Scuba Class

I was told that we should show up for our scuba class a couple hours early because there is a medical questionnaire and if we said "Yes" to anything we would need to leave and get a doctor's note to participate.  Our lesson started at 11am, so we figured we would get there at 10am - 2 hours early seemed ridiculous.  We showed up at 9:50am, but they don't even open until 10am.  I would have been pretty ticked off if we showed up at 9am!!  We waited until they opened their doors. 

 

The medical questionnaire was about 15 questions, mainly about asthma, seizures, and/or other breathing issues.  We were done in about 5 minutes.  Then we were fitted for our scuba gear, which took about 20 minutes.  We loaded our gear in our SUV and then they said we didn't need to come back until 12pm.  Uhhhh, really?!?!?!  I was told to be there at 9am and now you don't need us until noon??!!  We needed to return at noon to watch a 15 minute video and then head to the pool for our lesson at 1pm.  Our 2 hour lesson turned into a 5 hour day.  It was really annoying because we had plans to celebrate Ben's birthday and my cousin was playing Rugby nearby and staying the night with us.

 

We hurried over to watch Sabrina play in a portion of her Rugby tournament.  The match was only 7 minutes long, so we were able to visit for a while before we had to head back for our scuba class.

 

We unloaded our scuba gear next to the pool:

Our indoor, heated pool....uh, yeah that's definitely NOT indoor!  No one in the class planned on being outdoors, so NO ONE had sunscreen.  Lovely. 

We all decided to wear the wetsuits to help save ourselves from sunburns.  The suit made it harder for me to sink even though I had a weight belt on.  I played with the air filling and deflating my vest trying to find a happy medium, but I couldn't.  My ears would pop while on the bottom of the pool and the next thing I knew I would be floating at the top again.  The mask I was wearing was way too tight and hurt like crazy under my nose, so it was hard to just enjoy the class while I was having trouble sinking and my nose was so sore.

The pictures below are towards the end of class - they let us swim around the pool on our own.  It was a really neat experience; staying under water that long didn't feel right but it was so cool.  A woman in the class freaked out in 3 1/2 feet of water numerous times.  Her husband was nearby watching and anytime he walked a few feet away she would flip out and tell him to come closer.  Her husband is a scuba diver and she's quite the opposite.  Since he was dry and watching everyone else, he was kind enough to take my iphone out of my backpack and take a few pictures of us:

Fancy outfit for the class - holy smokes do I look pale!!:

Learning how to breakdown our gear:

It was a fun class, so it was easy to get over the annoying schedule issue earlier in the day.  I will admit that I had to stand up during a portion of our class.  The instructors were teaching us how to fill our mask with water so we could clear the water out.  We had to breathe through our mouth, blow hard through our nose (the air will push the water out) and then continue breathing through our mouth while under water.  I'm not a good mouth breather, so putting the combination together didn't work out well.  The water didn't clear from my mask and then I automatically took a breath through my nose to try again, but I sucked all the water into my nose.  Whoops!  I stood up to take a moment to choke on pool water. HAHA  I was able to complete the task on the second try.