schools. But when it comes to sports day they really push themselves hard and usually beyond their limits.
2. The conditions. It must have been over 30C out there in blazing sunshine and the kids don’t drink nearly enough water (they don’t realise that tea is a diuretic and doesn’t help them rehydrate).
3. Lack of an efficient warm-up. They do a 5 minute warm up session at the start of the day, but it only focuses on the upper body (maybe useful after the first hour when they’re having to crawl around the track when their legs have given up). But if a student is running in the afternoon then they don’t warm up between before the race. Similarly, as soon as the race finishes they pull up very quickly. There’s no such thing as slowing down with these kids and it’s usually when they stop that they collapse.
Now one of the 3rd year groups had obviously anticipated that they’d pick up a few injuries during the day, and so had set up their own medical station under the cover of their marquee. So one girl finishes a race and comes back into the marquee with a very noticeable limp. Then the 3 students manning this medical station get to work. The guy starts by applying cold spray to the affected muscle; one of the girls gets some medical/sports strapping out of her first aid box; the other one gets out what can only be described as something akin to a Fisher Price Guide to Strapping Sports Injuries! So these 3 students then start flicking through the book to find out which muscle she’s damaged so they can work out how to aplpy the strapping and help her. It was so cute, in a slightly disconcerting way!
That’s about it for now though. I’ll be in touch again soon with more diving news and hopefully a little more about these courses I’ve got coming up. As always, take care and dive safely.
Typhoon in the area so no diving this weekend
Just as I start to get back into the swing of diving in Oki, and we have a 3-day weekend, a typhoon comes close to Okinawa and ruins it. This onw was called Shanshan, and was initially projected to give Okinawa a direct hit. Fortunately for us it veered off and passed East of the island about 120 miles away. When it passed us through Saturday afternoon and evening it was still pretty strong: winds of 120 knots and gusts of up to 140 knots. According to a BBC news story the typhoon has killed 9 people on the mainland. Sad news, but not really uncommon when typhoons get to mainland Japan. Okinawa is used to typhoons - the buildings are relatively new (also because of what WWII did here) and pretty strong against the elements. But on the mainland typhoons are much rarer and so people and buildings are not as prepared.
So in the absence of diving, I thought I’d update people a little on what I’ve been up to, and also devote some of my time to talking about my students. I can honestly say that these kids are some of the hardest working people I will ever come across. I know I’m at a high quality school, but the students on the whole are really focused towards their ultimate goal, to graduate from school and get into university. And the kids don’t really have a life outside school - almost every student is involved with clubs which they take part in every weekend. Plus at my school the students have lessons on a Saturday morning (as we’re a high level school). On Friday I excitedly said to my classes “So today you have a long weekend… what will you all be doing?”. A few rather glum faces looked back at me before one student explained, “We have school on Saturday, then tests on Sunday”. So their “long” weekend was effectively one and a half days. A prime example of this work ethic was a couple of months ago, when one of my very good students was telling me about her daily schedule. She gets to school at around 7:15 as the first lesson starts at 7:30. Lessons end at 16:30 but then she has international club for an hour. She has to leave that early because at 18:00 she has evening school/cram school. This ends at around 21:00 so she then gets the bus home, has her dinner, and by about 22:00 she is ready to start her homework. I can’t fault her dedication, but just worry that they might be burnt out by the time they are 25.
I love Okinawa’s waters!
Apologies for the lack of updates recently. I ahve been really busy catching up with everyone and getting back into the swing of life here in Oki that I’ve not had chance to sit down and write an entry. But I’m here now and will try to update you on what I’ve been up to.
I’ll start by going straight into the diving. Last weekend was a diving fest, with 5 dives in total. Saturday morning was spent at Maeda, where I did 3 dives with Brian & Crystal. The skies were relatively clear but with a few dark clouds looming on the horizon. We were considering somewhere like Toilet Bowl to dive, but with clouds like that the conditions could change at the drop of a hat. So Maeda it was. We were in the water by 8am and on our first dive we headed left along the wall. Went down to about 33m and cruised along. After a while we started to go up and we hit a current going against us. We were able to make ground but we still had to kick a bit. Crystal was very impressive though; she was kicking but easily keeping up with me and Brian. Along the wall we also saw a baby eel sticking its head out qhich was quite cool.
Thailand trip over… back to Okinawa!
It’s back to Okinawa, teaching, and understanding at least a little more of the language than I did in Thailand. The last couple of days in Thailand were pretty relaxed. John & Erik took me to the airport in Koh Samui at 5am, and Goi (girl from La Bodega) came to see me off. That was pretty sweet of her and was highly appreciated. She was telling me, in very broken English, that she’d miss me and would try to call but that it would be expensive for her. I told her I’d keep in touch with her which she was pleased with. She was very close to tears as I left to get on the plane. Bless! I gave her a call on Saturday night actually. We only spoke for a few minutes (the huge language barrier means we can’t have anything other than very basic conversations) but she sounded really happy to hear from me.
My flight left Bangkok early on Thursday morning and I woke up feeling really excited about traveling. I felt like I was going “home”, and it brought a smile to my face when I got to Don Huang airport and heard a Japanese couple behind me chatting. I have developed such a strong affinity to this country and it’s going to be so hard to leave when the time comes. I’d had a great time in Thailand, but all the time I was missing Okinawa and especially in the last few days I was looking forward to getting back.
No rest for the wicked though, and 12 hours after arriving back in Gushikami, I was going to work again. All the teachers were pleased to see me and some of the students were highly excited to hear about what I’d been up to. I only had 2 classes and this week I’m looking forward to seeing the rest of them. In typical Japanese style though, they have tests this week. Yes – only one day of school last week and they are doing tests already. No wonder these kids get burnt out and sleep in class sometimes. The new foreign teacher at my school seems nice enough, and although she’s a little quiet I’m sure she’ll be a more than capable teacher.
I also had the chance to meet some of the other teachers on Saturday. Was originally meeting up with one from Brighouse (yay – another person from Yorkshire!) but then a few of the other new teachers walked in so I was meeting those too. Think I’ll get on very well with the Yorkshire lass – we’ve got a common language(!) and seem to have similar ideas about teaching and the JET Community. Plus we’re at high-level schools so hopefully we can throw ideas around between us and share the good ones. Think I might have managed to get someone doing a diving course at the end of September too. One of the new teachers’ friends are coming down from Osaka at the end of September and she’s interested in doing a Discover Scuba Diving course with them. I’d prefer doing an OW or Scuba Diver course, but they aren’t here for long enough. DSD is fine with me though and it will give me some much-needed experience.
That’s about it from me for now. No diving planned as of yet, but hopefully I’ll be back in the water towards the end of this week. Once I’m diving again I’ll report back on how Okinawa’s waters compare to Thailand’s. Until then take care and dive safely.