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.
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