{It's Official}

We are officially scuba dive certified. It was a fun process, but more work than we expected. 

There are a few different ways to take the class for it, but we opted for studying on our own and just diving every saturday with the instructor. Usually you do class time with the instructor, but we don't have time for that.  We studied on our own. I must say, the studying process wasn't that fun. A lot of the info. isn't anything fun to learn about. But a lot of it is necessary. I struggled through the studying process, ask shane. :)

We had to get in FIVE dives before we could get certified, AND take an 85 question test.  Our first dive was at the Sea Wall in about 6 feet of water.  I made it for about 30 minutes and then i got some bad pain in my throat and chest. It's something i have been dealing with since i can remember. I finally decided to go in and get it checked to make sure i could dive still. It really is very uncomfortable and almost suffocating...and to feel like your suffocating with all that gear on almost puts me in panic mode. Bad combination.  I went to the doc and he has a few ideas of what he thinks it is, but it hasn't been figured out yet. But he thinkgs it shouldn't keep me from suba diving. It's going to be a long long process to figure it out, i am sure.

I went back into the water a few days later with the instructor to make up for what i missed on that first dive. That one went a lot better. One of the things i didn't like at all about our dives is what we have to do when we first get in the water. We practice a few safety procedures. Two of them being that we have to let water into our mask and then blow it out.  Next we have to completely take our mask off , put it back on and blow the water out. Sounds simple. It's not. In any pool i naturally just blow air out of my nose when i am under the water. I figured that would be advantageous for me , but it wasn't. It's like the regulator in my mouth stopped me from being able to blow water out of my nose like i usually do. I don't know what it was. So, then i would get water up my nose. I eventually forced the water out, but it took a few times of trying before my nose would let me blow air out. In the meantime i forget that i have a regulator in my mouth so that i can breath in and get some air.  And getting that salt water in your nose just doesn't feel good. It burns. So, everytime we had to do that i would get so nervous. It ended up working out just fine for me.

The other issue we had issues with was equalizing our ears. It wasn't as big of a deal as letting water in our mask, but it was bothersome. Our second dive, my left ear equalized fine, but my right side didn't. It took it longer to equalize and wouldn't pop.  Eventually my ear started making really loud, creepy squeeky noises. I thought i was ruining my ear. It didn't really HURT, but the sounds just didn't sound normal. :) I would feel warm coming out of my ear when i heard these noises and wondered if i had blood coming out. I didn't. Our last two dives my ears were totally fine. I learned that i need to start equalizing from the very top, all the way down the whole time. If i wait until i start feeling pain in my ear then it is more difficult.

The other things you have to learn is your weight and buoyancy.  You have to wear weights around your stomach to help you sink when you get in.  If you aren't weighted properly then you will have troubles with floating too high, or sinking so much that you feel stuck at the bottom. And you can notice for sure when you are not weighted correctly. When you are weighted correctly its so nice. 

So, i had to wear 12 pounds around my stomach.  We wore exposure suits...full length. And those things are heck to put on and take off. Poor shane received one that was too small on our last day. hahahaha!  It was too short and it was pulling the top of his shoulders down...he couldn't fit into it properly so the whole crack split. hahaha! It was so funny.  The same thing happened to one other guy in our group on the first dive. It's so funny watching each other put our suits on.

After you put your weights on you then put on your BC....It's like a lifejacket, but it is able to fill up with air so you can float and it has a few different attachments to it. And attached on the back of your BC is the tank. Then you have a mask, and your boots and fins. It's a lot of freakin weight for me. I am small and weak. So, i always felt like i was on the edge of falling completely over everytime i walked. I had a really hard time getting OUT of the water. I felt like gravity was working triple time against me everytime i tried to step up out of the water. It is crazy.

Underwater is amazing.  We are so lucky to be able to see AMAZING sea life JUST off our sea wall, which is only about a 5 minute drive. It's a very popular spot for it.  What's crazy is that when you are underwater you don't see the TRUE color of the things you are looking at.  Out of the water my flippers are a vibrant RED color. In the water they look like a dull pink color. So, i only WISH we could see the TRUE colors of all the plant life in the water.  There are special cameras that are able to capture the true colors, but they are so entirely expensive SO that won't happen for us.  BUT seeing the varieties of coral is awesome. I thought what i saw snorkeling was awesome, but when you go down 40-50 feet the coral is so much bigger and beautiful.

We saw many many fish.  Shane and I kept being SURROUNDED by fish. Nobody else was getting it. I look around and realize i am literally in a tornado of fish surrounding me and nobody else is. It was the funniest thing. They are sooo interested in us. They just were staring and staring. I loved it.

We also saw lots of sea snakes.  I saw a large eel. He was actually out of his hole and in the open. Our instructor said it's unusual to see them out like that. There were numerous anemones and lots of clown fish. The coral life is amazing. There was tons of soft coral. Just beautiful. Truly.

Scuba diving makes me EXTREMELY hungry. It's quite a workout with all the kicking you do. Not only that but when you scuba dive you lose 25 percent more body heat than you do at surface.  It's a great workout, especially having to walk with all the gear on. And you can get dehydrated very quickly because of the dry air you are breathing in from the cylinder. It has zero moisture in it.

We really enjoyed the journey. It was tons of fun and we cannot wait to go out on our own without an instructor. :) To the Kerama Islands! Yippee!